Page 4 of Someone to Remember
“I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
“I can’t do this again. I just can’t.”
“I’m on my way. Do you want to stay on the phone?”
“I, um, I don’t think so.”
“I’ll be right there, honey.”
“Thank you.”
Gage comes into the bathroom as I throw on clothes. “What’s wrong?”
“Taylor’s husband, Will, was killed in an accident at work.”
I catch his expression as the news registers like a gut punch and worst-case scenario for a widow—hearing it can happen again.
“I’ll come with you.”
“You don’t have to. You barely know her.”
“But I know all too well what she’s going through. Or I should say… I know what it’s like to have it happen once. This…”
“I know. It’s unbelievable, and their baby is due in a month.”
“Good God.”
“Hurry. I have to get to her.”
My mom slept over last night so we could go out with our Wild Widows friends. Thankfully, I can leave the kids with her because I really want Gage with me. I text her to let her know we have to leave.
While he goes into our walk-in closet to get dressed, I brush my teeth and put my hair up with hands that refuse to follow basic commands because they’re trembling so hard. Any time something like this happens to someone I know, it takes me right back to getting the phone call about my husband, Mike, being killed in a plane crash while I was at home with three little kids, including an infant.
I’m sure Gage feels the same sickening sense of déjà vu over the loss of his wife and eight-year-old twin daughters in a drunk-driving accident.
Tragedy of any kind resurrects feelings and memories we’d much rather forget than relive, but we put ourselves out there to support others in the same situation. That’s the mission ofthe group Taylor and I cofounded with our friend Christy in the early days of our widowhoods.
Now Taylor has been widowed again.
It defies belief, and it’s yet another reminder that we’re never safe from catastrophe, even after walking through the fire to survive a monumental loss.
Gage’s hands on my shoulders startle me even though I’m staring at the mirror and should’ve seen him coming. I can’t focus through the haze of disbelief and unbearable grief for my sweet friend.
“Are you ready?”
“I… I don’t know. This is just…”
“It’s unbelievable and terribly unfair. She’ll need us—and the rest of the group.”
“Yes, she will.” I place my hand over my aching gut. “I’ve never, for one second, considered that it could happen twice, even though, I mean… I know it can, it’s just…”
“It’s shocking and so very sad. And it’s a reminder that we can’t take anything for granted.”
“I was just thinking the same thing. I couldn’t go through that nightmare a second time.”
“You could and you would. The same way you did the last time, because you have children and you wouldn’t have a choice, but we don’t need to worry about that now. We need to get to Taylor.”
Thank goodness for him. I’ve had that thought so often since he moved in with us. He’s an amazing source of support any time I need it, never more so than during my treatment for stage-zero breast cancer. This must be how he’d felt when I was first diagnosed, and he was forced to face the possibility that he could lose me, too.
