Love is Holding Hands

   It wasn't until mid-life that our lives finally found each other.

   Suddenly, it seemed, we discovered this giddy, adolescent butterflies-in-the-stomach kind of thing. Thick and sappy. God, it wrapped itself around our worlds and accelerated into one gigantic collision that touched everyone and everything we knew.

   Both of us, Carrie and I, were standing in our early 40s and could look back on a long road full of hard miles. Nothing really spectacular, I guess, just the normal single parent bumps that at the time felt like tragedies. But we survived. And then this fairy tale thing - our love was tangible. We could hold it in our hands. We were lucky. We both had stopped believing in forever a long time ago.

   The doctor says - what did the doctor just say?! He continues to speak (his lips are still moving), though I'm not hearing any words. He is sitting behind a huge desk, wearing his sad face. Carrie and I are sitting together on a couch, opposite the desk. We've been here before, too many times, it seems, over the past month. The doctor is younger than we are. Why does this suddenly piss me off?

  I begin to catch words here and there. Metastasized ... inoperable ... three months.

   No. No. We've been together three years! I realize that I'm standing. I look down at Carrie and see tears pouring out of the love of my life.

   "I'll be go-to-hell if I'm gonna change your diapers," I tell her through my own tears. She nods, smiling. "I love you, too."

   Carrie tells me she is more worried about me than anything.   "What about the kids," I say. "Mostly grown. They're young and strong. You," she says, "need a soul to squeeze." "I never needed anything before I met you," I tell her.

   Carrie believed that she and I had been dancing around each other's destinies through several past lives, our souls never being able to connect on the human level for one reason or another. "The cancer is just taking my body. My soul will always belong to you. Just to you."

   "Then why is fate taking you away from me just when we finally found each other?"

   I'm angry. Again. I'm yelling. Again. She is at the computer, e-mailing friends, trying to keep the connection to this life alive. I'm standing next to her, trying to understand everything at once. I'm not getting it. The only thing I am getting is pissed off, once again. Plus, she said the 'C' word. I never say that word. I'm determined not to let it rule our life. Carrie giggles into her hands like a school girl would, listening to a secret.

   Looking at her then, I realize that I've loved her my whole life. For her whole life. I feel cheated and I have to start believing in God again because I need something real to throw my hate against. She giggles some more. I'm standing there with my pain, wearing nothing but an old cowboy hat. "You make me laugh," she tells me. "I love you most for that."

   "OK," I say. "Don't make me cry when I'm naked."

   Two months after getting the news from Doctor Sad Face, Carrie tells me that after things settle down I shouldn't close myself off to meeting someone else. She is tired and in a lot of pain all the time. Tears again - mine.

   "You're my medicine," she says.

   "Just shut up, Carrie!"

    She giggles - my medicine.

   "I've had enough of this love crap. I'm done with it," I tell her. She is laughing now.

   "You're too horny to give up on love, Duane."

   "Sex has nothing to do with love and you know it!" I'm laughing, too.

   "Love is holding hands," she says. Our definition.

   "No, no more love for me. Maybe I'll just be a big 'ol man-whore."

   "Hmmm," she purrs. "Remember, I'll be watching you!"

    I'm keeping Carrie's last words. They are only for me.

    When we say goodbye to each other, we are holding hands.