A Little Blue Heart and a Vial of Nitroglycerin

What if liking never becomes loving? For Mary, love was a forbidden subject. Grief, though—that was a subject we shared. She was a widow, and I was a widower.

Yet for Christmas, she opened her wrinkled hand and presented me with a puffy little blue fabric heart. The greeting card with it was signed with "love." Never mind saying the word; this was the first time she ever dared even write it, after eight months of off-again, on-again dating. But it was enough to thrill me because I was hooked. For months, she had been washing me in showers of shared joys, rivers of kindness, an ocean of understanding, and my resistance had dissolved.

Then she jetted off to Florida. Every day I wore that little heart in my pants pocket next to the vial of nitroglycerin tablets that my cardiologist had told me sternly to keep at hand.

In February, I called her at her winter retreat in Sarasota and we talked about living together. She proposed a part-time arrangement, contingent on a trial run. In March, she invited me to visit her down in Sarasota "for fun." We did have fun. We relaxed. We snuggled. We explored verdant parks, took in kaleidoscopes of color in galleries and museums. Took long walks--slow ones to avoid my cardiac angina. We held hands in public. Were kind and considerate and affectionate to one another. Shared more confidences than ever before.

I felt so relaxed with her, so wanted, that I asked why she had proposed living together; what made her change her mind about me?

“I never changed my mind,” she said. “I was asking about goals—in general—about relationships in general.”

I didn’t say a word. She reached out to me looking sad. “Now I’ve disappointed you!”

I pretended it was okay. “It’s my fault. I assumed. I never asked whether you meant right away or eventually.”

I mentioned carrying the little blue heart.

"Oh, that," she said. Her eyes rolled.

I knew not to say I loved her, knew it would freak her out. But I said, "I cherish you."

Another mistake. "Too glaring," she said. “That kind of talk overwhelms me.”

I didn't mention carrying the nitro. But she knew I did.

When I left, I said, "So long, special woman."

She said, "So long, special man. I’ll miss you."

We smiled into each other’s eyes, but only a little.

When I flew home, I missed her too much. I got angry about all the stops and starts. I emailed her that I felt too much more, wanted her too much more, than she wanted me. I told her I couldn't take it anymore, asked her to let me go. I even mailed her the little blue heart and the Christmas card with “love” at the bottom of the page. I told her about doing so.

That freaked her out again. But she called and said, "I'm not ready to end the relationship". I was anxious, she said. It would be okay, she said. "Write down more about how you're feeling. We'll talk about it on Friday."

I wrote that I admitted being more anxious about her than resentful. That I knew I was going too fast, asking too much. That I could slow down and enjoy the journey with her instead of aiming for a goal. That seeing the places in me that are hard to love, and telling her about them anyway, and receiving her understanding gave me courage, helped me to learn how to love my neighbor as myself and love myself as my neighbor. I borrowed that from a book because I thought it was so vulnerable, so beautiful, so true.

I thought she could not object to a biblical version of love. But on Friday she said, "I feel numb. It's too much for me to process. Maybe I’m not enough for you." She needed space, she said, to give her a few weeks. Or maybe a few months. It was a repeat of what she had said and done the prior summer while grieving the passing of her favorite brother.

I replied that I understood. "Maybe we will never have more than Sarasota." It was the second anniversary of my spouse's death to cancer, and I told Mary that I was feeling wistful. It reminded her of her husband's death of cancer eight years previously. "I still grieve every year," she said, choking up.

"I get it," I said. "The last thing I want to do is burden you more." We said goodbyes, and I pushed the red button on my phone.

I couldn’t sit still indoors. I went outside to my vegetable garden, slashed open fresh bags of potting soil, dumped them here and there, scattered the soil around. I shoved blue bamboo stakes into the ground for growing pea plants. It was easy because rain had poured during the phone call. The sun had returned, and it warmed me. The dirt was warm, too. The stakes stained my hands blue, but I felt good, almost, till there was no more to slash or shove or dump or shovel. Till there was nothing left to do but feel an ache that had nothing to do with angina. As I washed my hands and the blue stain ran down the drain, I felt the loss of Mary and wondered what might have been.

I cursed myself for a fool. When a woman knows too well what loss feels like, why would she give her heart to someone who carries nitroglycerin around, even if it’s next to her little blue heart?

The next morning my envelope addressed to Mary returned in the mail, marked “returned for additional postage.” I shook my head in wonderment at this puny gift from the gods of the United States Postal Service, their rejection of my vain attempt to avoid my just desserts. What had I expected? That I could mail away my bewilderment and anger, my ache and sorrow? That, with a single gesture, a trip to the post office, I could rid myself of my little blue heart?