Thirty-Nine Years and One Day

I remember the snowfall before I remember him.

November 1st, 2003 — just three days earlier it had been seventy-four degrees and sunny. But that morning, a thin veil of early-season flurries brushed over a deserted Lavalette beach, the flakes melting as soon as they touched the sand.

Nico always remembered everything.

The first restaurant, the first movie — even the name of the Paris cab driver who sang to us on the way to that tiny hostel on our first trip to Europe.

Every beginning stayed with him.

But the moment etched deeper in me than anything he ever recounted is that morning on the beach.

***

And now I sit here, rubbing his hand, thirty-nine years and one day later.

Overlooking the same stretch of New Jersey sand where our lives began, in the summer home we bought for the grandchildren he’ll never meet.

***

I was staying at my grandmother’s place that weekend with my family— a house that always smelled of mildew, her little dog barking at anything that moved. I borrowed her car, drove to the boardwalk, put on my headphones, played Jessica Simpson, and told myself a brisk walk might clear my head.

Halfway down the sand, a man jogged past — backwards cap, tight gray T-shirt. I dropped something, and he slowed, tapped my shoulder, handed it back, then jogged on.

I hardly thought about him. Just another stranger on a cold, off-season beach, where the last of the early-morning flurries were dissolving into the damp sand.

***

Now, nothing dissolves. Everything feels heavy.

This is the first quiet we’ve had in weeks.

Our four children arrived in waves: our oldest with his pregnant wife, our middle son with his girlfriend, and our two youngest daughters flying home from graduate school and study-abroad programs before heading back again.

His parents drove down and stayed as long as their breaking hearts and aging bodies allowed.

My parents flew up from Florida, tearful enough to look concerned. Even here, they found space to speak about how tired they were, how sad they felt, what I should be planning next. They noticed the clutter in the house before the strain in my voice, and they couldn’t resist reminding me how “disappointed” they were that I’d let our youngest daughter go to school so far away. Their comfort never quite knew where to land.

Friends drifted in and out. Sharing stories, meals, cocktails, sometimes a puff of a joint on the porch, all of it melting into laughter that always softened into tears. They came to say their final goodbyes to Nico. And when he could, he said his goodbyes back—asking for time alone with each person who’d made the trip.

I loved full houses and loud gatherings, birthday parties that spilled into the yard. But Nico preferred quiet connection: catching a friend off guard with a question about love or regret, pulling a memory from someone like a thread.

Somehow, in his final days, he ended up consoling the very people grieving him.

Now everyone is gone.

It’s just us.

He has little energy left, and whatever words remain come slow and spare.

When he’s awake, he looks past me, through the window, toward the waves.

The house is still.

The ocean steady and indifferent.

***

Back then, I didn’t have the patience for quiet.

I lasted only a few minutes on the beach before the solitude started to grate.

Nature never calmed me; ocean air just made me think too much.

I headed up the ramp, sat on a bench still damp from the flurries, brushed sand from my sneakers, and tugged my silly pom-pom hat over my ears.

That’s when he jogged by again — the same guy from the shoreline, cap darker with sweat, wearing shorts like it wasn’t freezing. He smiled, kept going, then hesitated, turned in a half-circle, and jogged back toward me.

“Hi,” he said, out of breath. “I’m Nico. And… I just thought you were really pretty. Maybe we could walk a little? Keep each other company?”

He wasn’t the type I usually noticed— not tall, not polished — but his hazel eyes were warm, and his smile was so genuine it disarmed me.

No one had ever approached me like that before.

So I said yes. Just a short walk.

But even at nineteen, some part of me already knew it wouldn’t be just a walk.

***

Now I look around the sunroom we’d turned into his room

once the brightest spot in the house,

now swallowed up by an electric hospital bed and the machinery keeping him comfortable.

We’d filled the rest of the space with the things he loved most—

Artwork from our children.

Little trinkets from everywhere we’d ever been:

a tiny ticking clock from Prague,

a smooth stone he picked up at Walden Pond in Massachusetts,

a small painting a Rwandan artist made near Volcanoes National Park, where we watched mountain gorillas roam—all six of us together—three years ago.

Dozens more mementos from adventures big and small.

Photos lined the shelves, our whole life captured in frames.

Us hugging on our first trip to Montreal, barely more than kids.

Newborn photos of our four children in the hospital.

Photobooth strips from friends’ weddings where we danced like fools.

Sometimes, when he thought I wasn’t watching, I’d catch Nico taking it all in, smiling to himself

as if taking inventory of his own joy,

as if finding peace in the story we wrote.

***

We started along the boardwalk, keeping that polite half-step between strangers. Nico kept glancing at the water, like the ocean was calling him.

“Want to walk down there?” he asked, nodding toward the shoreline.

I laughed. “Not a chance. I just shook the sand off of my sneakers.”

