I Do

I remember the sound first.

Not his voice.

Not his laughter.

Not even the way he used to say my name like it was something fragile and holy at the same time.

I remember the space between sounds.

The quiet that settles when a life is almost finished. The kind of quiet that isn’t peaceful, but waiting. The quiet of machines that breathe for you. The quiet of people who speak in whispers as if death itself might overhear and hurry.

I hear it now.

A slow, steady tone. A borrowed rhythm. Proof that I am still here.

For now.

My body has become unfamiliar to me. Heavy. Distant. Like something I once owned but no longer control. My fingers lie in my lap, thin and pale, veins like fading rivers beneath paper skin. I try to move them, but they answer slowly, reluctantly, as if they too are preparing to leave.

They tell me this is natural.

That the body knows when it is time.

That it begins to loosen its grip.

But my mind refuses to follow.

Because he is here.

Nike sits beside me, close enough that our shoulders almost touch. His breathing is softer now. Slower. Every inhale earned. Every exhale surrendered.

I do not look at the machines.

I look at him.

Time has been gentle with his face. Age did not take him. It revealed him. The lines around his eyes are familiar paths. I have traveled them all. I know where each one leads.

Love.

Loss.

Laughter.

Survival.

He is sleeping, or pretending to. I cannot tell anymore. His hand rests beside mine, our fingers barely touching.

Even now, after fifty years, we reach for each other in our sleep.

Even now, we do not know how to let go.

They say life flashes before your eyes at the end.

They are wrong.

It does not flash.

It lingers.

It unfolds slowly, carefully, like someone afraid to wake you.

It begins with the smallest things.

A sound.

A feeling.

A moment you did not know would matter.

For me, it is the sound of ivory against wood.

Scrabble tiles.

The faint, hollow click they made the first time he placed the word that would ruin me and save me in the same breath.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

They tell me this is what happens at the end. That life does not pass before your eyes like a

film, smooth and orderly. It comes in fragments. In flashes. In feelings. A smell here. A

sound there. A face suspended in golden light.

And always, always, him.

Nike.

His name still lives warm in my chest, even as the rest of me grows cold.

I met him on a Tuesday.

I remember because I hated Tuesdays. They carried no promise. They were not fresh like

Mondays or hopeful like Fridays. Tuesdays were the middle child of days—forgotten and

tolerated.

I was volunteering at Bear’s preschool. My son clung to my leg the way ivy clings to

brick—desperate, silent, afraid to exist too loudly.

Bear had always been like that. Gentle. Watching. A soul too tender for the world.

That was when I saw him.

He stood in the doorway like he belonged nowhere and everywhere at once. Chocolate skin

glowing under fluorescent lights. Brown eyes that carried entire storms behind them. His

son, Malakai, ran ahead of him, fearless and bright.

And Nike smiled.Not the kind of smile men practice. Not the kind meant to impress or conquer. His smile

was unguarded. Like he had nothing to hide. Like he had never learned how.

It terrified me.

It saved me.

We spoke because our sons spoke.

We lingered because neither of us wanted to leave.

“Scrabble?” he asked one afternoon, holding up the box like an offering.

“I’m not very good,” I warned.

He shrugged. “I’m not afraid to win.”

I laughed.

I didn’t know then that losing to him would be the best thing that ever happened to me.

We sat across from each other, knees touching under the small classroom table. Bear and

Malakai built towers behind us, their laughter rising like birds.

Nike studied the board with the seriousness of a man defusing a bomb.

Then he placed his tiles.

LOVE.

Right across the center.

He didn’t look at the board after. He looked at me.

And I understood.

Not the word. Not yet.

But the beginning of it.

Love does not arrive all at once.

It grows.Quietly.

Like roots beneath soil.

We built something in stolen hours. Between school pickups and grocery runs. Between

exhaustion and responsibility. Between fear and hope.

He would walk me to my car even when it wasn’t dark.

He would listen even when I said nothing.

He never tried to fix me.

He simply stayed.

No one had ever done that before.

Not really.

I learned his hands before I learned his secrets. Strong hands. Steady hands. Hands that

could hold the weight of grief without breaking.

He learned my silences.

Which ones meant peace.

Which ones meant pain.

Which ones meant I was afraid he would leave.

But he never did.

Until he did.

It wasn’t a fight.

Not the kind you see in movies.

No screaming. No broken glass.

Just life.Life is quieter when it destroys you.

Money disappeared faster than dignity. Rent notices came folded like threats. Pride kept me

silent until silence cost me everything.

Bear and I moved from shelter to shelter across Los Angeles. Each place smelled the same.

Bleach and loss.

I told myself Nike was better off without me.

That love could not survive hunger.

That love could not survive shame.

I was wrong.

But wrong doesn’t stop consequences.

I left.

Memphis swallowed us whole. New streets. New faces. New loneliness.

Men tried to love me.

They tried to stand where Nike had stood.

But they could not hold the shape of him.

No one could.

Every night, when Bear slept beside me, I closed my eyes and saw Nike’s face.

Not angry.

Not betrayed.

Just waiting.

And that was worse.

Three years passed that way.

Three years of breathing without living.

Three years of existing in the shadow of what I had lost.—

I saw him again in a park.

Leimert Park.

I almost didn’t recognize him.

Not because he had changed.

Because he hadn’t.

Time had moved. The world had moved. Pain had moved.

But Nike…

He stood exactly where my heart had left him.

He saw me before I could hide.

For a moment, we were strangers.

Two lives separated by silence.

Then he said my name.

“Beth.”

No anger.

No accusation.

Just my name.

I broke.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

He crossed the distance between us slowly. Carefully. Like I might vanish.

“I know,” he said.

And he held me.

We married ten years later.

Not because we needed to.

Because we had already chosen each other a thousand times.

Marriage was just the paperwork.

We built a life from scratch. Children grew into men. Wrinkles carved their maps across

our faces.

Fifty years.

Fifty years of ordinary miracles.

Morning coffee.

Late night arguments about nothing.

His hand finding mine in sleep.

Love was persistence.

Now I lie beside him.

His hand rests in mine.

His eyes find mine.

“We did it,” he whispers.

“I do,” he says.

“I do,” I answer.

And together, we let go.