She sat down in his chair. The chair they had fought over for so many nights to see who would gain possession of it along with the television remote control. The chair where he had sat winning “Jeopardy!” while she kept score on the couch with a pen and notepad.

They had spent 40 years sharing pain and fear, love and happiness, arguments and making-up kisses. Their planned dreams were to move out West to Sun City as soon as they both retired from jobs here.

She retired first, she was five years older. Then the old man, as she playfully called him, dropped dead.

It was that quick, he was stolen away beyond her reach. Where was the justice? They worked hard all their lives with the hopes and goal of a pension that spelled the reward of freedom and choice. He retires and dies? Is that what oxymoron means?

She curses God and she prays to God in the same breath.

Not one person in the world can know the closeness they had, the intimacies, the memories that can never be relived.

People offer their suggestions and solutions. They cannot understand because only she knows how special he was to her.

She tries to remember their conversations of death to find consolation with his beliefs.

No longer can they recall stories where each told the part they told the best. No longer will they be invited as a couple to couple get-togethers.

There is no cure for a broken heart, there is no cure for death. Time will merely tame the pain.

She looked over at the stereo and noticed the stack of his favorite CDs. He had a voice any woman could fall in love with. She looked at the Christmas tree and the slippers under it. They were the only gift he had asked for this year. He never got to wear them.

A hundred questions torment her mind. Why me? Why him? Why now? An inconceivable punishment.

Taking another drink to dull the sorrow makes the little blue Christmas bulbs blurry as she blinks through the tears.

She tries to remember just the things he did that made her angry, but they seem so minor now. If only he were alive she wouldn’t argue with him about the temperature on the furnace thermostat. She wouldn’t nag him to fix the porch.

She would even turn the light off when she left a room. Her mind races and she can dwell only on his good side.

She sits alone in his chair wishing she could offer it to him with his slippers, a cigar and a sip of champagne.

The noises in the kitchen awaken her as he comes in from working late and makes himself a snack.

She lifts the heavy, white goosedown comforter and folds it back across the bed and tiptoes up behind him and wraps her arms around his waist and lays her head against his back and silently counts her blessings.

For once she doesn’t give him hell for waking her up. He turns around and they both look into each other’s eyes and race to get to the recliner first.

Robin Addams is a free-lance writer who lives in Old Town.