This is an image I made with AI and as I made it this came to mind:
The woods are lovely, dark and deep…
Long before he died he used to quote this line from the poem before I ever knew it. I don’t know why or even what the context was, for at the beginning and for a long time after, I didn’t understand half of what he was saying, whether or not they were quotes or something he referenced, that, perhaps if I was better connected with details I should have known. It seemed not to matter whether I understood them or not, they were like little inside jokes he was happy to share the punchline of for his own entertainment. I was just happy to be in the presence of his joyous company and tolerant of confusion.
Eventually it became mine, that poem, a thing that defines me. The woods are lovely, dark and deep. At the time he liked me for my dark sense of humour which was particularly dark at that time, and, although I couldn’t say if he continued to admire me for it throughout our relationship, because those details skip out on the fog of memory, but I know we certainly amused ourselves darkly prior to his approaching death, laughing at our darkness in a way only the years of shared day-to-day life intimacy allows.
The intimacy of a toothbrush for example. Sitting in a cup on a bathroom counter. Not mine. It’s here. He’s not. Proof he was here. Mute testimony. That phrase has become mine now, too.
In the early days then we also had a ritual of watching the x-files on a Thursday or maybe it was a Friday night. His ritual, rather, one I sidelonged into, those moments you can’t wait for, long days ago, when appointment based watching was a thing and the x-files made a wet Canadian west coast forest night a thing. We were a thing. Until we weren’t.
And I wore his ring until I lost so much weight, all of our mutual weight of shared meals, shared life, the shared children that I grew, lost so much weight that the ring went flying off my finger across the room as I waved my arms in the middle of an animated conversation, a conversation not with him.
I tucked that ring away. Half relieved I had a practical reason to take it off that wasn’t at all about saying goodbye. The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep.