My wife and I loved spending time together. For 29 years we had date nights nearly every weekend.
We loved going out for dinner. Sometimes dinner and a movie. Sometimes falling around in the car. Sometimes getting tipsy. Sometimes just a great dinner and then home to tumble into bed or snuggle on the couch while watching a Blockbuster DVD.
My favorite dining memories were eating at local fine Italian restaurants eating crusty bread or crunchy bruschetta, drinking big glasses of Merlot, and then feasting on chicken marsala, angel hair Alfredo or past carbonara.
Sometimes, we’d share a decadent desert, though usually by that having eaten half a loaf of bread, a couple of appetizers and our entrees, we’d often skip it.
We’d talk about the kids, about work, about the pets. We’d laugh. We’d smile. I’d look into her bright blue eyes and blindingly huge smile, reach across the table to hold her hand and think, “I’m the luckiest man in the world”.
Last night I had a dream.
We were having a party in an Italian restaurant. All of our friends, family and loved ones were there. The kids, the friends and our family. We were all young, happy and healthy.
I was sitting at a booth laughing with some friends when the waitress came to take our order. I ordered the angel hair pasta then said, “But I’m sitting over there with my wife. And I better get back there now!” as I pointed to our booth.
I went back there, slid across from Ellen and was enveloped in her big cheesy grin and bright blue eyes. I was so happy and in love I could have burst.
And then I woke up. At 3AM, in the dark and alone.
And I said aloud, “How nice.”
I had a smile on my face and my heart was bursting with love and joy.
I never thought I’d feel that way again.
I lay awake and thought, that’s Ellen giving me a proper goodbye. Instead of remembering her last days, weeks and months of suffering, she gave me one last night of our best times together.
I hope I have dreams like this again. But if I don’t, this will do.
It’s been twenty-one months since Ellen died. I will never stop missing her.