A good life

“I had a good life,” my wife said.
I missed it. It didn’t sink in.
We battled cancer almost two years, and I guess my wife had enough. She was 68, and the best friend I ever had. She actually liked me; liked the way I thought.
That turned me around. I had a dreadful childhood, and college was the beginning. Along came my wife to complete the reversal.
We weren’t supposed to last. Her mother was appalled: “What in the world does she ever see in him?” 44&1/2 years. I didn’t split during our first year, nor did my wife divorce me.
Chemo, hospitalizations, transfusions, etc. Up-and-down it went. Occasionally at death’s door, then my wife holding back our silly dog at a nearby park.
My wife was always fiddling her PC, visiting sites to deal with her cancer. Sometimes I thought she was ahead of our oncologist. They were extremely knowledgable, yet sometimes it seemed like my wife lit them up. Like “I hadn’t thought of that.”
All I could do was observe. I also did most of the driving. My wife was intimidated.
“How come you always know where the car is in this garage?”
“Third floor, up the ramp, there’s the car!”
“How come you always turn right here?”
“Because that’s where the sun is,” I’d say.
“What if it’s cloudy?”
“I know where the sun is supposed to be!”
I had a stroke in 1993, so my phonecalls are compromised.
But occasionally I covered for her.
“Don’t know if she’s gonna last the night,” once.
She couldn’t make the call herself, so I did.
Drop everything! Transfer her by ambulance from one hospital to another. After that, back to that park hanging onto our lunging dog.
But cancer kept coming back, and finally won. Six years have passed. 44&1/2 years chasing trains, and ceaseless yammering.
I think I brought her out. She wasn’t that way at first. Only with female friends.
I think I also convinced her she wasn’t the frump her mother raised. She could be pretty. “Ya gotta dump them bat-wing glasses.” She switched to contacts.
Now I find myself wishing I coulda been to her what I am now; mainly more sociable, and less a jerk.
“Ya know, I wouldn’t be talking to you had my wife not died,” I’d say to a good female friend. “Not because she wouldn’t want me to, but because I didn’t need to. She liked me; I could be anti-social.”
Someone who lost her husband told me the same thing.
If my wife hadn’t died, I’d probably still be the same jerk.

• RE: “chasing trains.....” —I’m a railfan, and have been since age-2. “How come every vacation we take involves trains?”