I finally got around to reading The Time Traveler’s Wife. It was a good, engrossing story from start to finish, and I enjoyed it. But the last few pages of the book really pissed me off. At the end Clare is an old woman, 82 — and Henry died when she was 35, and she’s still sitting around waiting to see him again. Despite all the poetic stuff he said in his final letter to her about going out into the world and living, some of which I quoted in my very first post on this blog, she doesn’t do it.
That kind of romanticism of a martyred widowhood pisses me off. I feel like stories of this kind are saying, “This is what true love is. If you really loved him, you’d spend every day for the rest of your life waiting to be reunited with him.” Well, I call bullshit. My husband wouldn’t want me to grieve forever, to give up on life. Henry didn’t want Clare to waste the rest of her life waiting for him. “Stop waiting and be free,” he tells her, but she doesn’t listen.
Maybe she doesn’t listen because the author thought it was more romantic this way — after all, because Henry time travels, he’s not GONE gone, and they can be reunited, however briefly. Or maybe Clare doesn’t go out in the world and live because grief beats her down, and she’s too tired to care about anything anymore, and it’s easier to just pass the days staring out the window and waiting to see Henry again. Believe me, I know what that’s like.
Henry wrote to Clare: “Our love has been the thread through the labyrinth, the net under the high-wire walker, the only real thing in this strange life of mine that I could ever trust.” It takes real strength to keep on going when you’ve lost that thread, to shakily get back on your feet and try again after the net has been pulled away, with full knowledge of how hard you can fall and how much it can hurt.
Friends tell me that they’re impressed with my strength, and I always tell them that I don’t feel strong. And I don’t. Most of the time I just feel tired and a little beaten up, and I wish there was someone to hold me and massage the tension from my shoulders the way my husband did. I’m already tired of doing this alone, and I don’t even want to think about the possibility that it could go on like this for a long time. I wish I had a time traveler in my life, someone who could just take a peek into my future and tell me, “Don’t worry. When you’re 55 you’ll be happily married to a wonderful man who adores you.” Then I could just relax into this business of living. I wouldn’t worry about when or how I would find this man; I’d just trust that it would happen when the time is right. But real life holds no such promises. There’s no way to know for certain that I won’t be a white-haired old woman, sitting in my rocking chair, trying to hold onto a fading memory of how I was loved, once upon a time. But there’s one way to guarantee that this is exactly what will happen, and that’s to give up, to shrink from life, to become a martyred widow who believes that all the good in her life is past.
My husband would be so disappointed in me if I did that. He wanted me to be happy, to find love again. I honor his memory, and I honor the love we shared, by embracing whatever life still has to offer me. If there is any possibility of an afterlife, any chance that I might one day see my love again, I want to have amazing stories to share with him when I get there.
Hon – I LOVE this post! I read TTTW while waiting for Willa so it holds a special place in my memory. I agree about the ending. I sooo appreciate and CHEER what you say about living and loving!! Your sweetie will expect stories of your adventures, if such a reunion comes to pass (which I believe it will on some level). And I hear you about being ‘strong’ – you are capable, determined and loving of yourself…that is what ‘strong’ means to me, what I see in you these days.