Sharing Body Heat

"Sharing Body Heat" started as a blog post, then changed and developed into a longer personal essay about love and loss that I submitted to the Modern Love column of the New York Times. Modern Love rejected it.

Then I discovered Modern Love Rejects, a new website with a fabulous idea -- they would publish the best of the essays that Modern Love rejected! "Sharing Body Heat" appears on their website today -- read it in its entirety by clicking here.



Sharing Body Heat

by Joan Price

I crawled into Robert’s bed and wrapped my body around his. If I could only get close enough to make the last hour, the last months, disappear. If I could magically erase the despair, the finality of our separation.

I hugged Robert tightly, my own need to be close to him one more time overriding his lack of responsiveness. I wailed his name and listened to his silence, remembering his murmurs, his words of love. I nuzzled my face into his neck as I had many times before, but there was no warmth, no “I love you, sweetheart,” no kiss on the top of my head, no strong arms pulling me into him.

I covered his thigh with mine, snaking my arm under his pajama top so that I could stroke the chest hair I had first touched seven years before. I willed him to respond.

But he didn’t.

I willed him to come back to life.

But he didn’t.

 "Do you need some time alone with your husband before the mortuary takes his body away?" the hospice nurse asked me gently. I nodded, shut the bedroom door, turned off the light, and crawled into bed with Robert’s dead body....

Read the rest of this essay by clicking here.