Widowmaker

As I watched the sun set, something burned through my heart. I looked down at my left hand and with a deep breath slipped the wedding ring off my finger. It seemed impossible. I was just nineteen years old. And now I was a widow.

It’s not like I didn’t know it was coming. It was the only reason I considered marrying so young. Yet somehow it still came as a shock. Like every day he lived was the defiant proof that he would make it to the next.

Tears slipped down my face as I recalled his lifeless body. All that was left after he had taken his last breath. For the first time, I truly believed in the soul, because what lay in that bed was not the boy I’d loved.

Lincoln and I first met when we were just thirteen. Friends first, we started dating when we were fifteen. It was the kind of romance people wrote songs about. We were just so good together. My first love. For a long time, I thought he’d be my only love.

Then, at seventeen, Lincoln was diagnosed with lymphoma.

He’d been sick, but no one suspected anything as catastrophic as cancer. It didn’t seem possible. Sure, kids got cancer, but not kids I knew. Not kids like Lincoln.

The first time I went to the hospital with Lincoln for his treatment, I realised all the kids there were like us. There were no others.

And still I never believed this could kill him. Lincoln was different. He was strong. A fighter. Ever the optimist. Every virtue they spoke of when people conquered cancer, Lincoln possessed. He was the antithesis of me.

And he did fight. Hard. Lincoln did everything the doctors said and underwent all the treatments. He did it all with grace and humour, but none of that stopped the cancer. The treatments were holding it at bay, but they would never defeat it.

I never knew sadness like that day. Even burying Lincoln had not hurt that much. His death was a sweet release from his pain. But that day tore the future from a living person. Even my future went blank. Hope was gone. I didn’t know how to get up and face the next day. But Lincoln did.

The doctors had told him he could have as little as three months to live. He might never see adulthood. And still he smiled that morning, thankful for one more day. He started planning how to live what remained of his life.

Lincoln sat down with me and began writing a bucket list. At first, I thought he was absurd. He’d never be able to do half the things, but he didn’t care. Lincoln was convinced what remained would be granted on his death. As I watched the colours of the sky change, I imagined him being taken around the world, experiencing all his life could never give.

But not everything was impossible.

The appearance of a wife on his list made my heart turn. It was a wish I could grant, but I was just seventeen and had never considered the idea. When I eventually hinted at my agreeance, Lincoln stayed silent. It was just a wish list. Fantasy.

I had been rejected by a dying boy.

A week later, Lincoln walked me to the very spot in which I was sitting and pulled out a ring. I said yes, and he apologised for making me a widow before we were even married. But I didn’t care then.

One more wish granted.

Our engagement was big news. Even the internet got hold of it. A feel-good moment of distraction for millions unconnected to the pain of our present that dragged on for months. We kept quiet on the reason we remained unwed. My parents were kind, but cautious. They wouldn’t give me permission to marry a dying boy.

It was a new torture. I woke every day expecting to find Lincoln dead. Every call had me on the verge of tears. For every day that passed, my guilt grew. One more wish that would never be granted.

But Lincoln made it to his eighteenth birthday.

He then held on for mine a month later.

We were married the next day.

It was surreal. Like kids playing grown-ups. But that was nothing to the marriage. After a short honeymoon, we moved into a studio in the basement of his parents’ house. We were a married couple, yet still just kids living in suspended reality, playing make believe. And attempting to bring a life into the fantasy. Another wish to grant.

It had been so easy to get carried away at the time. The strength Lincoln gained with every day he lived gave us hope he could beat this after all. The doctors remained pessimistic, but we refused to give up hope. Lincoln was a fighter.

After thirteen months, we even started to plan a real future. Lincoln would beat the odds and we would be a proper family.

Two tears slipped down my cheeks.

Cancer didn’t play by our rules.

The decline was swift and shocking. Over three weeks, the hope was savagely stripped from our hearts with every kilo that fell from Lincoln’s body. Then, after more hours of agony than any person should ensure, he was gone.

I’m not sure how many seconds I was granted before I was spat back out into reality, but it was a more foreign place than I remembered.

For two years I lived in a parallel universe.

Only now did I sigh in relief for the periods that came two weeks ago. A failure I had previously mourned.

But now I didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t just Lincoln who’d crammed a lifetime into a few years. I’d lived it too. Right to the end. My future without Lincoln was still blank. I’d never considered past this moment and the one person who could’ve helped me was gone.