he was there

I imagine you can sense the end of a relationship. Not the way you sense something ominously visible - like cancer for a chain smoker - but more in the way an animal can sense fear, or knees a coming storm. I imagine it to be the saddest part of the break up - knowing that there's nothing to stop what's coming.

There's a story I think of when I imagine this heartbreak. It's of a girl, madly in love with a boy; so in love, even her mother's bitter hatred can't keep her from him. One day, after an exhausting fight with the girl's mother, the boy has had enough; and, in a romantic attempt to rescue his love from anymore heartache, he promises her they will run away. She couldn't be happier; it's all that she's been dreaming for. So, with her heart in her hand and her luggage all packed, she waits for him. She waits with more hope than she's ever known...than she's ever had. But she waits. And the hope fades, because he never calls.

I imagine you can sense the end of all things...close things, at least. It would be unimaginable not to imagine so. 'Imagine' used to be the word she hated. "Don't imagine...just do." Of all the things she said, that stuck the strongest; probably because I do it so damn much. I always told her she should try it more often, told her it was like dreaming. Everyone dreams.

After she told me her story, though, I never asked it of her again. I didn't have the heart, I'd be asking too much. "Imagine he called", she'd hear. In her blue couch she'd sit, staring blankly at the doorway, the hinges intact, imagining if he had called; imagining she didn't have to carry her heart and her luggage to his doorway; imagining she could forget the face of his sister, unable to give an answer, just as confused as the poor girl standing in the doorway; imagining she could understand why he didn't call...why he wasn't there.

It's things like this I imagine we must be able to sense. How could we not. How could something expected hurt so much? Sure. But how could it not.

I don't think she meant to tell the story of the girl. She was showing me a song, "Aca Entre Nos", by a famous Mexican singer. I think she sensed other things that day, though. It was the first time I had heard the story and, as it stands, I'm the only one who's heard it in its entirety. I had never cried that hard. I had never seen her cry that soft. I imagine she sensed something that day, because 1 year later she died.

It was a sad funeral, but a happy one.

I have this fear that at my funeral nobody will show. My arrangements will have been made, my friends and family will be notified, and my children will be in good health, but the pews will be empty. There'll be rows and rows of silence. Nothingness. I imagine her to have had the same fear. But it was nothing like that for her. There wasn't a single pew empty. Everyone was there. And between you and I, I think he was there.