My Husband is Gone

My husband has been gone for just over a day now. I know we were fighting a lot and he had been acting different, but I still don’t want him gone. I love him with all I have. Even if we had problems. Even if he was having an affair. The days leading up to his absence were normal for the most part. In fact, they were the best days we had in a long while. We spent time together without bickering over some stupid thing and it felt like it used to. I really thought we were on the mend.

My husband has been gone for over a week now. It wasn’t until his mother called asking if I knew why he hadn’t been answering his phone that I really started to panic. What if he hadn’t left me after all. What if he still loved me. What if this was some tragic misunderstanding? I was brought back to reality by her worried rapid-fire questions. Where could he be? Was he hurt? In danger? I went from heartbroken to absolutely terrified in the span of one phone call. I never liked my mother-in-law, but I really felt her pain as she realized her son was missing. She hurried off the phone with me. She must be so distraught. My head swam as I hang up the phone. My world started spinning out of control. I need to call the police. I need to report my husband as a missing person.

My husband has been declared missing for a month. They say the effort of finding a missing person decreases greatly after the first few days. Every moment I spend in our home serves as a stinging reminder of him. His clothes still sit in the closet. His things laid out like he had just stepped away. I dared not to touch anything. Not even to ease my pain. I tried not to even think about moving anything. I left everything exactly the way he had it. Exactly the way it was supposed to be. In fact, if you were to use a checklist of every item in our home, the only things you’d be unable to find are the clothes my husband was last wearing and his notebook. A little black book with his initials monogrammed on the cover in gold that usually sat in his top desk drawer. Not many people know about my husband’s avid writing habit. It often annoyed me to no end as he sat at his desk and wrote constantly in that black book long into the night as he smiled to himself. He would never tell me what he was writing but every so often I would observe him tearing out a page or two and putting them in an envelope. I never could figure out who he was sending letters to. I never knew why he let a secret come between us.

My husband has been declared missing for 10 months now. I have not spoken to his parents in quite a while. I do try to call and talk about the search efforts or reminisce about my husband’s life, but they always deny my calls. I think they might have even blocked my number now. I knew they never liked me, but aren’t we all suffering a loss? It figures they would leave me to deal with this alone. They wouldn’t have understood anyway. The police have stopped by a few times since my husband has been declared missing. Always repeating the same questions and gathering information I’ve already told them. Constantly studying my reactions to try and catch a glimpse of something they won’t mention to me. They must be stuck in their search and trying to keep up appearances. I wish they would leave me alone and stop making me relive my heartbreak. I wish they would find my husband. I can’t keep living like this.

My husband has been declared missing for two years now. I have recovered enough emotionally to finally clean up his things. Ridding the home of every piece of my husband’s things and putting them into storage. I still can’t quite bring myself to throw anything away. You never know what could happen, after all. The only thing not in its exact place is my husband’s little black book. I know he has it with him now. The thought of that book brings back a stinging memory of our last fight. I never intended for my husband to find out that I had snuck into his office and read from his black book while he was at work. I never told a soul about what those pages contained. The book that symbolizes the end of my marriage. The end of my life as I knew it. Page upon page was filled with romantic poetry and confessions of deep love. At first, I thought my husband had been writing to me. Too afraid to tell me his feelings so he wrote them instead. But then I remembered all the letters I had seen him send. Those were never for me. My suspicions were confirmed when I reached the end of the third page. That wasn’t my name surrounded by loving words. No, that was the name of a woman I had never met before. In my anger, I searched through his desk to find an address book. And there was her name under the ‘B’ section. She lives in California where my husband used to frequently travel for work. She was who my husband wrote these words for. I tried to control my emotions and convince myself it wasn’t real. But seeing him come home from work and barely acknowledge me just to sit down with that book and smile as he wrote, I could no longer contain myself. And now, two years since my husband has been gone, I have taken the time to deal with the pain of his infidelity. Still, I tried not to think about that book too much. It only made me start to feel that anger again and I wanted to focus on the good memories we had.

My husband has been declared missing for five years. The court has now declared him deceased. I wipe away the few tears I have left as I sit in our home. My home now, I suppose. My husband left me in more ways than one but now it was official. I was here and he was gone. The police came by again today. With more questions and what I took to be a new accusatory tone. I fielded their questions as best I could and met their rudeness with as much kindness as I could muster. I will never forgive them for insinuating I orchestrated my husband’s disappearance to get his life insurance money. The audacity of such an accusation! I loved my husband more than any amount of money. I still do.

They think I caused my husband to disappear, but they don’t understand that he never disappeared at all. I know exactly where he is. He was ready to leave me for that woman. So, I did what any desperate wife would do when faced with losing the love of her life. I made sure he couldn’t. He would stay true to me. Forever. Just like he promised in his wedding vows. I didn’t do anything out of greed or malicious intent. I simply did what I had to do to keep my husband from going astray. I swear I didn’t know he had a life insurance policy. But as I open the $20,000 check from the insurance company, I can’t help but smile to myself. I knew he always loved me. Even to the end. I knew he wouldn’t leave me to fend for myself.