The Absence of Her

*This story contains suicide/self-harm/mental health*

When you lose someone you care about, it leaves a massive hole in your heart and in your life. It’s not just in death, but also in divorce, or falling out with a friend… A loss is a loss. And it hurts.

You are stuck dealing with that emptiness. Something extraordinary happens, and you want to call them to share the news. Something bad happens, and you want to run home and have them soothe you and tell you it’s going to be okay. But they aren’t there. You can’t call them. They removed themselves from you. From your life.

It’s fucking isolating, if I’m going to be honest with you. It’s a palpable loneliness that rips the scab off every time. You lose that person over and over again. Time and again. It’s never-ending.

I lost my wife, Bridget, in the worst possible way. She took her own life, and I found her. And it was because of me. She called it out in her note. She said that because I wanted to leave, she couldn’t bear the idea of such a loss, so she was going to beat me to it and leave me with the loneliness. Honest to God. That’s how it all went down. Those were her words. She really knew how to take petty to a new level. It was almost admirable if it didn’t hurt so much.

I hadn’t even filed for divorce yet. I only brought it up because I thought it would be better if we ended things. We no longer saw eye to eye on anything. We grew apart. We had no level of intimacy whatsoever. We had nothing really left. It wasn’t a marriage. It was a friendship. We were roommates who did nothing but fight and have an occasional dinner together and check in throughout the day. The typical texts- ‘What do you want for dinner?’ ‘I’m at the store, do you need anything?’ ‘OMG this lady at work is so extra…’ ‘I got selected for a promotion!’. No depth, no substance. We said I love you out of habit, not because of any true sense of the word.

At least, that’s how I felt.

And when I found her in the bathtub, water a strange shade of diluted red, her face ashen and life gone from her, it hit me. I never really wanted a divorce. We could have worked through it. Had I known this was what she was going to do, I would have never brought it up. I would have never been so careless as to leave the lawyer’s card on my bedside table with the preliminary papers. I would have fought harder to make it work.

The worst was watching them take her out in a body bag, and then draining the tub. Her life down the drain. Wasted.

Within a year of her death, I sold the house and moved somewhere else. I had no choice. I couldn’t use that bathroom any longer. I couldn’t sleep in our room. I couldn’t cook dinner in our kitchen. She was everywhere and nowhere.

Every day since, I could feel her absence. Each day brought a new realization of what I lost. Every day, I would miss the little things. It was in the silence of the walls around me. It was in the emptiness of the bed at night. It was everywhere I turned.

But then, I saw her. It wasn’t just a hallucination. It wasn’t just someone who resembled her. It wasn’t a ghost. It was her. Living. Breathing. Her.

I was at the farmer’s market buying cherries from the guy we always bought Ranier cherries from. They were our favorite. And she was at a fruit vendor holding a jar of strawberry jam. She looked at me across the crowd. We made eye contact. She smiled at me and waved.

Before I could grab my bag and move toward her, she disappeared in the crowd.

Two days later, as I walked down the beach, our dog (I couldn’t just say she was my dog, she was the one who brought him home from the pound) played in the waves and ran through the sand. Bridget loved to beachcomb. It would drive me nuts. A walk that could be completed in no time, dragged on so she could find beach glass and shells to put in a bowl on a shelf (I have that bowl in my new home. On a shelf. I carried it, holding it gingerly in my lap as my brother drove me from one home to the other so that the pieces would not be jumbled from the way she left them).

As I walked, I scanned the ground and picked up pieces here and there. A bit of glass. A shell. I put them in my pocket. That’s when our dog, Nigel, took off running down the sand at a breakneck pace.

I took off running behind him. The waves are soaking my shoes and my feet, the shells and glass jingling in my pockets. I called for him to come back, and I stopped suddenly.

I found him frolicking at her feet. Running around her, licking her hands as she’s laughing. It’s her. She had the most distinctive laugh. Light and lower-pitched and quiet at the start, building to a louder, boisterous sound at the end.

I’m staring. It’s not a hallucination. It’s not a dream. I feel the salty waves as they saturate my shoes and lick at my ankles. The water is ice cold, but I don’t care. I look at her with the sun directly lighting her face. She’s carrying a ziplock bag of shells and sea glass. Her hair is tied up in pigtail braids. Her slightly upturned nose has a sprinkle of freckles from being sun-kissed for hours on the beach, scavenging for shells and other beach treasures that washed up.

She cocks her head to the side. “Hi. I think I found your dog.” She’s laughing as she said it.

“Our dog?” I say.

She shakes her head. “I love him. He’s a cutie. But he’s definitely not mine. He sure thinks he is, though, huh?”

“Right. Of course.” She’s dead. My wife is dead. This woman is very much alive. Standing in front of me as my dog plays at her very real, very alive feet.

“I’m Nicole.” She offers. My wife was not Nicole. She was Bridget.

“Ainsley,” I say. I’m still staring. Her voice. Her. Everything about her screams Bridget. Not just a resemblance. Her.

