My knees near gave, because inside the base of that dented coffee pot was a single long letter, many pages, in Nadines hand, and the first line read: My darling grump, by the time you find this, you have probably been mean to yourself about that voice for far too long. So let me set you straight one last time.
I sat down slow, and I read the last letter my wife ever wrote me.
She had known me better than I knew myself, known that I would say something careless about her cheap little gift in that voice, known I would shove it away, and so she had written ahead of time to forgive me for a thing I had not even done yet.
She wrote: I bought that ugly pot to tease you, and I knew, I absolutely knew, you would grumble and say real practical hon in that voice, and I laughed about it for a week planning it. The voice never hurt me, you old fool. After thirty-four years the voice is just how I know it is really you. I have loved that grumpy voice since before you had gray in your beard.
She went on, page after page. She wrote about the day we met, the babies, the lean years, the good years, the ordinary Tuesday nights that turned out to be the best of all. She wrote that she had had a wonderful life, that she regretted nothing, that if she had to go first she was glad, because she could not have borne this world without me and was glad I was strong enough to bear it a while without her.
And she wrote: Stop hating yourself. I forbid it. You loved me every single day of thirty-four years, in your own grumbling way, and I knew it every single day. Do not you dare spend one hour blaming yourself for a voice I found endearing. Go buy your trolling motor. Be happy. I will be waiting, and I am in no hurry, so take your sweet time and live a good long life.
A whole year I had hated myself for that voice, and all along her forgiveness had been sitting in the pantry, written before I ever earned it, waiting for me to find it.
I read that letter until I knew it by heart. It let me set down a year of guilt I had no right to carry, because the one person who could forgive me had already done it, in advance, in ink.
I bought the trolling motor. I am living the good long life she ordered me to live. And every morning I make coffee in that ten-dollar pot and I read a line or two of her letter, and I do not use that voice on anyone anymore, except sometimes, quietly, when I am talking to her, because she said she loved it, and I want her to know it is still really me.