Remember His Name

In the first year of our marriage, I wonder what I did to deserve Henry. I’ll never know. I question it all the time, but I won’t dwell on it because I don’t want my insecurity to spoil what we have. 

My mind is already doing that in other ways. The dream I had on the night we exchanged vows attempts to hold sway over me. I won’t let it. I can’t. I refuse to believe it. 

I’m going to enjoy my life with the man of my dreams and nothing is going to ruin that. Not my past, not my abilities, and certainly not my inability to believe I’m worthy of his love. 

I have never felt so loved and accepted as I do with Henry. He is everything to me.

In the second year of our marriage, I’m still holding onto hope that my visions aren’t visions at all, only my greatest fear tormenting me, attempting to sabotage my life. 

We make each other happy. I won’t let anything ruin that. 

Before we met, I’d never known what happiness felt like. I’ve never complained about my childhood, but he knows that it wasn’t a happy one. Even if my parents had been loving and supportive, the weight of my gifts – or as I’ve come to think of them, my curse – would have crushed me. 

I wonder, though, if I would have been given the proper tools to handle it if my father hadn’t hit me. Or if my mother had been present. Whatever road has led me here, I’m happy to have taken it. My husband is worth every bruise I had to endure, every day and night of misery I struggled through during my adolescence. 

As long as we’re together, I’ll never be miserable again.

In the third year of our marriage, Henry finally knows about my dreams. I had hoped to never voice them, but it was starting to affect me. I’d anticipated a scoff, maybe an accusation I was lying, but not laughter. 

Henry knows losing him is my worst fear. So, naturally, that would be a recurring theme in my nightmares. He cracked a few jokes, made us both laugh, and I felt better. 

As disturbing as it is to watch someone I love die over and over, I can’t let it get to me. No matter how many dreams I have, I’m tucking them in the back of my mind. I have to ignore them or I won’t be able to enjoy our life together.

In the fourth year of our marriage, I’m worried about where these dreams are taking me. 

It’s getting worse. The death of my husband haunts me every night in my sleep. I can’t ignore it any longer. Something this persistent has to be real. 

Before my mother died, I dreamt it, and these dreams are relentless. There’s a new detail every time I see it, and yet, I’m unable to identify the perpetrator. It looks to be a man, but the face appears more like a black hole than anything human. 

If I don’t do something, Henry is going to die. I have to stop it, but I don’t know how. And he’s noticed the panicked look on my face every time he tells me he’s going out. 

I want to be with him at all times to protect him, but he would hate my hovering as much as I would hate to seem like a desperate, clingy spouse. But I am desperate. Desperate to save him.

In the fifth year of our marriage, something has changed in our dynamic. His embrace, once warm and comforting, is now cold and distant. And that’s if he embraces me at all.