Open When…You Need to Remember Me

Hey, you.

So you found my letters. Took you long enough. If I had to guess, you found them while you were stress-cleaning. I hope you haven't torn the house apart too much. I know how you get when you're a mess, and it's kind of adorable, but I also know that you pile everything from the bookshelf in the living room onto the couch while you're dusting, and believe me, you're going to want to sit down for this.

I don't know how long it's been since my death, now that you've found these. Well…obviously.

If, by some miracle, I survive the surgery, this is going to be really awkward because these letters were supposed to be coming to you from the beyond. Spooky, right? But I'm pretty certain, no matter how many times you held my hand and stroked my hair and told me that I would be okay, this is the end of the line. You're in surgery and Lexie Grey is helping me write these, because there's too much that I want to say to you, and I don't have enough time to say it. My surgery is in an hour. I've reached crunch time.

I don't know where to begin. 'Thank you' seems insignificant. 'I love you' is something we've started saying regularly, and I don't want to write something to you that feels like a habit. I want to tell you all the things I've never said.

If there's something beyond this life, and I believe there is, I'm going to be missing you from wherever I am. Not enough that I'm going to wish you were with me—you don't seem like a Romeo and Juliet kind of girl. But I can say with absolute certainty that your face is the only one I would ever want to see. All of those months ago, when I said I could look into your eyes for the rest of my life—I meant it then, I mean it now, and I'm so glad you realized you loved me so we could make eye contact for longer than the time it took for you to visit me before surgeries. It's a lot less…socially unacceptable…to stare into someone's eyes when that someone is your ACTUAL wife, not your health insurance wife.

But I bet you knew that.

What you don't know:

Owen killed your goldfish. Not me. I took the heat for that one and said that I had forgotten to find a fish-sitter the weekend we went to Portland because I knew he felt bad. But I'm dying. All bets are off.

I know you were pregnant in June. You did a GREAT job hiding the test itself. But you left the box in plain sight. I was excited, but I also know that you miscarried pretty close to when you found out. It was right when I had my most recent tumor resection procedure. I was getting my CT when the pain started to hit you. You said it was nothing, but you were holding my hand tighter than you normally do, your breathing was labored, and you were squeezing your eyes shut like you do whenever you're about to cry. You came back by the time my surgery was done, but even though I was high on pain meds, I still noticed that you looked pale and shaky. I know that the only reason you didn't say anything was because of my procedure, but I wish you had. The whole time you were curled up next to me in my hospital bed, I would have held you while you cried and told you that it was okay, that we'd just keep practicing. But you held it together for me. You're too brave for your own good.

And finally. You know I love you. You THINK you know how much. But you have no idea. Whenever people use that "I love you more than all the stars in the sky" cliché, multiply that by about a hundred, and you have what I feel for you. When we met in that elevator, I was getting ready to propose to my girlfriend, and I still kept catching myself wishing I'd run into you again. Was I expecting you to say you'd marry me when my girlfriend said no? Not even a little. But it proved what I had suspected of you: that you have the biggest heart of anyone I have ever known, and anyone I ever would have met.

It has been the greatest time of my life, loving and being loved by you. Thank you for everything you've done and everything you are.

If you're missing me as badly as I think you are, there are a couple more of these letters. Open them as needed—read them whenever you want—and please, please try to feel like yourself again. I've seen you after losing patients. Loss makes you angry. Let your friends take care of you, so that you don't stay shut up in this house all the time. And try to sleep. Try pretending I'm with you if it helps. Don't do that a lot, because you'll fall down a rabbit hole if you do it all the time. But for the first few nights, I'm happy to be your imaginary husband.

I love you more than words, Teddy.

I'd write that and nothing else, if I had the time.

We'll see each other again someday. You have been the greatest adventure of my life. When you're ready, you deserve to have another.

