Sleeping on the Diagonal


The right side was my half of the bed. I found when waking in the deep of night, it was as if an imaginary barrier existed. I never crossed it. Only maybe an extended limb or hand that if Jack were still alive would have been wound around him, craving the connection and the comfort in the security of knowing that in the silent order of our relationship, he would be on the left side.

Once I suggested to him that we switch, change things up, get out of a habitual pattern. But neither of us lasted. The left side was too unconforming to my body’s contour. The right to him was a strange plain, where the clock seemed to tick louder and the breeze from the window too faint.

I’m reading Elizabeth Berg’s The Year of Pleasures. It is about a woman recently widowed. This passage touched me:
“I remembered an eighty-nine-year-old woman who’d lost her husband many years ago telling me in her shaky voice. You still sleep on your half of the bed. I learned that it was true.”

Even though I have moved from the house that Jack and I shared, I realized that in my solo bedroom, I still slept on my half of the bed. The other half was filled with extra pillows, I sometimes hugged tight like a lover, a plumped up comforter for my cat, Mel and it became the repository for magazines, books or the affirmation I was reading before drifting off.

I tried the middle. It seemed an empowering idea. Since I am alone right now, and the bed is mine, I decided to take ownership. The middle symbolized that for me.
But the digital numbers on the clock kept changing and soon it was silly to be battling with myself. I willingly scooched over to my half and fell deep into sleep.

Then one night during the hot airless summer, I found sleeping on the diagonal, pleasant. The breeze seemed to reach my sweat-filmed skin more than when I was on my half.

Sleeping on the diagonal is now my position of choice. In those moments before dreams fill my head and heart, I concluded that sleeping on the diagonal is mingling the past and future. I am experiencing the support of both sides of the bed. It is a position of the Now, it is saying I am fine here alone but still with the hope that I will once again be blessed with someone to share the silent order of a relationship where I am on the right and he is on the left.