A LETTER TO MY WIFE ON HER 40TH BIRTHDAY
September 2016
My love,
Today you turned forty years old. Today my friend’s wife died. My friend’s name is also Brian. He and I were soldiers, we fought in the war and that meant we were supposed to die first. But he didn’t die first, and now I see I might not, either, so I cling to you like you never had a shadow until today.
To celebrate your birthday we went for a hike. There is a hill near our home that is covered with statues. They call it a sculpture park: fantastical animals, nude maidens bathing, wrought-iron turrets and castles, enormous insects, a maze without a minotaur, and the busts of generations of women, all the way down the line. We walked the grassy paths among the sculpture, under a blue sky so sharp as to cut, and I held your hand and you knew I thought of my friend Brian.
That’s why you asked me to write you this letter.
I never met Ilyse, Brian’s wife. She died today, but she had been dying for some time. Brian and Ilyse are poets, and the more cancer she got the more poems she wrote, and that’s why I feel like I know her a little bit, too. We had heard the end was coming. A ghastly relief.
Brian and I fought in an overseas war. We fought them over there so we didn’t have to fight them back here, that’s what everyone said. A year of bombs in a faraway desert was the cost of keeping you safe back home. I paid my lot, and gladly. But what war can I fight now to spare you even a sweet slip-off while asleep at home in bed? Of the two of us, I’m the one who hates to see you grow old. Not for the smiles around your eyes or sparkles in your hair, but because it exposes the lie that I can protect you indefinitely.
We stood in the bright meadow and looked across the hollow, untouched yet by autumn color. I smelled your sun-warm hair and touched your neck with my finger and laid my brow on your shoulder until your shirt was wet. I didn’t say anything and you said, “We’re very lucky.”
If I could loosen my grip even a moment, I might hear those words. We were married so young. Everyone said we were just kids, and though I didn’t believe them at the time, they were right. I grew up with you. Only half our lives together thus far, but you float at the edges of my childhood memories as well. I’m surprised, when I look at old school photos, to see you absent. I missed you before I met you.
But today, on your birthday, you’re here. You are happy and healthy and sexy and strong. You have lived on this planet for forty years and I am somehow alive with you. Astounding.
How to spend your only fortieth birthday? Fearing and fighting what will pass, or cherishing that unlikely moment? I didn’t speak this question aloud, but you answered, and in the most surprising and wonderful way.
You took off all your clothes and ran in the sunshine, and in that moment, all shadows were burned away.
That’s when I kissed you.
Forever, Brian