Our Forever

As Anya lay in her stiff bed, about to doze off into permanent slumber, she thought back to her life, her marriage, her husband... David. The pain was almost bearable now. It was still there, of course, it never left, but Anya was just about medicated enough that it didn’t matter.

She and David had the type of comfortable marriage that most people would have deemed pretty damn perfect. They rarely fought, there were no affairs, no jealous-ridden rows, no deep disagreements about finances, religion, or having children. It was, Anya dared say, a marriage out of a storybook. They perfectly complemented each other. David, the level-headed husband, Anya, the free-spirited, slightly eccentric wife. The stars aligned one day when they met at a birthday party for a mutual friend (neither of them could ever remember for sure which friend, funnily enough). Anya had spilled wine on David’s immaculately clean shirt (not on purpose, Anya was not that smooth) while she was goofily hopping around dancing to “Kiss with a Fist” by Florence and the Machine. Anya had been mortified, but David had laughed, apparently finding the whole thing adorable somehow, and the rest was history.

It was perfect, for a while.

But like all perfect things, it couldn’t last. Life is suffering, as they say, and Anya should have known to prepare for it. It truly was unfair. Anya was young, beautiful, and had her whole life ahead of her. Like a horrible cliche, it was all taken away in an instant. A car accident. A crushed spine. Months of therapy and an unbelievable amount of pain. It wasn’t long before Anya couldn’t function without a minimum of thirty milligrams of morphine in her system. With time, her wounds healed and her scars faded, but the pain remained. The addiction remained.

The thing about illness is that people only forgive the physical ones.

To his credit, David tried. He didn’t cut and run. He was there through the surgeries, the hospital stays, the doctor’s visits... the revolving door of rehab. Though at that point Anya could feel him slowly pulling away. She supposed it was too much to ask. How could she expect him to love someone so broken? So different from the girl he married?

The relapses were the hardest. After a few months of sobriety they would get lulled into thinking maybe... maybe this time it would last. Maybe they could finally go back to the way things were before, love each other like before. Then invariably Anya would slip back to square one all over again, and the hope they clung onto would once again become nothing but a cruel joke. Again. And again.

They say relapses are a normal part of recovery, but Anya couldn’t accept that. She couldn’t let her husband keep living through that. She knew that David inexplicably blamed himself for all of it, feeling that somehow it was his fault he wasn’t enough to save Anya from her demons. Knowing this only made Anya hurt just that much deeper, made her hate herself that much more.

The thing was that Anya really did love him. More than life itself. She loved him enough that all she wanted was to free him from this hell she had built around their lives. She was going to end it today. Finally, it would be over.

—

David wept throughout the entire service, silent tears dripping onto his lap, the world around him muted, gray, out of focus.

David wished he could tell his wife how wrong she was, for thinking she was a burden, for deciding for both of them that he would be better off. No, it wasn’t easy loving Anya, but loved her he did. She was one of a kind, his wife, his better half. He wished he could tell her how brave she was, for surviving, for enduring the pain, and for battling the demons that came with it.

After the accident David admired Anya’s determination to get better, how she would power through her therapy despite the setbacks, and how she would pick herself back up after each relapse. Yes, it was horrible sometimes, and there were dark moments... but there were good days too. David would miss Anya’s boisterous laugh, the way she furrowed her brow when she read her books, the way she always knew how to cheer him up when she could tell he needed it. Her mind was as sharp as they came, even when she was in pain, even when she was fully medicated.

How was it that somebody so intelligent could be so oblivious to the love that was ever present around her in abundance? Why couldn’t she see that she was his forever?

No, it wasn’t fair, the cards they were dealt, and things did change after the accident. But that was life, wasn’t it? It didn’t play fair. But if you only loved somebody when it was easy, then what did it all mean, in the end? God knows he wasn’t perfect, but if David could do one thing right in his life, it would be to fulfill his promise to Anya. But life was cruel in that way… he loved her, and he knows she loved him, but in the end, he still lost her.

David clenched his fists and wept harder. The worst part was that Anya never blamed him. The accident... it was his fault. He should not have been driving that night. He knew he was too sleep deprived, too tired, and yet he still got behind the wheel. He should have seen that other car coming. But not once, in the sordid years that came after, did she give him any indication that she resented him. Her ability to forgive him only made David appreciate the unbelievable strength his wife possessed even more. He only hoped that wherever Anya was now, she was finally at peace, and that his love for her reached even there.