It felt light and cold.
—Nancy —he said—, I feel terrible asking you this.
Our conversations had become more affectionate as the days went by, but the seriousness in his voice frightened me.
“Ask me.”
“I have loved you all my life.”
Part 2:
My breath caught in my throat.
“I know I don’t have much time left,” he continued. “But there’s something I’ve always dreamed of doing.”
He looked me straight in the eyes.
“Will you marry me?”
For several seconds, the room disappeared.
Fifty-six years of questions, regrets, and imagined possibilities seemed to accumulate between us.
Part of me heard Raymond’s voice warning me that I was being foolish.
But another voice—the voice of the seventeen-year-old girl I had been—told me not to wander off again.
Thomas had advanced cancer.
I knew he was dying.
This was his last wish.
—Yes —I whispered.
Tears filled her eyes.
Mine too.
“Yes, Thomas. I will marry you.”
He squeezed my hand.
“You won’t regret it, Nancy. I promise.”
There was something unusual about the way he pronounced those words.
It sounded less like reassuring words and more like a carefully planned promise.
At the time, I thought he was only referring to our marriage.
I still didn’t understand that he was referring to something much more important.
The wedding took place three days later in her hospital room.
One of the nurses stayed by our side as a witness.
A quiet man, dressed in a gray suit, introduced himself as Walter, Thomas’s lawyer.
I found it unusual that a lawyer would attend such a small ceremony.
But Thomas took my hand and I pushed that thought away.
Her eyes sparkled as she uttered her vows.
Mine too.
After the ceremony, Walter opened a leather briefcase and placed a folder on the wheeled table next to Thomas’s bed.
“There are some documents that require your signature,” he explained. “Take all the time you need.”
It didn’t take me long.
I trusted Thomas completely.
Whenever Walter pointed to a line, I signed it with my name.
That night I told Raymond what had happened.
His reaction was immediate.
“Have you completely lost your mind?” she shouted into the phone. “You married a dying man you barely know?”
“I’ve known Thomas longer than I’ve known you.”
“You’re being manipulated,” Raymond blurted out. “A stranger sees an elderly nurse with a pension and convinces her to marry him. You need to get the marriage annulled immediately.”
“No.”
“Nancy, you don’t understand what you’ve done.”
“I understand perfectly.”
I ended the call.
A month later, Thomas passed away.
He passed away peacefully early in the morning, with my hand intertwined with his.
The pain was much greater than I expected.
We had only spent a few weeks together, but somehow those weeks contained all the love and longing of the fifty-six years we had lost.
