On a whim…

I pick up the envelope — only slightly yellowed by time. The end is torn open, as if in great haste to read what it once held. I lift it to my face, hoping for some trace of her scent, some faint whisper of the hand that sealed it.

Emotion rises; her absence floods me. My eyes follow each line of the address — her capital E in “Ensign,” the luminous D she always gave my name. Every letter is carefully inscribed: Fleet Post Office, USS Starfield DD-837.

I squint to read the postmark, my vision not what it once was. Beneath the lamplight I finally make it out: Greenville, P.M., 14 January 1977.

This was the letter she sent after her solitary journey across Europe — that audacious pursuit of adventure, and of me. I have read it countless times and never had enough. Again I’m struck by the cruel truth: there will be no more letters.

Even now — fifty years since our wedding, thirty-two since her death — the sweetness of her words undoes me. It is la petite mort in its truest sense: the tender collapse of what once was flesh and is now only memory.

I close my eyes and let it take me. The ache, the sweetness, the loss — all of it. For one breath, I hold her again. And though it breaks me, it sustains me.

— D.