To hear him that way was awful. He would not have done this.
I loved him more than any other. He was the man I could never leave, the one who was my home. No matter where we were, what we had or didn’t have, wherever he was; there was my home. He was always so strong, but his cries that night were terrible. He was hurting. Something had him, was taking him. He did not do what they said he did.
I was lying in bed. I said my prayers, thanking God for the life we had. I prayed for my husband and I soon fell asleep, but woke in the night to the sound of my husband crying for help outside our bedroom window.
My husband never cried, so I ran, in my nightgown, in bare feet across the grass. I slipped and fell, but rose and ran again. I called for him but could not find him. There was no moon or stars, just the cold blackness and his pitiful cries for help. I ran, crying out and promising to help him. I would have done anything, but I could not find him. He was not there. His voice howled in dark pain, crying for me. I begged him to tell me where to find him.
A wind blew through the trees and the leaves laughed. Branches moaned like a violin. I thought of the time I saw an old couple dancing alone in a dry yellow field. The moon peeked from behind a cloud, giggling, then disappeared again. The blackness spun, the sky bellowed laughter over me and, I am in the basement, my husband’s voice whispered. I felt his breath, it moved my hair. I smelled his mouth, it was him. But he was not there.
I ran to our basement. I shone a light, and there he was, hanging. He hung from a beam beneath our bedroom floor. His feet still turned, inches from the ground. I cut him down and held him, but he was gone.
He was my husband, my friend and my home. He did not do this. We prayed together. When he would not pray, I prayed for him. I held him in soft nights. There was something out there. Something in the night took him away. There’s something when the wind blows that got inside him, the way things laugh out there, I know. He would not have done this to me.
I was a good wife.