The Love Story

I knew he was going to die.

My client told me ahead of time that the memoir she was sending me was written by a young woman who shared 10 beautiful (and crazy) years with her husband before God decided his time on earth was up.

I devoured every word of her love story. My eyes eagerly waited to read the last line of each page and then move on to the next. I was standing in the room when they yelled about half eaten French fries and who was going to tell the Abercrombie pants story. I hid behind my laptop screen when they made love in cheap hotels and in the secret nooks of the dark highways in Lubbock, Texas. The cream colored fur of their kitten Max’s coat was as real to me as the faded blanket on my bed. The infatuated love addiction of my past hugged me tight. Sweet moments in my unhealthy relationships flooded my mind. Her love story would have been my life story had I married my ex-boyfriend.

When I read the title Losing Mike,* I knew that he would die somewhere in the last three pages. I pushed all my nervousness away and continued reading. I kept telling myself to focus on the task at hand – I was not to be swept away by the relationship I was reading about. I was to edit the memoir – that is what I was getting paid to do. A page later, she wakes up to the sound of her husband screaming and headlights coming straight at her. Just as I was reading the words “Mike was ejected from the car,” everything around me went pitch black. Literally. The electricity in my entire apartment complex shut off. The only thing that stayed on in my entire apartment was my laptop, showing me Mike’s story. I believe in God, in Christianity, in death, in ghosts, in all of that. I could hear her screams when the cops told her her husband had not made it. I could literally see God’s plan for Mike’s death even months before it happened. Her descriptions were so specific that after reading the story you had to believe that it was Mike’s time to go – this wasn’t a haphazard event or the mistake of a driver heading west. His death had purpose. Why did my lights go out as I read that he left this earth? Why was my laptop on when it had been previously running off of AC power? I know why. I leave it up to you to find the answer.

After this my thought was that I should just embrace the habits of writers and editors past and present. Next time I should go to Starbucks and get a grande caramel macchiato with extra caffeine or take a couple of shots of whiskey during my writing breaks. If I had done this, maybe my analytical and spiritual self would not have had a temper tantrum in my mind. Since I don’t drink caffeine or whiskey, though, maybe those parts of me that I have been neglecting were suppose to have a temper tantrum. Anything to wake me up to the reality that her story, like all stories, has one ending. It is what happens after the ending that matters more than what happens before it ends.