All my love,

Henry

I dropped the letter, watching it fall silently and come to rest on the carpet. I wasn't crying. I wanted to be. But the tears wouldn't come. My heart was, even though I knew it was medically impossible, threatening to beat right out of my chest. And Henry was right—sitting down was best. It was 3 AM and I was cleaning, the only productive thing I'd been able to get out of the sleep deprivation I had been dealing with since I lost him. I had, as he predicted, pulled all of the books off of the shelf and left them scattered on the couch. So when his letters escaped from inside the cover of my copy of Bridges of Madison County, I had no choice but to let my legs give out and sink to the floor.

I had brought the book with me to the hospital and left it with him when I was called into surgery, expecting to read it curled up in the chair next to his bed while I waited for him to wake up. The first night I was home after he died, I shoved it back onto the shelf, swearing to never touch it again unless I was cleaning.

Just as he promised, there were two more letters waiting for me. Both were folded—he had drawn a smiley face on one and wrote "read last" on the other. Tears finally stung my eyes while I stared at his slightly messy handwriting, but I didn't give them the satisfaction of falling. Not yet.

I opened the smiley face letter slowly, wincing slightly when I read the header: "when you need to laugh." Yeah. Right. Up until this month, I'd had a great laugh. It was so loud most of the time, and Henry always said that he could base how funny his jokes were on how loud I was when I reacted to them. But now I couldn't remember what that laugh sounded like. In conversations with people around the hospital, it was forced, almost maniacal. Nothing was funny anymore.

When You Need to Laugh

Hi. Me again.

As you've probably noticed by now, my baseball card is in this letter. I told you there was a card out there somewhere with my face on it…it's been in my wallet this whole time. I was waiting for a day where I would need to make you laugh uncontrollably. It didn't even cross my mind that this could be what I was waiting for.

Look closely at it. The sun is in my eyes. I'm squinting. And honestly? I look high. You've described what I look like on morphine and it is, essentially, this picture. I thought you'd get a kick out of it. I also needed an excuse to picture you smiling. So you had better be smiling right now.

I've always loved that smile. I didn't see it enough—sometimes it was work, and I know sometimes it had to do with Iraq. But what I did see of it, I could have looked at for the rest of my life. And God, if you were LAUGHING? Even better. I could never get enough of the way your nose scrunches up when you laugh. The way you'd tilt your head back and then fall forward—you laughed with your entire body. (Always. I mean…go big or go home.) The way your eyes would get lighter. And you have the loudest laugh known to mankind. It's my favorite sound in the whole world.

I hope more than anything that someone will make you laugh like that again. I know more than anyone that the next few months are going to be hell for you. That's the cruel irony of this—losing me is going to break you and I know I would be able to help you fix yourself. But I can't be there. It'll be hard for you—I already know this is your 'Everest'—but please, please don't isolate yourself. You just can't. I hate to leave not knowing the next time you'll be hugged. My challenge for you is to hug the first friend you see tomorrow. Owen…Callie…Arizona…even Dr. Bailey. Hug someone, so I can be comforted right now by knowing that someone's got you. Someone. Anyone.

I love you.

Henry

I put the letter down on the floor next to me and thought hard about the last few sentences. When was the last time I had been hugged?

I hadn't spoken to Owen in five weeks, which was kind of a record for us since the year he broke off his engagement with Beth. But I didn't care. That was the funny thing about having a dead husband, wasn't it? You stopped caring after a while. You shut out your best friends. You went days without sleeping. You would wake up feeling good sometimes and start to straighten your hair, thinking maybe you'd try to look nice for a change, and give up halfway through and sweep the tangled curls into a messy bun.

"You'd hate this, wouldn't you?" I whispered to Henry's picture. "You would hate this so much."

He would have taken one look at the shadows under my eyes, my half-straightened hair, and the now-spotless living room and gotten down on the floor with me. He would have pulled me onto his lap like a child and I finally would have cried. I imagined him doing that now, and my throat tightened hard.

"You said you'd grow old with me," I said a little louder, throwing his picture across the room.

