Member-only story
This is Not an Obituary
He was too full of life for that.
On Wednesday, March 16 at 12:30 AM my husband, Ed, passed away peacefully. Our children and grandchildren were able to fly down to our winter digs in South Carolina, where we could all spend that fleeting time together. I think it was the way anyone who saw their last days coming would have wanted it to be.
He was 89 and still making jokes the day before his breathing finally slowed then stopped. No pain, no real stress, just…an ending.
And now a new beginning for me. We’ve been together since September 1955, two weeks after I turned 18. He was 23 and just out of the Marines. He asked me to marry him on Christmas Eve, presenting me with a small but perfect emerald-cut diamond ring he picked out himself. We were married the following July, and I moved out of my parents’ house to make a new life with him. And what a life it was! We were still practically strangers — and mere kids — when we started out, but we chose well. Neither of us could have lived that long with anyone else.
I have never lived alone. Never. But you know what? I’m looking forward to it. My grief will be painful and palpable. It will strike whenever a sight, a smell, a memory jabs at my heart. I expect that. I can’t say I’ll welcome it, but I’ll expect it. But now, in the years I have left, it’s my time.
