by

                                                Lucille Bellucci

            At odd hours of the night, I would startle awake and speak my mantra before I was even aware:  “Don’t go away! Don’t ever go away!”

            And from next to me Renato always responded, “Of course not. I am not going anywhere.”

            Then came the day when I held his hand while he lay, eyes closed, a tube down his throat. He might not come out of the coma, the doctor said, but I knew he could hear, for I when I asked, “Will you visit me?” he shrugged, to signify he couldn’t know if that was possible.

            Finally the day he left me came and passed.  A month later in March I awoke hearing, as if inside my head but so clear, his voice from far far away calling Luuucy….. drawn out to make it more than a single word, to make it a long message telling me more things than saying my mere name. 

            In September, while I sat under the five overhead lights in the dining room, one light went out.  Well, four lights were enough; I didn’t think anything of it. A few minutes later it came back on and the next went out.  Wondering, I looked up, noted the time, waiting -- for what I did not understand.  Eleven minutes later that light lit up and the next turned black.

By now I was holding my breath.  I watched the clock.  Sixteen minutes, I counted.  Back it came. Twenty-seven minutes, I said in my head: Yes! That one returned and the last light, the fifth, was snuffed. Sixty-five minutes I breathed, my gaze riveted on the clock. The fifth brightened.

            I was already crying hard, so hard I could barely breathe. Don’t all married couples or partners have private names or numbers that mean something special?  Renato’s and mine were the numbers 11, 16, 27, 65. 

            He had come to visit! And would again and again, in other ways.  ###