Within Reach

KJ was one of the most amazing people I've ever met. She was creative, honest, sarcastic, kind, and intelligent. We met in mid-1993 through a mutual friend, and bonded over a shared love of Dean Koontz. We moved in together just a couple of months after met. We were married two years later.

When I first met KJ, she was a writer. She spent hours every day writing romance stories, and while she never published anything, her work was always impressive.

From there she went on to cross-stitch, crochet, pour painting, wood burning, jewelry making, resin crafting, and more. And she had a list of other mediums she wanted to try eventually, such as metal working, carpentry, sewing, and cosplay. She jumped from hobby to hobby like she wanted to sample all life had to offer.

We were obsessed with each other, to the point that we often ignored everyone else in the room. Some couples finished each other's sentences, but we didn't even need sentences. We often spoke to each other in movie quotes, and we almost achieved "Darmok at Tanagra" levels of communication.

In our early years together, she was an inexhaustible dynamo. I had trouble keeping up with her. Once we got our first digital camera, we began going to zoos and parks every weekend, and we loved taking pictures together. Money was always tight, but we found our bliss in whatever nature had to offer, and we searched high and low for photo opportunities.

I couldn't afford to give her the life she deserved, but she always told me she loved the life I gave her.

Then in September 2015, KJ had to go to the emergency room for diverticulitis. This was the beginning of the end. Her health was never the same afterwards. She never got all her energy back, and it was like the start of a cascade failure, health-wise.

In the following years she had several more operations, including partial thyroid removal and eye surgery. By the end she was blind in one eye and deaf in one ear, she'd developed diabetes, nearly half of her teeth were fake, she had high blood pressure, she couldn't walk very far, and she had chronic body pains.

She still tried to stay busy, but her body couldn't keep up with her spirit. There was a lot she couldn't do, and for the past couple of years she mostly watched TV while crocheting. She fell into deep depression and developed a gambling addiction. She no longer wanted to watch anything new, preferring the comfort of shows she'd already seen dozens of times. She spent most of her time watching YouTube videos.

Moving out of Nashville helped her disposition a lot. Our new house brought her a lot of joy. She loved this town, and so do I. We could easily see ourselves growing old together in this house, sitting out on the screened-in front porch and watching the cars go by.

She was making progress, anyway. There's no way to be sure how it would have gone, but I know I saw improvement. We started watching new movies and TV shows again. She was greatly looking forward to the new Fantastic Four movie. And then we got the puppy, and it made her so happy. She'd wanted a dog for years.

If there's actually any rhyme or reason to the universe, an actual cosmic plot guiding our fates, then I'd like to believe her death was inevitable, and the universe was just trying to make her final days more comfortable.

I'd like to believe that. But I don't. They say it's always darkest just before the dawn, but in my experience the reverse is more often true. The universe just loves to give you false hope, putting the promised land within reach before it pulls the rug out from under you.

Screw this universe. I want my money back.