Sometimes, when she least expected it, a picture of him would flood into her head.  She might be at the grocery store, or standing in line at the movie theater, waiting to buy a ticket to a show she didn’t really want to see.  Once, it happened when she was rifling through her purse to empty it of trash before she switched to another, newer, purse.  This was the purse she was using when he left her, she sometimes went through the ritual of changing to another purse but she never threw this one out, because she knew she would return to it.  The picture would come on strong, like a sudden headache that catches you off guard with its clarity and strength.  The gap between his two front teeth – the way words ending in ‘s’ whistled softly when they passed from his lovely mouth.  When he smiled and it turned into a silent laughing fit, his eyes and nose would crinkle up and try to meet somewhere in the middle of his face.  In the memory, she would see his scrunched up face, hear his voice carelessly whistling words, or even smell his overwhelmingly good scent.  When this happened to Juliette, she knew there was no recourse, no wriggling away.  At some point she had learned to steel herself against these intrusions, at the suddenness of him.  When they first started happening, right after he was gone, she tried to combat the memory.  She busied herself with other things, and called people she hadn’t talked to in a while, even cooked (which she never did) in an effort to trick herself into forgetting she had seen the mind-picture.  Her intentions were good, she thought.  The sooner she moved on the sooner she would get over it, his leaving her.  Over time, though, she gave up these futile efforts.  She gave in to the memories.  And, eventually, as the pictures appeared less often, she realized clearly their value and began to embrace them when they did come.  Like a dream you are loath to wake from, she tried various tricks to keep the pictures and smells and sounds with her.  She would still herself, cancel dinner plans, dentist appointments, let the laundry pile up.  She even missed work a couple of times, so intent was she to keep the pictures, to be sure not to chase them from her head with the absurdly unnecessary movements involved in driving the four blocks to work.

Of course, her well meaning friends tried to convince Juliette to deal with these pictures in a different way.  They encouraged her to ‘move on’ with her life.  While acknowledging her loss, they also reminded her that this had happened to other women before, and other women had somehow moved on to live rich, full lives.  They told Juliette that she might not believe them now, so soon after he left, but eventually, they promised her, she would be able to live each day with some measure of happiness and satisfaction, even without him.  At first, Juliette was too distraught to engage in these conversations.  She looked blankly back at her friends, her co-workers.  Even her therapist, Angie, encouraged Juliette to embrace her anger, her disappointment, her sense of loss, and move on.  Right after he left, Juliette felt as though she were in an alternate reality.  When people talked to her, she honestly didn’t know if they were serious, surely this was an elaborate practical joke, or maybe the set of facts and circumstances they referred to was different from what those she was dealing with.  Was it possible they had her mixed up with some other friend?  Someone who had experienced a lesser loss?  She was certain, for the first few months, that one or another of them would suddenly say ‘just kidding!’, and punch her light-heartedly on the arm.  ‘Of course you can’t function, we get that.  It sucks that he’s gone and you never expected him to leave and it’s also very unfair’.  She prepared herself for the day when one of them would tell her that she had withstood the test, the horrible test of true love, and they would now stop spewing such nonsense to her.  Oh, and yes, he’ll be back.  Sure, we all believed it from the beginning.  One of them would tell her that she had been right to be in a catatonic state, that it was expected she would lose her desire to go on living.  Someone would finally tell her that no one ever thought she was over reacting. 

But, that never happened.  In fact, as time went on, nearly four years now, her friends became less patient with her.  Where once they listened with empathy to her long reminiscing stories, and the particular picture memory that she was thinking of, now they cut her off and told her they would love to talk but they just had to pick up Eleanor at soccer practice, had to get to their hair appointment, must fly now and pick up that pound of coffee, we’re almost out at home.  But really, Juliette, it was lovely to see you and you look good, no really, you’re looking great and let’s get together soon when we can spend more time together, ‘kay?  When she realized that her friends and even her family meant for her to get over him and move on, Juliette knew that she would have to take another approach to this whole thing.  She was mistaken when she thought that her circle of support would help her with the ever increasingly important job of keeping these memories alive.  That, by sharing them with her friends and family, she would have help carrying them, which meant she could carry them for longer, keep him with her longer.  It had made such good sense to her.  And while she was not ready yet to concede that they were right and she was wrong, she did finally realize that they didn’t know, couldn’t know, the proper way to deal with this.  She did not question their motives, did not begin to assume they were insensitive or blind to the pain caused by his leaving, she simply understood that they would not, could not ever, support her in the way she needed.

