Good Night: A Work of Fiction

Mm-mm I wanna linger, mm-mm a little longer
Mm-mm a little longer here with you.

Mm-mm it’s such a perfect night, mm-mm it doesn’t seem quite right
Mm-mm that it’s my last one here with you.

Mm-mm and come September, mm-mm I will remember
Mm-mm our camping days and friendship true

Mm-mm and as the years go by, mm-mm I’ll think of you and sigh
Mm-mm this is goodnight and not goodbye

This is 46 hours of my life given to you. This is 1,104 minutes of your life given to me. This is 66,240 seconds of our lives given to one another. This is an endless culmination of 51 years of love. We came here to say goodbye, but what we lost in words, we found in the gifts of simple days.

You come from these waiving plains where hills rise and fall, rise and fall like the sturdy breath of steady Midwestern women. I come from the Kudzu comfort of home where unruly thick things grow. Unfortunately those Kudzu vines don't grow in the hills of Missouri.

Last night we set about the evening- we cooked dinner together, I washed dishes while you set the fire. We watched that fire for hours. Hours of total silence, until the last embers were barely living. My mother always quoted Rogers & Hammerstein, “When there is nothing left to say, it is time for silence.” But that particular fire said, “No. There is so much to say. But, what words could possibly be loud enough to be heard over the deafening sounds of such stillness?” I wondered if you were trying to give me one last gift of watching our life together burn, ebb, re-light, ebb, smolder, smoke, gone.

Amid the sharp smell of kerosene and the soft glow of lamp light, I curled up beside you for a fit-full sleep. Mijn bedgenoot! Dit is gezellig. It is amazing to me that still, after all this time, your body holds the same warmth and wonderment it did that November on the beaches of Chicago. It was All Souls Day; do you remember? I whispered those most sweet of Dutch words to you that night too. Mijn bedgenoot! Dit is gezellig.

This morning we have still said very little, and I am panicked at the thought of leaving here with so many things unspoken. It has been so perfect. It really doesn’t seem right that this should be my last unburdened day with you. I am packing up the cabin. You doze in the hammock outside. God, you are so striking. It is like this sickness, which is inside the both of us now, has not eaten one cell of you, while I have been ravaged by it. I realize, finally, that your pain must be more acute than the aches of my weariness. For leaving is so much harder than being left. I am free to burn, cry, smolder, but you must carry on with the nobility and dignity you must convince us can be found in your departure. No, I will not let you carry the burden of leaving. If silence is your way, I will let every moment we have left fade from day into night without breaking the unspoken. This is goodnight, and not goodbye.