Author's webpage: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/8298/titles.html
Author's disclaimer: Can you believe I'm doing this for pleasure?
Author's notes: This is a death story. Blair is dead. It takes place years down the road, but Blair dies. Jim grieves. I cried buckets while writing this, but Jim insisted, so don't say I didn't warn you. Get your kleenex or hankies ready.
Happily Ever After
by Merri-Todd Webster
(19 January 1999)
He made me happy.
I couldn't very well put that on his tombstone. But it sums it all up just as well as "Lover and Beloved," which is what I did have put on his tombstone. He was that, my lover, my beloved, and my partner, my best friend, my mentor, my Guide. He was everything that mattered.
Was.
I always thought I'd go first. I mean, it was much more likely. I'm older; I work in a high-stress, high-risk job; I'm more sensitive than most people, sometimes dangerously so. I always thought it would be me. I'd take a bullet and he'd go on without me, maybe even get married and finally have some kids. Beautiful kids with thick curly hair and fast mouths.
But he was the one who took the bullet. Not for me, thank God. I couldn't have lived with that. He tried to negotiate with a strung-out, hyped up kid at a convenience store, a fourteen-year-old with a gun bigger than his dick--or his brain--and when negotiation didn't work, he stepped between the gun and the cashier, who was a girl and nineteen and a Rainier student. He tried to disarm the kid, but one bullet got between his ribs and lodged right in his heart. The paramedics just didn't get there in time.
Blair Jacob Sandburg. Lover and beloved.
I miss him so much. He was only in his fifties. In a couple more years I'd've retired, taken him out of the line of fire.... There's no use going that way. It wasn't because of me, I know that. Blair Sandburg would have done the same thing--tried to help, even at the risk of his own life--even if we'd never met. He was like that.
I miss the long curly hairs that used to clog up the bathroom drain. They were starting to get white, but they were just as thick as ever. I miss the smell of him in the bed. We had more than ten years together, and it wasn't enough. I could never get enough of that sagey smell he had, of those incredible smiles, half a dozen different smiles, each one more beautiful than the last, and one of them was just for me. I miss the heartbeat that I used to listen to, all the time, more and more the older I got, for some reason. I miss the weight of him in my arms as we'd sleep together and the little touches, all day long, my arm, my back, tugging on my jacket. I miss the way he kissed me and the feel of his hair under my hands. I just miss Blair, something that isn't the sensory memories or the things he always used to say or the adventures we had together. Just Blair.
At his funeral I broke down and cried like a baby in front of everyone I knew. It didn't matter, by then; everybody knew what we were to one another. Most of our friends cried with me and the ceremony pretty much came to a halt until we were all done. I still cry for him almost every day, not for long but suddenly, when I least expect it. The other day I ordered that curry chicken he used to love and got to crying over that because the smell of it reminded me of him. I felt like such an idiot. And if he were still here, he'd say, "Hey, Jim, don't sweat it. Grief is normal. You've got to give it its head."
After the funeral I gave away most of what he owned--not that that was a lot--gave it away to people who cared, some of it to charities, a couple valuable pieces to Rainier, to the anthro department. I didn't want to wind up sleeping with his robe, trying to pretend he was still here. I wanted to let go. But I have pictures, lots of pictures, and a braid of his hair he made me the one time he got it cut short, and his papers, of course, and some of his jewelry. I wear a necklace I gave him underneath my shirt most of the time. And I dream of him. Almost every night. The fiftysomething Blair with grey streaks in the brown mane who took care of me after the back surgery that almost put me off the force, and the twentysomething Blair in a white shirt and a blue and purple patterned vest who first told me I was a Sentinel, and every Blair in between. Blair sleepy and sweaty after a night of passion. Blair edgy and nervous before getting his promotion. Blair smiling at me, that smile that meant, "I love you, Jim". He's not here, and yet I feel he's never left. He still loves me as much as I love him.
I'm not going to put a gun to my head. I'm not going to deliberately try to zone-out and stay there, go catatonic, slip away quietly on the couch. I'm not going to bow out or back down from the risks. I never lived that way before, and I won't do it now that he's gone. No matter how much I miss him. The best way I can honor his memory is to live with the grief. To live. And to grieve. Not shove the pain into the darkness the way I have so many times before. Not push away his memory like I did Peru and my senses and so much else. Simon is making noises about retirement, but I want those last two years on the street before I start teaching at the Academy or trying to write my memoirs. That'd be damned funny--"My Life as a Gay Sentinel." Naw, I don't think so. I'll think of something else to do.
We had so little time together, and yet it was everything. It was all of my life that mattered, the part I shared with him. Blair Sandburg made me happy, and I'm as sure as I can be that I made him happy, too. We were two men who lived together and were friends and partners and lovers and we made each other happy. Even when we bickered and fought. Even when we were lonely and hurt. Even when we couldn't say how much we loved each other. And so we lived happily ever after.
End