Thoughts on an Absent Love
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I haven’t slept very well for the last four nights. My husband is away and the absence of his body beside me in bed leaves a void. Even though I’ve been tired every night, as soon as I get into bed, I become alert, jangly. Anxious is too strong a word, but I’m somewhat unsettled. We have been together for sixteen years and until last week we had not been apart for fourteen months. Before the pandemic hit, we were frequently apart due to his work.
But this feels different. Or maybe I’d just forgotten what’s it’s like to lie in bed without his body there to ground me, how I can be slightly hypervigilant. When he’s here I’m more at ease when I go to bed, even if he’s working in his backgarden studio, which he frequently is. Somehow just knowing he’s around is calming.
Not that I feel explicitly stressed out. I don’t. But this experience makes me realise how much my nervous system is entrained with and influenced by him, how in some way he is part of me. Not in a wishy-washy romantic way, but in a my-physiology- is-deeply-affected-by-him kind of way. I don’t feel like I miss him, though it will be lovely to see him when he’s back in a few more days, yet my body, the place beyond thought, misses him and is affected by his absence.
This feels vulnerable. Not because I’m afraid he’ll decide not to come home, or that he’ll leave me for someone else. Those things could happen, but the odds are low and I’m not worried. No, this is deeper than that. The understanding that love itself leaves you open to loss. One day he won’t be here, and I will be. How would I keep living, keep functioning in a world without him?
I don’t mean to be overly dramatic or to catastrophise. And the truth is that one of us will outlive the other. It’s hard to contemplate either scenario. I’ve read that the greatest gift older long- term couples can give each other is the gift of saying don’t worry, you go first. I’ll be fine. Imagine a love such as this. A thing of wonder and awe.
We are both in great health and heretofore I haven’t really spent much, if any, time contemplating the day when one of us will be left without the other. There is so much left to love and live for. And yet this experience of my body telling a greater truth, the truth that we have become inter-dependent, that I sleep better when he’s around, makes me think of couples who have been together for decades: how do they look to the time when one of them will remain and the other will have passed on? How do you keep going? How does your body function when it feels like part of you is missing?
To love is to grieve. To love deeply is to risk vulnerability and loss.
We’ve all heard of couples who die within a short time of each other, when one died the other just didn’t want to keep on living. I’ve never thought that I would be like that. I’m fifteen years younger than my husband, so I may well grieve him. Hopefully not for many years. And, while I don’t explicitly miss him and am quite enjoying having time and space to myself, these last nights I’ve lain in bed and wondered how I could go on should something happen to him. How would my body continue to do the things it needs to do? I really don’t know. But I think it would.
The tenderness of this place is astounding. The realisation that I have become this vulnerable to my love for him, my being intertwined with his, is beautiful, a thing to be protected. Earlier in our marriage, it used to make me angry. I couldn’t really admit how much I missed him and blamed him and was mad at him for being away. Now, I don’t miss him as much and don’t blame him for being away. I’m glad for this time apart, it makes me cherish the memory of the togetherness. Shows me how important he is to me, the value of this thing called ‘we.’
The paradoxical thing is that in years past I missed him more, was more pissed off but could go to sleep. Now I miss him less because I’m happier overall, more focused on my own projects and daily commitments, nonetheless, I find it harder to fall asleep at night because I have become more calibrated to the cocoon of our bed. That place of afternoon caresses, sleepy time chats and goodnight kisses. Of waking up in the middle of the night head against his back, knowing that we are there together in our place apart from the rest of the world.
The realisation of this vulnerability and tenderness feels exquisite now instead of angry-making. At some point over the years, I came to realise that the ache in my heart was holy, that to love like this is indeed a gift, a thing to be cherished. I’m grateful that our love cracked the code of my heart and opened it to something precious and true. A love like this takes time to grow and distill, a rare and priceless thing.
Every love is shadowed by the threat of loss, of separation. Knowing that makes it more valuable. This love has weathered storms, it has stood the test of time. It’s messy and imperfect, it drives me to distraction and makes me effervescent with joy. His absence haunts our bed, the faint smell of him on the sheets both comforts and adds to the ache. The memory of our togetherness lights me up. I smile when I hear his voice in my head and quicken when I remember his touch.
Come home darling, come back to our table, that place of meandering conversations and food cooked with love. Come back to our warm bed, that place of snuggles and sex, snores and intertwined legs. Return to this fragile yet resilient, magical, entirely separate thing we call ‘us.’
Dearbhla Kelly, December 2021
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