Saying Goodbye

By Peter Bowden

Valerie died at 3:30 A.M. Eastern Time, June 5th, 2022. The clock ticked gently, politely, as if trying not to wake the world. I was there. I saw. I felt. I heard her breathing through the deep, star-thick night—soft, slow breaths that faded like the end of a lullaby sung by the moon.

She was beside me. And then she wasn’t.

She left without fanfare, like a candle that knows the dark is waiting and doesn’t mind the return. She left me. Left everyone. Left everything. There was a hush then, not just in the room, but in my soul—a hush shaped like absence.

And fear arrived on quiet shoes. Fear of mornings and noons and long purple twilights that would unfold without her. Fear of clocks that didn’t care she was gone. Of years, calendars, birthdays, old photos with her frozen in time, smiling as if she hadn’t left at all.

She had said she was ready. Told others she’d found peace, as if it were some warm place in the sky or tucked between the stars. I tried to understand—how does one become ready for the great journey? Is it surrender? Is it trust? Or is it something sacred, gifted only to those who stand at the edge and see what we cannot?

I ask myself often: did she know how much she was loved? Not just by me, but by the echoing crowd of lives she touched. Did she carry that with her, like a lantern to light the path? I hope so. I ache with the need to believe it.

And yet, I worry. Not just about the past, but about all the empty places in the future. I worry if I should have said more, done more. But what more is there when all you want is one extra hour, one last shared glance, a hand held longer than time allows?

Life since then has been a dream I keep waking into. I walk through it, but I don’t feel part of it. It’s as if I stepped out of one story and into another, and the author hasn’t told me the plot yet.

Before, we lived in the moment, as if moments were eternal. I didn’t plan. I didn’t look far. I believed we had more pages left in the book. That the illness would pass, or at least pause, and let us write a few more chapters.

But I think Valerie knew the truth. She always knew more than she said. When the cancer came back, she didn’t speak of fear—only hugged her nurses as if saying goodbye. I asked what it meant. She said they knew. That she knew. But she didn’t burden me with it.

She was like that. Brave in silence. Kind in hiding her sorrow.

And now, I live in the after. After her. After June. The days pile up like unread letters. I open them one at a time, slowly, not sure if they contain memories or warnings or just blankness.

The future feels like a distant planet, spinning, silent, unfamiliar.

Memories keep me company. And sometimes, remembering is all that keeps the stars in the sky.

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