Diana Rosen: “A life. Of sorts. Or, 18 ways to remember my love”

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A life. Of sorts. Or, 18 ways to remember my love. 

1. My love is in the kitchen, baking popovers. The heat of the kitchen, or the intensity of his concentration, makes him sweat from head to toe. He delivers mine on a gold-rimmed plate, so proud. I break it apart, dab it in the accompanying jam and butter, offer proper oohs and ahs. He beams.
2. My love is standing at the toilet, right shoulder to the wall, howling with laughter at the note I taped to the bottom of the seat reminding him to put it down when he is done. He doesn’t fail to forget ever again, and often giggles leaving the bathroom.
3. My love loved and lost someone, that’s why there’s a fence of mistrust between us. I chip away. It takes so long, but he finally believes.
4. He’s cleaned up the living room, set out candles mid-afternoon, made scones and tea for the wife of a friend who’s brought her diminished boy to spend the afternoon. My love coos and bills. The toddler giggles. The woman tries not to cry.
5. He wants a child, but I’m no longer able. He misses his little boy with the hole in his heart that ended his life at three.
6. My love and I play Santa and Mrs. Claus for the village holiday festival. Grown women sit on his lap, share intimate details of their lives. Children climb up, each totally astonished that he knows their names, not realizing it’s their parents’ friend Alexander underneath the red velour suit and snowy beard. Everyone wants a photo. I accommodate.
7. My love looks like the Elephant Man, pustules of shingles up and down the left side of his face. Eventually, they go away but leave a post-herpetic pain I cannot take away. Nothing I do helps. I feel bereft.
8. He brings me flowers. Picked by the highway. Brings me Japanese boxes, the amethyst ring, always unusual, pretty things. That they were bargains made me love them more.
9. My love refuses to go to a girlfriend’s significant birthday. She lives way up in the hills during an era devoid of Lyft and Uber and I don’t have enough money for a cab and it’s too late to call mutual friends for a ride. She holds that against me for years. He does not apologize. This is my first view into the depression that comes and goes.
10. My love and I tango in our gallery kitchen, belt out the soundtracks of operas, Broadway shows. He tapes me singing which was sweet, tapes me snoring, not so sweet. Shares thousands of words with me, their roots, pronunciations, he seems a veritable human dictionary. It’s not the same looking up words myself even in my mammoth Random House which sits on a stand he makes for it. We play word games in bed until one of us fallsin asleep. Usually him.
11. His mother was beautiful and spent many hours admiring herself at her vanity table. Such a well-named piece of furniture, he says. He spent hours braiding her hair, fetching her ribbons, avoiding her temper. His father loved alcohol more than his wife or sons. His mother sent him to fetch his father from the neighborhood bar. He was five. This father, a sailor, and my love, a Marine who lied about his age, unexpectedly meet up in Japan. They drink together, of course. My love soon finds himself face to face with a Japanese soldier. No one else is around. My love bowed. Was bowed to in return. Each turned and walked away. He still thought the act was cowardice. I’m grateful his drinking stopped before we met. He quit his five-pack-a-day cigarette habit, too, then says he won’t kiss me until I stop my half-pack habit. Longest two weeks in my life.
12. A girlfriend admits she’s never had a birthday party. We invite others, one friend brings a cake, my love makes dinner, all the women take their time hugging him goodbye.
13. My love becomes old, age-wise, but the personality is so strong, no one believes his numerical age. The powerful energy still bristles, announces itself when he enters the room.
14. My love reconnects with his oldest child, a daughter. They even appear on a daytime talk show on reunification. He is not who he was. I’m unsure how I feel.
15. My love and I separate.
16. My love recovers from a stroke but won’t let me visit. He feels diminished yet the strength of his voice, that deep radio voice, is still there, the mind is still there, his arms still work. These reminders fall on deaf ears.
17. My love has a second stroke that puts him in a coma. His daughter comes to whisper love in his ear until there is no hearing left. I am the last to hear he died.
18. Age fades the bad memories and leaves us with the good. He’d love today’s sunshine, hurry me up so we could go “saling” – – his dry-ground adventure visiting every garage sale in the neighborhood until the treasures surface. When I first trek through the swap meet in my new hometown, I laugh, walking countless aisles, recognizing all the many things we’d collected, then sold. As I left the arena, an ocean breeze brushed my shoulders as if to say, “Didn’t we have fun?”

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About the Author: Diana Rosen is a journalist and avid tea enthusiast, with six books on the topic, who writes poetry, essays, and flash fiction and creative nonfiction. Her work appears in RATTLE, Tiferet Journal, Mad Swirl, PIF Magazine, and Potato Soup Journal, among others. She loves exploring Los Angeles’s Griffith Park, the country’s largest public green space, which is her 4,000-acre “backyard.” To read more of her work, please visit www.authory.com/dianarosen

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More by Diana Rosen:

Dinner at Six

Hollywood Freeway

Mrs. Reagan, Who Lived Next Door

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Image Credit: Chase Dimock “Spring Rose” (2021)