A Glimpse of Hope

You’re only three feet away. The only things physically separating us are the table we bought on our first trip to IKEA, the chipped plates and mottled silverware that are smudged with the remnants of dinner, and the heavy, unquiet air. You’re only three feet away. Why does it feel like there’s an ocean between us?

I want to cross that empty, cyanic expanse and reach for your hand. I want to feel it run through my hair again like the wind, and I want to feel your body bracing me like the deck of that sailboat we rented for our 10th anniversary. Do you remember that trip? I was the sail and you were the hull, and together we braved the passage to the Keys. On that trip you learned that I could fish when I caught our dinner that first day, and I learned that you could navigate with just a map and your senses after the Garmin broke.

When did we stop learning about each other? Was it after Allie died, and we had nothing to give each other for years but our grief? Or was it more insidious than that, a daily taming of the winds and settling of the currents that eventually left us stalled?

Our eyes meet over the table, and just for that moment it feels like the ocean is gone. It feels like I can whisper and you’ll hear me; it feels like I can reach for your hand without the risk of drowning. My fingers twitch, beginning to close the distance when your hand suddenly retreats. It grips the plate in front of you and then reaches to grip mine as you stand. I whisper a thank you, but even though you’re less than a foot away now I know you can’t hear me across the miles and miles of lapping waves.

Do you remember the night we met? You were the young, strapping mariner - no stranger to hard work and filled with humble ambition. I was the sea - a cruel and fickle temptress with no regard for the lives of men. I wanted to hate you at first. I wanted to pick the splinters of your ship from my teeth as you staggered back onto land. But you were ever the patient suitor, weathering every rogue wave and waterspout I threw at you until I realized that I didn’t need to be the sea anymore. I didn’t need to push you away to protect my cerulean heart.

The wedding was marvelous; a perfect painting hung in some aristocrat’s quarters. We laughed and we danced and we drank until the early hours, sail and hull, come together to explore the hidden coves and channels of our new life. And then came Allie, and we found that everything we needed was suddenly on dry land. Do you remember the night we got the call? Do you remember holding her hand on those cold, sterile sheets as the doctor’s words faded in and out like the beam of a lighthouse?

We made it through those first flower-filled weeks, but then you had to go - you always felt closest to her on the water. I remember you begging me to join you, pleading with me, but how could I step onto that deck when the lights on the shoreline sparkled like her eyes? How could I hear her laughter over the wind, and how could I see her reflection in the ever-shifting waves? I watched your ship leave from the widow’s watch, wishing more than anything that I could be sailing with you. Knowing that my heart was no longer at sea.

I stand there now at that balcony, scanning the brilliant horizon for the speck of your hull. I desperately search for a glimpse of the sails that used to be mine, hoping I’ll spot you coming into port. Praying I’ll see you coming home. The only thing that gathers on the horizon are black, roiling clouds, and I close the shutters to await the coming storm.

The dishes are quickly done and we assume our standard positions on the couch as the invisible tempest swirls and builds around us. I pick up the paperback novel that Gordon Lightfoot once sang about as you open your laptop to continue the day’s work. For another moment we lock eyes, and I open my mouth to let the torrent of emotion come pouring out like the rain. But what do I say to the weathered sailor as we’re standing on the docks? Can I ask you to sing my favorite shanty, knowing the ghost of the woman it will conjure? I ask you to turn on the news instead. The sailor fades.

The storm’s fury is peaking as stabs of lightning move in closer and closer, the accompanying thunderclaps shaking me to my core. Can you feel it too? Is the hair on your arms standing up? Is the tightness in your throat almost too much to bear? We’re transported back to that sailboat, the sea churning and tossing us with the storm’s wrath. We shelter in place, every new strike seeming like the one that may finally break us apart - but somehow, miraculously, they all miss. Somehow, as wave after wave breaks over the bow, we keep from capsizing.

The storm slowly wanes as it always does, eventually leaving behind only a fine mist and a red sky under the shelf of clouds. It’s a sight that would have been greeted with rum and music in years past, but for now it’s enough to just let the mist wash the sorrow and the anger and the loneliness away.

We retire to the bedroom, and I open those shutters one more time to stare out into the quickly-darkening expanse. I don’t really expect to see anything but the rolling, restless ocean. Then, for the first time in months, your arm slowly, hesitantly, reaches around to draw me back against your chest. I immediately melt into you, your breath on my neck a warm, welcome breeze and the salty spray of your quiet tears an answered prayer. I can see it there now; your ship cresting the edge of the horizon. I know that it’s my sailor coming into port. I know that, at least for now, you’re coming home.