Mermaid Tears

Suddenly she realized that what she was regretting was not the lost past but the lost future, not what had not been but what would never be. – F. Scott Fitzgerald

Seventeen years, four months and nine days.

If you did the math from the day she was born, until the day she died, that’s what you would get. She had always called it the ‘Dash Time.’ He could still hear her voice.

That’s what matters, Coop. Not when I was born, or when I’ll die. It’s that dash time in between. That’s the only thing that really matters.

The Dash Time.

Her Dash Time was seventeen years, four months and nine days.

Cooper stood in the quiet graveyard and looked at the pink marble headstone, his running shoes squishing slightly in the ground still damp from an overnight rain. Standing beneath the overcast sky, it was almost as if nature was crying with him, accepting the tears as it had the raindrops in the dark hours.

There was no reason for him to blink the tears away from his eyes. He knew what the headstone said by heart.

Tabitha Michelle Henderson Cooper

Beloved daughter, sister, wife and friend

Wife. She had been his wife for five days. Tabby had been the only daughter and she wanted to walk down the aisle with her father. He had been sitting in the hospital room when she made her final wish.

To get married.

Without any hesitation, he proposed.

His best friend’s twin sister was dying of cancer, and he had loved her for years. Knew that he would always love her. Before she was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he pictured a life with her. Two or three kids. White picket fence. Dog running around the yard.

He wanted the life that the Hendersons had. An undying love. One that held them together through the death of their only daughter.

And a year later, to the day, their only son.

Cooper’s eyes moved to the dark gray headstone next to Tabby’s.

Eighteen years, four months and nine days.

Tennyson Michael Henderson.

Beloved brother, son and friend.

Cooper’s heart broke the day that she died. It was broken but continued to beat inside his chest. Tenn never recovered. They had made it through their senior year without her. Made it through basic training. Cooper thought that they would make it through and beyond the first anniversary together.

Instead, Chief woke him up just before five that morning, told him that there was something he had to tell Cooper. Later that day, Cooper and Chief stood on the Henderson’s front porch. Unable to live without his twin, Tenn hung himself in the stairwell of the barracks.

Roughly at the same time that Tabby had died the year before.

Coop never asked why. He knew. On the same early June day, two years in a row, his heart broke. The first year it continued to beat because he promised her he would go on. The second year, he was not certain that it would continue to beat.

Standing before the headstones, he slipped his hand inside his pocket and felt the small band of gold that he had put on her finger six years and five days ago. The same band again reminded Cooper that he still had to continue to live. He had promises to keep.

It was a simple gold band; she didn’t want anything elaborate. Didn’t want anyone to waste their money on a dying wish. The simple band had been donated by a jeweler, accepting the meager forty-five dollars that Cooper had in his pocket. As simple as it was, he knew it cost more than the measly two twenties and five ones.

He had argued with the jeweler to accept it and finally the old man took it, telling the teen groom that it would be donated.

A local dress shop brought in two racks of dresses for Tabby to choose from. She had been too weak to try them on, so one of the nurses modeled for her. The pale pink dress with a sheer shawl hid the IV tubes while keeping her arms exposed.

She had made a beautiful bride.

In the pink lined coffin, she would wear her bridal gown forever more. Her brother was buried in his crisp new Navy uniform.

Cooper finally let his eyes move to the double headstone on the other side of Tabby’s. It had only recently been placed; the marble had not even settled into the ground yet. They were killed in a head on collision at the beginning of the year.

Barely a week after celebrating his friend getting married, he learned of their deaths. When he got the notice, JD had been with him. JD had taken him home, to the house that his stepdad, Reese, had bought for him and his new wife, then he sat up with Cooper as he drank himself stupid.

In the morning, they requested emergency leave. Cooper because the only family that he had left was now gone. And JD because he believed his friend needed support. Chief Pollard and Captain Harlow agreed and sent JD with Cooper.

While they were here in January, Cooper told him all the details of his life. His father left to go get the infamous pack of cigarettes before his son was even born. His mother had worked multiple jobs to pay her way through nursing school. Continued to work multiple jobs to ensure her son had a future. He spent more and more time with the Henderson’s and when she was killed by a psych patient, they petitioned for custody.

His own mother lay in a grave on the other side of the property. The grave marked by only a flat slab with her name and dates on it. No epitaph. No design. Not even a beloved mother engraving.

Josephine Cooper

Thirty-two years, six months and twenty-three days.

Her dash time was spent working, studying and trying to keep her son out of trouble. Her dash time was longer than Tabby’s, but Tabby lived hers to the fullest. When the cancer diagnosis came, she made a bucket list. By the time the treatments quit working and her cancer became terminal, she had done most of her items.

There were a few that she never got to do. Her family did them in her memory after her death.

After they were married, Tabby gave Cooper her other bucket list. And her TBR. He didn’t know what a TBR was.

“To. Be. Read.” She laughed. “These are the books that I want to read. And these,” she handed him a piece of paper, “are the things that I always wanted to experience. More than just reading about them. Do them for me.”

He had expected to see a trip to the Caribbean. A cruise. Fishing in Alaska. Things she had always talked about.

“Find a woman, a good woman, Coop, and experience all of it with her.”

As a seventeen-year-old boy, he had not known what half the things on her list were. Shared. Placed on a spit. Stuffed. Watched. Toys. There were even specific toys listed. And places. Against a wall. Over a desk. On the beach.

Over the past six years, he had read her books. Experimented with different sex positions. Different places.

But he knew it wasn’t what she wanted. Even though he had done everything on the list, sometimes multiple times, none of them were marked off. Tabby didn’t want him to do it with random women, like the waitress that JD had introduced him to. She had been a little freak, willing to do damned near anything.

As long as it was casual, no repeat performances and was never spoken of in the diner.

“I think I may have found her.” Cooper finally whispered to his wife’s headstone. “You would like her.”

He stepped forward and laid a penny on Tenn’s headstone. “I miss you, man.”

With a glance at the double headstone, he turned and walked back to where JD stood next to his pickup truck. The younger man pulled him into a hug and held him as Cooper gave into the tears.

Cooper stood a few inches taller than his friend’s six feet two inches. Where he had pale blonde hair and pale green eyes, JD had mousy brown hair and dark hazel eyes. He also had more tattoos and muscular bulk than his younger friend. But they both spent a lot of time at the gym.

And in the tattoo chair.

They both wore jeans and blue Navy T-shirts for their unit. Cooper’s arms were completely sleeved out while the newer tattoos barely peeked out from JD’s sleeve.

“I’m here, man.” JD told him and Cooper nodded.