We took a weekend trip…actually, probably not far from here. It was early in our marriage. He wasn’t a camper, and neither was I; he was more of a road trip person, and I was a homebody who rarely left my hometown. He went out and bought all the gear, the tent, the cooler, the lantern, the bug spray, the camp stove, all of it. He had enough gear for us to camp out for a month. It was a disaster. He pitched the tent in the most uneven, rocky area he could find. Mosquitoes ate us alive, rabid, bird-sized swarms of them. He couldn’t get the fire going, and by the time he did, it was nearly midnight and we were snapping at each other. He brought a bunch of canned beans and fruit, but no can opener. A camp stove, but no propane. One sleeping bag each, and it was the coldest weekend of the entire summer, and we froze all night.

The most magical part of it was the last night. We were cold, miserable, hungry, and ready to go home and live like civilized people. We couldn’t sleep. We were too frigid and miserable to even fuck, which says something. So, we abandoned the notion of sleeping and left the tent. Wandered down by the lake, where the moon was high and full and silver and bright, and we sat on a big boulder with our sleeping bags zipped together and wrapped around us both, huddling together, watching our breath huff out in a white fog, staring up at the sky full of stars.

We sat there all night long, just staring up. Holding each other. Not talking, just…being. Together under the stars.

I haven’t seen stars like that since.

Until now.

I lose my breath, staring up at them. My chest aches. I feel him in their twinkling countless millions, feel him watching over me from somewhere behind them.

I’m not okay.

But for the first time since he died, I feel like maybe, someday, I could be.

Coffee & Home Cooking

25:

Dawn—I’ve woken at 6 a.m. on the dot without an alarm since I was sixteen, and by now it’s an unbreakable habit. I’ve been letting—sometimes forcing—myself to lounge in bed for an hour, dozing off, thinking, just enjoying being warm and in bed. Finally, around seven, just after sunrise, I take my cup of coffee out onto the porch—it’s not quite truly cold outside, chilly enough to require a jacket, but it’s bracing. The mug is hot against my palms, steam rising from the black liquid.

I sit with the book. In it, the narrator has met the heroine—like him, she’s a widow who recently lost her husband. They’re both closed off and bitter and hesitant to let anyone in—sounds familiar.