Shortly before the first anniversary of Anthony’s death, she invited me to his life celebration at their home. Still, that night, I stood outside their house, gripped with shame. Who did I think I was, showing up here?! I didn’t belong with his real and respectable loved ones! I imagined their disgust when the adulteress who’d wreaked havoc in his too-short life walked through the door. Then, steadying my breath, I knocked.
Anthony’s wife welcomed me with a hug, ushering me in from the shadows to take my place among his family and friends.
When I saw the framed photos of Anthony on his wedding day—how frail his body looked in his hospice bed, yet how steady and strong his eyes remained, his wife by his side—I wept uncontrollably, stumbling away to hide in the bathroom. But I was intercepted by one of Anthony’s friends, holding a box of tissues.
“You must be Kim,” he said. “Anthony told me all about you.”
Later, everyone gathered in the living room to watch a home video of Anthony. He was so alive. Happy. Deeply in love with the woman who had carried him through his sickness, whom he would ask to be his wife, if only for a day. I couldn’t stop the guttural sobs escaping my body. I curled into a ball, trying to stifle the sounds, trying to vanish into the floor. Two sets of arms wrapped around me, more of his friends, holding me until my wails subsided. When I looked up, tears streamed down their faces, too. “Thank you,” I whispered.
At midnight, we rode bicycles down to Anthony’s favorite spot on the beach. I handed his wife the flowers I’d brought to place in the ocean. She held my hands, softly shaking her head. “That’s for you to give him.”
A few months passed before I heard from her again.
“I’ve thought about you a hundred times since the July bike ride,” she wrote. “I wish I could have shared more stories with you, but words fell short for the emotions I was feeling. But I hope there comes a day when the two of us can sit down, giggle like girls, and truly share the stories of our love.”
Three years later, we did just that. Over cocktails, she told me how Anthony had two folders in his email: one with her name on it and one with mine. In them were all of our correspondence.
She told me about a memoir she was writing. “You’re in there,” she said. Then she looked knowingly at the tattoo on my forearm.
“What does it mean?”
In my sent box, I had found an email that my delete button missed all those years ago. In it, Anthony had written, “The divine in me sees the divine in you.”
I’d gotten the ink to memorialize the night of his life celebration, to forever be reminded not only of his impact on my life, but of his wife’s, and the way she had selflessly pulled me from my shameful isolation, offered me community, and taught me there was no hierarchy to grief.
I suddenly felt bashful. She squeezed my arm and winked. “That can be a story for another time.”
