Dear John,

    We spent our end side by side as we should have, but open to nothing, mapping our existence in your cynical glory and nicotine stained fingertips.  My eyes bright and naive in the beginning, drawn to your dark circles and fog and magnetized by what felt like a never-ending, beautiful melancholy of a-minor.

    The first time I found you hanging from the end of a noose, I lost all use of my legs.  I never told you that. Our child in my arms and too young to remember any of it, I dragged you down with one hand, screaming and cursing at you for doing such a horrible thing to yourself and your family.  You were angry with me, and I understood why soon after.  But I would never be the same.

    The pills were next, then your wrists, and after that I lost count of all of the threats, the plans, the attempts that never amounted to anything more than emergency calls.  I did begin a tally of psych visits, however, as my life became a sleight of prescription exchange after exchange.  My evenings turned from a sigh in a glass of blood red Cabernet to praying to God that it would not be the day that the rush hour traffic would keep me so long that you'd have time to finish before I got home.

    I learned when to speak and when not to, and I learned that it was best I didn't express any negativity around you in the event that my words would be the focus of your next attempt to kill yourself.  I knew they had been in the past, as you'd told me, and I began to pick away at all of the parts of me that allowed anything but a smile to peek through at you.

    I write you this, John, not because I want to make you feel guilty or ashamed.  I know you were sick, and I loved being by your side regardless of the circumstances behind what became an ever-watchful eye.  

    I write you this because I spent the last thirty-seven years of our marriage together in a cold well of silence, muffling my own voice in order to keep yours alive.  Every moment I breathed was for the one that you would tell me you were happy in our life together, in your life here, and you felt you had something worth living for.

    I write you this to bury with you because I am numb, and do not know how to grieve a loss that I've waited for over three decades to come.  

    I write you this because I gave myself into you to keep you from going out, but now you're gone.  Now you've left me - no goodbye, no kiss - having died of nothing more than heart failure in your sleep.

   So now I'm saying goodbye to you and your pain, and I will send it with you rightfully so that I may finally let my own take its place.

                                                                                                  Love Always,

                                                            Jane