Their marriage was made neither in heaven nor hell more like in limbo and tumultuous it was and tested by tragedy but it survived all that and thirty years flew by like wildflowers and he relied on her and needed her and she too he believed though she never said so needed him soulmates they were and when she fell ill and years of care lay ahead he was her caregiver and she held his hand to get around and he held her up in the shower and he drove to the drugstore a hundred times a dozen different pills for her and Xanax for him and gin and tonics and botched meals he overcooked and broken plates and takeout meals and doctors visits his new purpose in life and reason for living and when the thunderbolt hit and struck her down his reason for living was taken away and reduced to ashes currently contained in a bronze urn in a glassed-in shelf of the bookcase in the living room now the dead room where night after night he sits across from her empty armchair amidst the unreal absence not even a ghost sitting there.