Six years ago last week, Dave posted that quote on my
Facebook wall. Privately, so that only the two of us could see it.
The quote is by Joan Didion and I had told Dave that she is
my favorite author. One night, looking for something romantic to say, he probably
Googled Joan Didion quotes and found that one.
We had just started dating and we went out a lot, to dinner,
for drinks. I took the post to mean it the way Dave meant it, which is that the
two of us had gone out together and that our lives had forever changed. For the
better, he meant.
If Dave had read A Year of Magical Thinking, where the quote
is from, he would have known that it is used by Didion to describe her
husband's death. In painful detail, she writes about how the two sat down for
dinner, what they were eating and drinking, what they were talking about. At
one point, her husband stops speaking. She sees him, slumped over, silent, and,
believing that he is choking, tries to move him so that she can do the Heimlich.
He falls from his chair, hits his head on the table and lies motionless on the floor,
blood pooling on the carpet. He is dead.
"You sit down to dinner and life as you know it
ends."
Still, I was flattered and moved. I thought that Dave seemed
deep because he was quoting literature to me. And caring because he remembered
the name of my favorite author. And romantic. I didn't think much about context
or meaning. I didn't wonder about a person who mistakenly uses a quote about
death to describe the beginning of a relationship. It strikes me now, as I read
the quote again, that it does not seem positive, even without context. It is
about something sudden and abrupt that wipes out all of that which came before.
If you are looking for that in a new relationship, you aren't looking for love.
Love isn't something that you can use to erase your past. It's not an excuse or
an explanation for the bad things you've done or will do. And it can't help you
outrun yourself.
I remember the night that Dave broke up with me, five and a
half years later. The details used to pain me but they don't anymore. I
remember sitting down for dinner, which is when I realized what he was about to
do. I remember what we were eating and drinking. He had steak and beer and I
had nothing. We weren't talking about anything because we weren't speaking.
Dave was concentrating on his meal, cutting his steak into pieces, and I was
wondering how he could eat at a time like this.
The end was like the death scene Joan Didion describes, Dave
slumped over on the couch, crying as he spoke his parting words. Me,
motionless, next to him.
"You sit down to dinner and life as you know it
ends."
And, sometimes, it's better that way.
