(for Dad, who kept a list of the top ten ways he was going to die)
1.The wife is stricken with a terrible, fatal illness while they’re still in couples therapy. He stays with her out of guilt and she’s fine with that. Eventually he realizes what a heinous mistake he was about to make and spends the rest of her living days atoning by reading to her, washing her hair, and bearing gifts of fine jewelry.
2.The husband falls from a second-floor window at the client’s house while he’s still in couples therapy with the wife, who outfits the home with a ramp and one of those chairlifts that runs up the stairs and when he returns home from the hospital she cares for him for the rest of his living days. He realizes how lucky he was to have her all those years and spends the rest of his living days expressing his gratitude.
3.The wife, still conscious on her deathbed after falling down in front of a car years before the horrible client comes into the picture, years before they ever go to couples therapy, tells her husband not to cry, that even though she had a short life, she had everything she ever wanted, and she coughs an operatic cough and dabs her head with a lacy handkerchief and expires.
4.Returning from couples therapy round three, where they’ve finally made a breakthrough, pledging their renewed love, they both die in a car accident because the husband is tailgating and there’s a tailgater behind them and the car in front of them slows down and there’s a pileup. The client shows up at the funeral and the wife’s friends stop her at the door and say Yeah, no, bye, and then everyone says nice things about how much they loved both of them and how right they were for each other even though the husband went on a stupid walkabout.
5.A year after separating, the wife slips into some morbid reflection and writes it down and then one of these grim scenarios actually happens because that’s the superpower she’s burdened with, and she has to live with it, on earth or in eternity, depending on which way it goes.
6.Decades after separating and never getting divorced, the husband and wife tentatively and tenderly reunite, only to learn that the husband has a horrible and deadly pulmonary disease from years of working around chemicals. Everything good in my life was because of you, he says. I’m glad you know that now, she says.
7.Decades after separating and never getting divorced, the husband and wife die separately but meet up in eternity. The husband spends a few eternities trying to make amends, and a few eternities after that, the wife finds forgiveness and they spend all the eternities after that together.
8.Decades after separating and never getting divorced, the husband and wife die separately but meet up in eternity, and in eternity there is no language and no form, only blissful, wordless understanding and love of the human condition. There’s no such thing as sorry in eternity, there are no mistakes or regrets in eternity, zero self-loathing or grief; there’s only what is, and what is is good and right and perfect, which means there are infinite puppies.
9.The client was never born, no one else was ever born who either of them found attractive during their fifty years of marriage, and they die peacefully in their sleep holding hands.
10.The husband and wife were never born, and no one’s heart ever hurt.