“Come on,” he said, already angling toward the ramp. “The sand feels great. And if it ends up all over your toes, I’ll wipe them off for you. It’s a full-service offer.”

“Absolutely not, weirdo.”

He grinned like that was exactly the response he wanted.

“I really do hate northeastern beaches,” I said. “I can’t swim unless I can see the bottom. My abuela’s place in Miami? Water like glass. This?” I motioned toward the gray waves. “This looks like it wants to swallow me whole.”

Nico stopped and looked at the ocean as if it were an old friend.

“I love it,” he said, walking towards the sand. “Even when you can’t see the bottom. Especially then.”

I rolled my eyes — but something in the way he said it made me follow him, before I could talk myself out of it.

***

How easily those first words between us came.

Now

we haven’t spoken in two days.

We haven’t had conversation in almost a week.

It’s the longest silence we’ve ever had.

We fought sometimes, sure. We’d stonewall each other for a few hours, maybe a night, at most two. But Nico always broke first: making a stupid joke, kissing the side of my neck, pinching my butt as he walked past me.

I used to get so frustrated with how easily he brushed off life’s problems, how he floated while I carried the weight of everything — the house, the kids, the schedules, the fear, the future.

But maybe he just carried things differently.

Three days ago, a priest gave Nico his last rites. Our children and closest friends formed a small circle around the bed. The room carried a faint mix of ocean air and the anointing oil the priest pressed gently onto Nico’s forehead, gleaming the way the first snowflakes had once clung to his skin the day we met.

He asked me to tell Nico he could let go.

I said the words, but my heart didn’t follow. Maybe he knew.

Two days ago, the hospice nurse said he had “a week or two.” Now his breathing has shifted into a slow, uneven rise and fall.

Today it’s only us. The house has stilled. His cousin Eric and his wife Elena will come tonight with pizza, wine, and whatever conversation might soften the edges.

But for now, the silence between us thickens.

Outside, the light has shifted —

a quick autumn gray that settles in before you notice.

For the first time in forty years, I feel lost.

Lost like I was on that beach the morning before I met him

wandering alone

while he drifts just beyond where my voice can reach.

***

We walked along the shore, sneakers in our hands, letting the cold-water curl around our ankles. Somehow it felt warmer than the air.

We wandered and swapped harmless facts —movies we loved, music we grew up on, places we dreamed of. Then ice-cream flavors. He liked peanut-butter chocolate; I told him that was disgusting. I was a mint girl—the greener, the better. He laughed like that tiny detail told him everything he needed to know about me.

Then Nico veered into real questions — unexpectedly deep ones for a twenty-year-old in a backwards cap and a too-tight T-shirt.

“Who do you love the most?”

“What’s your favorite memory?”

“Where do you want to be on your last day on earth?”

Questions my nineteen-year-old brain had never even brushed against.

Questions my fifty-eight-year-old brain has been forced to sit with in these last days.

Nico — he already had answers. Not with bravado, but with a kind of quiet clarity, like he knew himself better than most people our age had any right to.

When I asked him that final question back —

where he’d want to spend his last day

he didn’t look at me.

His eyes stayed on the waves

“Right here,” he said.

***

And now I stand in our kitchen, holding a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup.

I’d filled the freezer with them weeks ago.

Only one has been opened.

The rest will sit there untouched, spoiling.

Waiting for the day I can bear to throw them out.

I grabbed a spoon and went back to the sunroom, to the hospital bed angled toward the window. The waves were restless, the same churn as the day we met.

I lifted the head of the bed. His eyes fluttered, unfocused.

“Nico,” I whispered, my voice cracking.

“Just try. Please.”

I scooped a tiny spoonful and touched it to his lips.

“It’s your favorite,” I said, forcing a smile.

“Come on. Just a little.”

He didn’t swallow.

His mouth stayed slack, the ice cream melting against his tongue and slipping back out in a thin streak.

I tried again, a little more insistently, and he aspirated —

a sound that sent a jolt of fear through me.

“Come on,” I whispered,

my hand shaking.

“Nico, please.

Just…

eat.”

But he couldn’t.

I slammed the spoon down too hard on the table.

Then I leaned over him, pressed my forehead to his chest, my breath unsteady.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

***

In our first moments together, we just walked and talked and laughed.

Until the flip phone buzzed in my pocket.

A text from my father:

“Come home.

Weather’s turning.

You’ve been out all day.

We’re worried.”

The words shattered the small calm we'd built.

“I have to go,” I told him, snapping the phone shut a little too hard. “It was… nice talking to you.”

“Can I get your number or something?” he asked, hopeful in a way that startled me.

“I’m sorry,” I said, stepping back. “I really have to go.”

I shook his hand — polite, too formal and walked away.

I didn’t look back.

***

Now I lay on my husband’s chest, tears slipping down my face.

