Will I Ever Stop Asking?
Image provided by Kevin Mueller @kevinmueller on Unsplash
Will I Ever Stop Asking
Where would we be,
had you not died?
Will I ever stop wondering
what would have happened
in our life together
if you were still here?
Will I ever be at peace
with the idea that my life is filled
with questions
that do not have answers?
Will I ever feel okay
with the knowing
that large pieces of my life
will always remain unknown?
Will I?
There are so many things I wish I could know.
I wish I could know what life and marriage would have brought us,
after 4 years and 9 months.
I wish I could know what it feels like
to celebrate 5 years together. Or ten. Or twenty.
I wish I could know what a lifetime with the same person
feels like.
My husband was a person who was happy.
Seemed happy.
I think he was happy.
Will I ever really know?
He walked around our apartment, whistling.
Often.
He coped with stress through music.
He would go in the other room,
by himself,
and strum that guitar,
until the demons went away.
Until he stopped thinking about what he saw that day on the job.
On the ambulance.
Trauma. Death. Little kids he couldn’t save.
He always said that was the absolute worst.
Sometimes he would talk about with me.
Afterwards.
After he played the music.
And sometimes he would stay silent,
and just want to sit side by side,
holding my hand.
Is that why his heart gave out?
Was he more affected than he let on?
Was he really good at hiding stress from me,
or did he really just know how to seperate
the horrors, from the good?
I don’t know.
But I wonder.
Often.
I wonder what years and years at that job
would have done to him.
If he had lived.
I wonder what kinds of things
he saw and experienced and felt
during his time in the Air Force,
and his time serving in Desert Storm.
I have nobody to ask these questions,
and when he was around,
I didnt ask enough questions.
I wish I had listened harder,
and heard more of his stories.
I used to love just hearing him talk.
Sometimes I loved it so much,
I may have forgotten to really listen,
to the words.
Time goes on.
And I keep forgetting
the words
to the songs of his life.
It makes me sad
that I can never ask him
if he was truly happy,
when he died,
and when he lived.
Our future remains unknown,
and the time we shared together,
so simple and loving and kind,
now seems a mystery,
that I can’t seem to stop
wondering about.