Miss Sunshine

We held each other tonight and I stared at the ceiling in our dark bedroom, listening to the rain fall.
"This is permanent," I said.
"I know, how wonderful it is," he said.
"And frightening as hell," I say. "This means one of us will have to deal with the other dying."
"I see it every day, Tone," he says. "I won't let it enter this little bubble of ours.
"You can't ever die," I tell him. "Not ever."
Always adding comedy to tragedy he says, "Babe, if I do die, you'll know what it's like to fuck an angel."

I've never felt permanence like this. In the past, I always knew there was someone or something better awaiting me. It doesn't get any better than this. What would I ever do if something happened to him? It took me a lifetime to find him. I can't imagine ever being touched by another man, my head, my heart, or otherwise. No one could ever fill his shoes. If he dies, I'm destined to a life like my nonie's -- long black dress, black shoes and rosary beads in hand. Or I'll be a lesbian who misses her husband.

When I was unhappy, I spent a lot of time worrying about death, that I would die before I had the life I'd always dreamed of. Now that I have the life I've always dreamed of, I spend a lot of time worrying about losing it.

I wish I was a true believer. God knows I've tried. I made a promise to God a while ago to attend mass every Sunday. I convinced my best friend to come with me. It was like high school again. The two of us giggling in the pew, rolling our eyes at the sermons, never really buying into any of it. I put in a year of Sundays that turned into champagne and mass Sundays, that turned into champagne Sundays, no mass.

To believe in an afterlife must offer all the comfort of a bowl of chicken soup and a chenille bathrobe. I want to believe. I convince myself that my mother has reincarnated herself into my new baby niece. That she's up there, somewhere, looking down on me. Then reality sets in and it all starts to seem unrealistic. My logical mind takes over and I fear that this is it.

I see myself in the future alone, growing old in the black dress, mumbling to myself, genuflecting and wiping off the tears as I pass his picture on the mantle. I wait for the the kids to call or for someone to stop by so I can share my stories about the great love I once had. I'll wait to die, hoping that it really isn't all bullshit, that I'll see him again, and my mother (my father will be elsewhere), and we'll all have a glass of wine together and talk about old times, wings tucked under.

Or maybe I'll die first. Maybe I'll get hit by a drunk driver or a flying object or even worse, the "c" word. (This is one instant where the word "cunt" is preferred).

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.
-Jean-Paul Sartre