I feel fingers trail slowly down my back.

Softer than they used to be.

Bonier.

But still Nico.

Still familiar.

“Tell me...Who do you love the most,” he whispered.

I lifted my head, relief breaking through for a moment.

“You,” I said, crying openly now. “Always you.”

“You’re lying,” he murmured, the ghost of a smile tugging at his mouth. “It’s Max Fisher, isn’t it?”

The joke pierced straight through the sorrow, a callback from another lifetime.

My old Applebee’s boss from when I was waiting tables in college.

Twenty years older, all bravado and biker leather jackets, flirting with anything that moved.

Nico barely knew him, but we joked about him for decades.

“Obviously it’s Max,” I said, rolling my eyes.

Nico gave a breathy laugh and lifted his tongue to catch a streak of melted ice cream on his cheek.

“Peanut butter chocolate,” he whispered. “My favorite.”

“I’m sorry,” I said quickly.

“I got you messy.

And this room is a mess.

The house is a damn mess.

The kids are scattered all across the world.

No one’s coming until later;

and I should’ve made today perfect for you.

I’ve tried so hard to get everything right….

and I still…

I still can’t.”

“Marisol.”

His voice was thin but steady, pulling me back to him.

“No.”

A shallow breath.

“Today is the greatest day of my life.”

His face had changed so much;

but his hazel eyes…

They were still his.

Still finding mine.

He caught his breath, then whispered,

“I know you’re restless.

Your mind is always running.”

Another slow inhale.

Another fragile pause.

“Why don’t you head to Stop & Shop,” he murmured.

“Pick up some charcuterie.

The hard salami — Eric loves that.

It’ll give you something to do.”

He squeezed my hand.

The faintest pressure,

but still his.

“I’ll be right here when you get back.”

Then he gave me the smile — the same, generous, unmistakably Nico smile he’d given me on that first day we met.

I wiped the ice cream from his cheek.

Kissed his forehead.

Smoothed his hair back.

Then I stood,

steadied myself,

and walked out of the room.

***

Many years earlier, a different kind of unease had settled over me

the kind only family can stir.

I walked toward my car with that old sense that everyone expected something from me,

and no one cared what I was actually feeling.

I cut across the lot toward my car —

ready to slam the door and blast my music — when I saw him.

Nico.

He’d gone the opposite direction when we split on the beach, but somehow he was parked three spaces from me, leaning against a dented, blue, Mazda 6.

One foot was propped on the grill, stretching out his skinny legs as he sang along to whatever early-2000s song blasted from his CD player.

He looked like a total dweeb.

Such a beautiful, lovable dweeb.

I laughed into my purse as I dug for a pen and a scrap of paper.

I wrote down my number and my AOL screen name in loopy handwriting.

“LilMissPrissJ.”

Nico spotted me approaching, caught sight of the username, and burst out laughing. I handed him the paper without saying a word.

Three days later, he would find the courage to message me.

***

Today, courage feels quiet.

I spent the next hour doing small, ordinary tasks.

I tidied the living room, straightened the dining table, wiped down the bathroom sink.

I drove to the supermarket, picked up the salami, grabbed crackers, sparkling water, and a fresh loaf of bread.

Before leaving the store, I added a bouquet of flowers — the kind Nico always brought me.

Twelve red roses, tucked in with hydrangeas.

When I got back, the house was quiet. Gentle.

I set the flowers on the windowsill and leaned over his bed.

“Eric and Elena will be here in forty minutes, love,” I said softly.

I turned toward him.

He lay exactly as I’d left him,

Only now, the rise in his chest was gone.

His face was peaceful.

His hands folded the way they used to when he’d fallen asleep watching football.

He had sent me away to let me breathe.

I moved to the side of the bed, rubbed his hand, and pressed it to my cheek.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

The waves outside kept rolling, as if nothing had changed.

I opened the window a few inches, and a breath of cold air moved through the room.

Outside, the first snowfall had begun.

Soft, tentative flakes drifting down over the same shoreline where he first said my name.

***

I got into my car and pulled the door halfway closed. For a moment I just sat there, staring out at him.

Nico leaned on his car, holding the scrap of paper, grinning like he’d just won the lottery.

Snow flurries had started again, drifting around him.

That smile — so open and unguarded — stirred something in me I hadn’t even known was there.

Before I knew what I was doing, my own smile rose to meet his.

I pushed the door open, left it swinging wide, and jogged back toward him. He straightened but didn’t move.

I reached up, cupped his face, and kissed him.

We kissed again, deeper this time, in the empty parking lot

the waves crashing in the distance

the wind cutting through our clothes

the snow circling around us.

He looked at me with those bright, hazel eyes.

And the smile he gave me then is the one that still returns to me in the quiet.

“Today,” he said softly,

“is the greatest day of my life.”