My husband is gone for a year – not to war, not to sea, but to entertain.

  So it’s OK, even great in some ways – that he’s a working actor in a good show, that he’s doing what he loves and making enough money that I can go see him once or twice a month on weekends.

  But my bed is half a bed.  Reading material of all kinds covers his half.  The hot water bottle waits patiently for me to cuddle it, and I use the few yoga tricks I know to try to put me back to sleep in the wee hours of the morning when I awaken without him breathing beside me.

  How do widows manage their loss?  This is not permanent, and I am very busy and dead tired at night, and it is still half a life.  Sixteen hundred minutes of cell phone time every month bridge the gap across the country.  The words are beautiful, the daily activities pronounced in detail.  But the absence of his touch is like a chronic disease with brief periods of remission.

  And those periods of remission are filled with such glorious moments of gratefulness to the gods for not having truly taken my lover away, for having given him back to me for the weekend, that I can bear again their price – his bringing such happy, sad, and meaningful moments to hundreds of other people. 

  When we are together, our hands, covered with age spots, reach across the table to each other at breakfast; we kiss on the street corners, on the bus, in the restaurants.  We hug dozens of times and we both cry when we leave – me for the airport, he for the show.

  I shut my eyes on the plane, remembering the events crammed into the niche of time – opening presents on my arrival after his return from the show; deep sleep until I awaken too early because my body is still on New York time; breakfast at a new place; riding the incline trolley to the market; shopping in Chinatown; eating outdoors in the beautiful sunshine in the oldest Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles -- with flowers, trees, tiled water fountains, and strolling musicians singing Spanish love songs at our table; then going to a different area downtown and drinking luscious fruit drinks.

  I am thankful for the new experiences; for the compressed space of only love, leaving no time for arguments; for the maids making the bed; and the lack of jealousy of space.  But I had rather him be beside me now, with my hand enclosed by his.