The Gray Hair

You stand in front of the mirror, wrestling your curls into submission with the flat iron. He is next to you, bare-chested, brushing his teeth, spitting into the sink, humming a happy tune. You chatter back and forth about what lies ahead in your respective days. He talks about compliance meetings and projects. You talk about the bittersweet last week of school. Your eyes meet in the mirror and your shiver a little. His chocolate eyes have always made you weak in the most wonderful of ways. He smiles and the corners of his eyes crinkle, like fans brushing away the past year.

You remember the bottomless nights when he would utter, “I don’t want to live anymore.” The lips you love to kiss are the lips that broke your heart in ways so profound that words like broken, crushed, devastated can’t contain this pain. New words need to be invented to describe such an acute shattering.

You remember the white paper stretched across the doctor’s table as you sat holding his hand time and time again, medication after medication, tear after tear, slippery on your faces. You remember his kissing lips telling you to please lock up the medications so he wouldn’t swallow them all. You pushed aside all of your shoes and plunked down a brand new safe in the corner of your closet. It was heavy, cold. You kept the combination to the safe to yourself, hating that you had to keep a secret in a life that has always been shared.

You remember carefully putting out daily doses all in a little pile by the sink. You remember how his pants became loose, like dress up clothes on his gaunt frame. Food and sleep were unwelcome in his black ocean.

Then you remember the day he said, “I’m starting to feel okay.” You remember sessions with the counselor when he began to return to himself and your heart began to heal.

At the mirror he smiles and kisses your cheek. Your eyes drift down to the coils of black hair on his chest. One rogue gray hair stands at attention in the middle of all the other black ones. You look at your own face and see new lines around your eyes. In a moment of clarity, you understand that you are growing old and that he has chosen to live, to grow old with you.