• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

bump she had

and to visit

with friends and family.

we talked about

how fun it

would be to go

back to the mn

for future holidays

with our kid.

here i was,

one year later

with that kid we

were so fucking

excited to show off,

but it was

two of us rather

than three

getting on the plane.

Time was passing so much more quickly than I had anticipated. I found myself constantly flashing back to what Liz and I had been doing exactly a year earlier—it was impossible not to. As much as I loved thinking about the trips we’d taken and the fun we’d had together during our time together, it hurt so much more to remember what it had been like just the year before: our last vacation, birthday, whatever, together, and without our knowing. It was shitty to think about how happy and full of hope we had been. Now the holiday season approached, and I knew I was about to enter a minefield of memories.

Minnesota during the holidays had always been a pain in the ass. Liz and I had to run from my dad’s house to my mom’s house to her parents’ house—it was exhausting. But this year, our first year without Liz, our holidays would become a true family affair. We were all going to gather together: my dad and his wife, and my mom and my stepdad—they would all come over to Tom and Candee’s to mix with their huge families. It made my life a hell of a lot easier because I wouldn’t have to run around with an eight-month old. Everyone excited to see—and spoil—Madeline would be in one place. Everyone but Liz.

In the present, I kept thinking that everything had been perfect when we were eighteen, but I hadn’t known it. Sure, there had been big challenges facing us, but they were like a Brat Pack movie: where to go to college, what to wear to prom, and how to deal with the idiots at Liz’s preppy high school who didn’t like the kid with the beat-up truck coming by to pick up their princess and drive her to the other side of the tracks every day. Really, we usually just went back to Liz’s.

After school we would tumble out of my truck and into the kitchen, grabbing some food and drinks to take into the living room, just doing mundane shit. I had a memory of Liz asking me to help her hang up the giant photo collage we had put together for her graduation party in her bedroom. After pounding a few nails into the drywall, the board was up and we stood back to admire it. It was like a testament to her life so far, with pictures of her with her friends and photos of us, all pinned to a corkboard. There was a photo of two of her high school friends making out on the trampoline in someone’s backyard, and another of Josh and me out at his cousin’s farm, standing near the ostrich pen. And my favorite, sweet little Liz and her huge smile, holding a rifle and a winner’s certificate—turns out the prissy girl from the suburbs was one hell of a shot.

Those times seemed so far away now. Since we had been teenagers hanging out poolside in her parents’ backyard, I had experienced so much of the world. When I was growing up, the people around me were all from Minnesota and tended to stay in Minnesota. Liz encouraged me to cast my glance across the country—across the oceans. She encouraged me to make my world larger, and she did so with me. I wondered now what it would be like to go back to our hometown for a holiday with our families, but without her.

When we arrived at the Goodmans’ house, I felt hyperaware that Liz was dead. There had been so many of these holiday events during our twelve years together, and she was by my side during every single one of them. I felt like I was going to sink without her.

I wanted her memory to be present, even if she couldn’t be. Not in any sort of creepy way—we didn’t set aside a plate of food or a spot at the table for her—but I made sure to talk about her and to let our families know that I wanted them to feel comfortable talking about her. Sure, it was for my own sanity, but it was also for Maddy’s sake, and it was something I did all the time. When we would pass by Blush Salon,