I'm listening to The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffeneggar on my iPod. I read the book a long time ago when it first came out and I loved it. I remember reading it while Gessner was in the hospital and crying. A nurse walked in and saw me crying, assuming that it was because of Gessner being in the hospital, and tried to comfort me. I'm nearing the end of the book and just listened to the letter that Henry left for Clare to be read after his death and I felt Gessner with me, saying that had he written me a letter, it would have read something like that. That he too, wants me to be free and that he would have stayed with me if he could. I wish that he could have stayed with me.
Before he died Gessner told me that he was going to write letters to people he loved to be read after his death, but apparently he did not get around to it as I have been through all of his things and did not find any letters. At times I am angry. I wanted him to write me a letter to tell me all of these things--to tell me that he loved me, that I was a good wife, that he didn't want to leave me, that I would be okay. I don't know why he didn't write the letter. Probably because it was too hard to think about and he didn't think that his death was so near. Or maybe he thought that he would be able to tell me these things at the end, not that he would be non-responsive and just slip away. I feel selfish when I am angry about this because no one should have to plan their death and I'm glad that he lived it as much as he could instead of dwelling on it. Perhaps I want a letter from him so much that I am clinging on to this quote from the book. But, at any rate, tonight I heard Gessner say that it was for me. So here are excerpts from the book:
A Letter to Be Opened in the Event of My Death
About this death of mine—I hope it was simple and clean and unambiguous. I hope it didn’t create too much fuss. I’m sorry. (This reads like a suicide note. Strange.) But you know: you know that if I could have stayed, if I could have gone on, that I would have clutched every second: whatever it was, this death, you know that it came and took me, like a child carried away by goblins.
Clare, I want to tell you, again, I love you. Our love has been the thread through the labyrinth, the net under the high-wire walker, the only real thing in this strange life of mine that I could ever trust. Tonight I feel that my love for you has more density in this world than I do, myself: as though it could linger on after me and surround you, keep you, hold you.
I hate to think of you waiting. I know that you have been waiting for me all your life, always uncertain of how long this patch of waiting would be. Ten minutes, ten days. A month. What an uncertain husband I have been, Clare, like a sailor, Odysseus alone and buffeted by tall waves, sometimes wily and sometimes just a plaything of the gods. Please, Clare. When I am dead. Stop waiting and be free. Of me—put me deep inside you and then go out in the world and live. Love the world and yourself in it, move through it as though it offers no resistance, as though the world is your natural element.
...
If I had to live on without you I know I could not do it. But I hope, I have this vision of you walking unencumbered, with your shining hair in the sun. I have not seen this with my eyes, but only with my imagination, that makes pictures, that always wanted to paint you, shining; but I hope that this vision will be true, anyway.
...
We will see each other again, Clare. Until then, live, fully, present in the world, which is so beautiful. It’s dark, now, and I am very tired. I love you, always. Time is nothing.
Henry
Excerpts from The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.
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