The Hats We Leave Behind

The chemo had taken Elena's hair, but not her dignity. She still wore that ridiculous red hat everywhere — the floppy sunhat she'd bought in Mexico, back when we believed in forever. I'd stopped wearing my hat too, out of solidarity. Or maybe punishment. I wasn't sure anymore.

"You're walking him?" she asked from the couch, where the cancer had made its permanent home.

"Buster needs exercise." I grabbed the leash. Our dog, old and patient, thumped his tail against the floorboards.

The autumn air hit me like a confession. Buster and I walked the same route we'd taken for seven years, past the neighbor's decorated porch, the dry cleaners where I'd dropped off my good suit for the funeral I wasn't planning to have yet, the coffee shop where the barista asked "How's Elena?" with that look in her eyes.

I felt like a zombie going through the motions. Wake, care, worry, sleep. Repeat. The grief hollowed me out while she was still breathing.

Buster stopped at his usual tree and I waited, thinking about the hats in our closet. Hers. Mine. The matching ones we'd never worn. The hatbox of forgotten identities we'd accumulated like artifacts from people we used to be.

A woman passed us, pushing a stroller. She nodded at my bare head. I touched where my hair used to be. I'd shaved it two weeks ago. Elena had cried, then laughed through tears, said we matched now.

The dog finished his business and we turned toward home. Toward her. Toward the empty spaces where words used to be.

Elena was asleep when we returned, the red hat slipping sideways on her pillow. I righted it gently, kissed her forehead, and lay beside her, Buster curling at our feet like punctuation at the end of a long sentence.

Some hats we wear for protection. Some for love. Some, eventually, we learn to take off.