And so she adopted a new persona.  When Angie asked her what kind of a week she had had, Juliette said ‘great!’ and described inane activities that would serve to place her, in Angie’s mind, into the meaty part of the normal curve.  She told her about shows she was thinking of seeing, of friends she was thinking of calling, told her about the latest gossip at work, and even made up a few anecdotes about her sister, her mom, her nephew, to complete the impression of normalcy, of recovery, and even make Angie believe she was, in fact, recovered.  Angie was, fortunately, an optimistic sort of psychologist.  It was easy for Juliette to construct this life of contentment, of ‘moving on’ and, eventually, ‘moved on’ for her.  And, luckily for Juliette, Angie never asked her what she saw when she thought of the future.

If that question had been asked, Angie would have finally known the ruse Juliette had created.  She would have been clear that Juliette had not, in fact, moved on.  Because when Juliette thought of the future, all she saw was a big, fat blackness.  There were no plans, no hopes, there was no ‘maybe this’ or ‘maybe that’ kind of thinking going on in her head.  Just black, stretching out as far as the human mind can fathom, deep, wide, encompassing.  This blackness was a special, velvety kind of colorlessness that Juliette had never experienced before, never even known existed.  It was devoid of emotion and expectation and potential.  Its fullness was complete, at the same time it was empty.  The shock of this blackness startled Juliette at first, but over time she had come to embrace it.   It didn’t start out that way.  She used to see the future in varying shades of light and color, and felt she was the sole influence of how vivid and rich the next day, or week or year would be.  In the beginning, she thought of the future in terms of recreating, somehow, what she had lost when he left.  She honestly thought if she opened herself enough, this wrong would be righted.  If only she were ready to receive what the universe had to offer, order would be restored.  So she went to an ashram, bent on stilling herself so she could be a vessel ready to receive.  She sacrificed at the ashram, denied herself simple pleasures, spent hours in meditation hoping to become the person to whom happiness could be restored.  She was gone for six months, and she was a devout resident, a model resident, really. 

But she was not restored to her former self.  Undaunted, when she returned home she spent money she didn’t have on psychics, fully expecting to be told that the future held a whole life for her, a completeness that she did not have now.  She was encouraged a time or two with readings including ‘another male in your life’ but became doubtful as the months and years went on without the hole being filled.  Maybe they weren’t real?  Just scam artists out to take her money and give her false hope?  She was ready to close herself to the otherworldly ways, but then one came along who gave her hope.  A woman, a friend of a friend, who didn’t charge her money or offer vague concepts.  They had been introduced not long after he left, and this woman was compassionate and validating.  She represented hope for Juliette, someone who really understood the pain she felt, the unbearable burden she carried and the quest she was on to find a way to lighten the load.  And, at first, it was that way.  She walked with a lighter step as she received information she wanted and needed, information that validated her sanity and confirmed that her reaction, her sadness, was true and right.  His being gone deserved this upheaval, and the loss of direction in Juliette’s life was reasonable, and he would, impossibly, return to her one day.  But then, just like her friends, and her family, and even Angie, this woman -  the true and real psychic - began to drift from Juliette.  She became unable to give her what she wanted, even called her a ‘psychic junkie’.  And so Juliette returned to her solitary quest, to find a way to connect with him again, to have a semblance of the life they had before.  She read books on spirituality, and went to a different church every week, and meditated, and fasted, and opened herself.  She attended deprivation retreats and emptied herself of everything, all thought and doubt and negative energy that could possibly be impeding his ability to return to her.  And she waited for him.

And to everyone else, she looked like she was moving on.  She got a job, and moved back home to Florida to be closer to her family, and even talked about returning to school.  She went to her appointments and put an interested face on for Todd, the new Angie.  No more phone calls to her friends to talk about him; instead she waited for them to call her.  Even then, she was silent on the matter, and told them stories of her busy life and how she would love to go to the show with them, next time, because unfortunately this time she has a conflict she can’t possibly get out of.  And still the over-riding thought in her mind was how to get through each day without him.   She never went to bed without thinking of how easy it would be to just not be here anymore.  She never woke without remembering that there was a time, for nearly seven years, when she didn’t wake alone.  She saw and felt the blackness in her mind and her future, and kept it to herself.  And she tried, every single day, to remember him with clarity.  

Maybe today would be a memory day.  Maybe it will be from another fall day, four or five years ago.  In the pumpkin patch would be nice.  Or, a birthday party. His 4th, maybe, when he lost his balance and pitched forward into the cake, and came up laughing with his crinkle face.  The way he pumped his short little boy legs as he ran across the grassy area coming home from school, running to get to his cartoon, or his snack, or his coloring book.  The day he was born, the smell and moisture and softness of him so vivid.  Nursing him.  Anything, anything at all.  She just wanted to see his liquid brown eyes again, hear his tinkling laugh and feel his soft little boy fingers on her skin.  She hoped she would get something today, she hadn’t had anything in a while and she was starting to feel frayed at the edges.  The blackness was getting bigger and might swallow her soon.  It was time to visit with her little man, she hoped he came soon.