“And who is this?” She asks as she strokes the ear of our-my-dog.

“Nigel.” I can’t seem to say more than one word.

“Nice to meet you, Ainsly and Nigel.” She continues on her way, walking in the opposite direction I had been going.

“Wait!” I call out to her.

She turns around and looks back at me. “I would love to stay and chat, but I really can’t stay. See you around.” She turns back and keeps going.

Two days later, as I stand in what used to be our favorite coffeehouse, waiting for my order, I see her again. She is sitting at a table with her coffee and a book open in front of her. Bridget loved to read in public. She said it was the best place to be alone while surrounded by people.

I grab my coffee from the barista and make my way over to her. “Nicole?” I ask.

She looks up at me, her face blank. “I’m sorry. No. I’m not Nicole.”

“I… I … We didn’t meet on the beach a few days ago?”

“No. Sorry.” She goes back to her book.

I’m stunned. Standing there. I look down at the book she’s reading. Affinity by Sara Waters. It was the same book Bridget had left unfinished on her bedside table when she...

The woman who is not Bridget. Not Nicole. Looks back up at me. “Can I help you?” It’s not with rudeness, but with gentleness.

“I swear I feel like I know you.” It’s all I can manage and it comes out in a whisper.

“I’m sorry. If we met, I would have remembered.” She says it in an almost flirty way, but with a coyness.

“Ainsley,” I tell her.

“Josephine.” She extends her hand.

“Nice to meet you?” It’s more of a question than anything else.

She looks at the time on her phone and closes her book after carefully placing her bookmark in the pages. “Pleasure.” She says as she stands. “I’m late for an appointment! I lost track of time.” She turns and leaves me standing there.

I see Not Bridget Not Nicole Josephine outside of the art museum. But she’s Not Bridget Not Nicole Not Josephine. She’s Shannon. And like before, she can’t stay. She can’t talk. She’s due somewhere else.

And then I see her outside the bookshop. She’s Not Bridget Not Nicole Not Josephine Not Shannon. She’s Sierra. And she’s in a hurry to get somewhere.

Every time I see her, she’s not who she was before.

I see her everywhere.

Every time I leave the house.

It’s her. But it’s not her. Even though she looks like her, smells like her, smiles like her, dresses like her, sounds like her.

It pushes the depths of my loss to an unbearable limit. Maybe I’m only seeing her because I want to see her? I question my sanity.

But it is her. She says she’s not. But it’s her.

Finally Not Bridget Not Nicole Not Josephine Not Shannon Not Sierra Not anyone I’ve ever met supposedly, stops and doesn’t go anywhere.

This time, she stops me. We are at the same coffee shop again. Plaintive acoustic music plays overhead, and I’m sitting alone, doom-scrolling on my phone. “I know you.” She says.

I smile. This may have all been a game. “I think I know you, too.” My heart does a thing. This is my chance to make it right. Fix what I broke.

She extends her hand. “Bridget.” She says.

The floor has gone out from under me, and the room spins. “I’m sorry?”

“Bridget.” She repeats. “You’re Ainsley, right?”

I nod. My throat constricts and I can’t say a word.

“Are you okay?” She asks.

I shake my head no as tears fall. “I’m so sorry. For all that I’ve done.” I whisper.

She cocks her head to the side as she always did. A stray lock of hair falls into her eyes. I want nothing more than to push that piece behind her ear like I used to do.

“What is it you think you’ve done?” She asks.

“I was heartless. I was ready to quit. And then… You …”

She looks genuinely confused. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She pushes that stray lock away.

“You took … You died.” I choke out. “It was my fault.”

“Um. I’m right here.”

“I saw them. They took you out in a black bag. I drained your bloody water out of the tub. You left a note.”

“I think you have me confused with someone else.” A look of concern and confusion as she shakes her head.

“No. No. I don’t. It was you. You’re her.”

People are starting to look now. I don’t care. I just want to touch her. I want to hold her. I want to make her laugh, and I want to tell her about my day and hear all about hers, no matter how mundane.

“Nnnooo.” She backs away. “I’ve got to go.”

As she backs away, I bolt from my table, my Americano spilling to the floor as I push the table out of my way in an effort to get to her. “No! Don’t go!” I grab her arm. Even the perfume she’s wearing is the same. I see the spine for Affinity peeking out of her tote bag.

She rips her arm from mine. “Let go of me! Are you crazy?”

Am I? Am I?

“Ainsley?” The barista pulls me back. “Are you okay?”

I shake my head as Not Bridget Not Nicole Not Josephine Not Shannon Not Sierra Still Not Bridget shakes her head and walks out.

I no longer leave the house. I can’t. She’s everywhere and nowhere. I stay within the confines of my home. Instacart delivers my groceries and necessities. DoorDash sometimes delivers my meals. A dogwalker comes three times a day to walk Nigel for me.

If I leave the house, I will see her. She’s everywhere. Everywhere. She’s everyone. And I can’t bear it.