Page 71 of Someone to Watch Over Me

When she’s put on her coat and grabbed her purse and keys, she hesitates at the top of the stairs, as if she’s still worried about leaving me.

“Go, will you? Sheesh, I can’t get you out of my hair for five minutes.”

“Okay, tough guy. I’m going. Call me if you need anything.”

“I’m not going to need anything except for you to come home after you’ve had a great time with your friends.”

“I’ll see you in a bit.”

“Drive safe.”

A short time after she leaves, I get up to look for my discharge paperwork. There’s one detail in particular I’d like to revisit. The paperwork is half an inch thick and full of dos and don’ts for patients recovering from the stent procedure. On page twelve, I find the item I’m looking for.

Resumption of sexual activity can take place between two and eight weeks following the procedure, depending upon the patient’s pain level and general rate of recovery.

“Yes!”

That’s way better than six weeks or ninety days or some other random number they might assign to my condition.

Since I’m feeling stronger every day, I can work with the two-week parameter. One week down. One to go. I can’t wait to tell Lexi this news.

Lexi

Traffic is the usual disaster,and I’m about fifteen minutes late to meet the girls, but they won’t mind. I’ve had friends in the past who’d be annoyed if someone was late, and once I was caring for Jim full time, those same friends fell by the wayside, unwilling to be inconvenienced by the slow-motion catastrophe unfolding in my life.

Plenty of others were right there, pitching in as they could and never turning away from the horror of his illness. I still hold them close, even if I don’t see them as much as I did before everything changed. These days, I find myself gravitating to friends who are in the same season I am, putting shattered lives back together one day at a time. Although I see my other friends, I find it hard to relate to their soccer-mom lives, their upwardly mobile career challenges, their husband gripes and all the regular-life stuff that they’re understandably annoyed by.

I usually find myself biting my tongue in their presence, wanting to say,Shut up already. I never got to have kids because my husband was too sick to have sex, and since he’s been gone, I can’t afford kids because of the millstone of debt around my neck that I’ll never be rid of.I want to remind them to count their blessings, even on days when their lives are out of control, when their kids are melting down and their husband has gone golfing—again. They have no idea how lucky they are to be so annoyed by regular life.

But who wants to hear that?

No one does, and since I find myself biting my tongue almost every minute I’m with them, I don’t see them very often.

My widow friends, on the other hand, never annoy me the way the others do. They dwell in a place of gratitude and optimism after having survived the worst thing. They never gripe about normal-life stuff because they know all too well how quickly a normal life can be ripped apart. They take nothing—and no one—for granted, and they don’t sweat the small stuff like someone being fifteen minutes late.

“Oh, hey, you made it.” Joy jumps up to hug me when she sees me heading for our usual table.

I return her tight embrace. Joy gives the best hugs. “I made it.”

Brielle hugs me and moves over to make room for me on the bench seat. “We’re so glad you did.”

“How’s Tom?” Naomi asks.

“He’s doing great. I took him for a ride today to check some of his work projects and to see his mom at her care facility. She has dementia.”

“Didn’t you have work?” Hallie asks as she dips a chip in salsa.

“Well… I did until I got laid off.”

“Oh no,” Joy says. “Shit.”

“What does it say about the job that I’m relieved more than scared?”

“You hated that job,” Brielle says bluntly.

“I’m not sorry to lose it, because it will force me to find something that doesn’t make me feel like I’m dead inside after every day I spend there.”

Joy raises her margarita in a toast to me. “That’s the spirit. You’re going to find something wonderful. I know it.”

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