He would have just held me tighter. I would have fought the strength of his arms, tried to get up, tried to run away. He wouldn't have let me. He would have whispered some kind of comfort and stroked my hair and forced me to feel every last piece of this torment. That, more than a genuine desire to read anything more, was what convinced me to pick up the third letter.

When You Need to Move On

I'm not going to lie; I was dreading getting to this one. The thought of you moving on, no matter how far in the future, makes me feel a little bit sick. But this letter is necessary.

My time is almost up, literally. The pre-op procedures have started and Lexie is writing this for me, as you can probably tell from the handwriting. I just talked to you on the phone, for what was probably the last time. Just to mess with you, I am THIS close to asking for extra morphine. What if I want to have one more of those awesome dreams? You're usually in them. Why do you think I like them so much?

In all seriousness, it's comforting that your last words to me were, "I love you." I already knew that. But that's what I'd want to hear if I could only hear your voice one more time. Thank you. I love you, too.

When you get out of surgery, Cristina and Dr. Webber will more than likely have some bad news for you. I'm praying you're not alone because picturing them telling you about it is too much for me.

I know you well enough to know how this is going to go. You're going to obsess over this. You're going to get it into your head that it's your fault, that there was something else you could have done. But this is just the way things had to be. I have a chronic tumor condition. We were doomed from the get-go. The time I got to spend with you was better than anything I ever dreamed my life could be. I want that for you again, someday.

I mean that. I'm not just saying that because the morphine is starting to kick in. I really, genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, mean that.

When you're with me, your eyes light up. Your smile is bigger and brighter. You hold my hand in the halls like we're in high school.

That part of you can't die with me. You'll want it to. But this is my dying wish. Are you listening?

My dying wish is for you to be this happy again later in your life. I was your "right now" love. I was never your one and only. You were mine. I want you to find yours someday. You deserve to be happy again. I don't want you to live the rest of your life without getting a puppy, without having a real wedding, without having kids…just because I'm not here to do it with you. I want all of those things for you.

Hug your friends. Heal. Smile.

I miss you already. You were the best years of my life. I wish we'd had more of them.

I love you.

I'll only make Lexie write that once, but know that I mean it infinitely.

See you someday.

Henry

To say that I was crying would have been an understatement. My vision was blurred and the noises I was making weren't quite human. It sounded a little too much like someone's hands were wrapped around my throat. This was pure terror. This was a panic attack; the same kind I'd had because of Iraq.

I was alone.

Completely, horrifyingly alone.

I was going to go up to bed and the other side would be cold and empty. I was going to leave for work the next morning with no one to say goodbye to. I would come home to an eerily silent house. This would become my cycle if I didn't hurry up and break it. This rabbit hole I had gotten myself into would break me.

My legs still felt frozen to the carpet where I had been sitting, but I forced myself to stand up. I put the letters back in the cover of my book, where I was sure that I would pick them back up every night for God only knows how long. I picked Henry's baseball card up from where I had thrown it and took it upstairs with me. I set it down gently on the side of the sink first while I brushed my teeth, then set it on his pillow while I climbed into bed.

The sad reality was that I knew I still wouldn't sleep much, if at all. But for him, I wanted to try again for the first time in over a month.

"Just for you," I whispered to the picture as I turned my lamp off, "I'm going to try to sleep. I'm going to drink water tomorrow, not just coffee. Can't promise that I'll wear makeup, but you always said I didn't need it, so maybe that won't matter much. If I do my hair, I'll commit to doing all of it. This is harder than you thought it would be for me, and clearly you prepared for a lot. But I'm trying, okay?"

I settled back down onto my pillow, fighting back more tears as I realized that a day would come when I didn't need his picture anymore. I wouldn't need to talk to him. I would be okay someday.

But in my twisted, masochistic nature, I didn't want to be okay yet.

At this thought, I picked my phone up and scrolled through unread text messages until I found Callie's name.

Hey, I typed. This is going to sound like a weird request.

Weird requests are my best skill set, she answered.

If that has anything to do with Arizona, I don't want to know.

Shut up, she said, adding a laughing face to her message. What's going on?

I need a hug.