BY CELIA CHANDLER
Copyright is held by the author.
“You can tick Common-law,” I say, smiling at Rosa as she’s updating my patient record.
“Really?” She grins back and raises a perfect brow. I’ve gone to Jane for two decades, and assumed everything eventually filtered to Rosa at reception. But clearly there is a degree of patient confidentiality and Jane hasn’t shared news of my relationship even after my pregnancy panic earlier this year. Moving one box down in the marital status column certainly doesn’t mean I want to add “45 year-old first-time mother.” Crazy enough that I’m stepmother to four and step-grandmother to two.
***
“Er, we haven’t told anyone yet, but switch my status to Married when you file,” I say slyly to David, my tax accountant.
“Wowza, you kept that under wraps!”
“Well, sometimes you have to do something fun during treatment,” I reply.
I think back to how Jack’s oncologist chivvied us along in our plans to wed. Hell, everyone did: at our pre-chemo party, a friend practically forced Jack to carve a ring out of a strawberry and get on bended knee.
It may have taken me a long time to leave the first step in that marital status column, but now I was moving down its rungs like a sprinter in training.
***
“Widowed,” I reply, my tone is both sad and irritated. I’m in front of my bank advisor, Kleenex in hand. The ink is barely dry from making Jack my investment beneficiary, and here I am naming my niece again.
To the advisor, this is just a necessary form but I hate the word. There it sits smugly at the bottom of that status ladder, the near-forgotten addition under the others that denote endings: Separated and Divorced. Or in the case of Separated, on-the-way-to-the-end. Why is there no category for My Spouse is Dying? I knew it our entire 30-month marriage. At least, I was pretty sure.
Other endings seem more glamorous. I suppose I could revert to Single but to do so would negate what I’ve been through. Still, Widow feels like I failed to keep my Tamogotchi alive. Successor partners, if there are any, will be cautious, worrying they cannot live up to a dead man. I’ll be cautious too since Wilde’s quip may apply: to lose one may be regarded as misfortune but to lose two looks like carelessness. Or black widow territory. And as for another round of caregiving? Yeah, there’s no way I could do that again.
***
“Emergency contact?” The dental receptionist stifles a yawn as she asks.
When we get to Marital Status I’ll say Widow and move on efficiently. Five years makes me a pro, unlike the early days when the death story poured out like a new mother sharing her labour tale.
But emergency contact?
All I hear is Jack asking: “hey what’s your phone number?” when he first wrote my name in that box. My heart swelled then and it contracts today.
***
Celia Chandler won a Canadian Online Publishing Award for her series on her husband’s medically assisted death on rabble.ca in 2020. That kickstarted her writing. Since then, she’s won the 2024 Eden Mills Non-Fiction Read at the Fringe Contest, and been shortlisted in several others, including the 2023 International Amy MacRae Award for Memoir. She’s thrilled this is her third CommuterLit publication! Celia writes weekly from her Toronto laneway house. You can follow her at celiachandler.com.