All Write, Already!

Dear Gracie,

If you're reading this, I'm already sorry. I'm writing this on a clear day in October of 1955 - we're still picking up the pieces after your father passed, but I think it will get better. We've been married four and a half years three days ago. You were having a "dry spell" until a few weeks back. It bothered me more than I let on, but less than you suspected. I may be male, but that's not all I am.

I should be the happiest man alive, Grace, I should. I can't complain about a single concrete thing in my life, and in point of fact, there are things that should have me swinging from the stars, including you. Nothing makes me feel that way, though. That's the first apology: that I can't give you the effusion of joy a woman like you should inspire.

I've been feeling very lonely lately. I know that my behavior isn't helping - being shut up in the house most nights doesn't fix the problem, and I should start a poker night or ask one of the guys if they want to go down a deer one of these weekends, before it gets too late. I can't, though, and that's the thing. I've got nothing left, baby. I'm thirty-one, and I already feel like an old used-up rag. I'm tired for no good reason. My get-up-and-go packed its bags sometime a couple years back, and I haven't seen it since.

If I told you this, I have an idea of what you'd say. You'd be standing there by the sink in that pink gingham dress of yours that I like so well - the one with the buttons and the belt-thing (the sash, I think you said) - and you'd be cutting onions. You'd turn around and go to scratch your cheek, and stop to wipe your hands on the towel instead. "If you don't like working at the shop, you can look for other work, sweetie," you'd say. "You know I'll support you, even if it means a pay cut. I just want you to be happy." I can hear it in my head just now, if I listen.

And bless you, Gracie, but you'd be missing the point. Because maybe you'd be right and it's all about the job, but that doesn't matter. A man should never feel like this. Not once.

To tell you the truth, I've wanted to stop for a long while now. You know I'm too chickenshit scared to want to die, but the abstract idea of just freezing in place and not having to put one breath in front of the other is so appealing it scares me, the big, strong bear of a man that made you fall in love.

This is the part that's hard, so keep reading, Gracie, because this is important. Four years, six months and three days ago, I made you a promise. I'm going to do my very best to keep it, because it's the only thing that's right. If I've got anything keeping me going, it's that I can't hurt you. And if I can't do that one thing, my apologies aren't worth a damn thing, and don't you dare let them bury me. Make sure they burn me. It'll be better than I deserve.

You've been my best reason to keep going, Grace. If I failed, it was me. Remembr that.

All my love,
David