All That Really Mattered

My dearest Andrew,

It breaks my heart to say it: our marriage is over. I have agonized over our situation ever since your operation. I was fearful the experimental transplant would be certain death for you, but I knew you preferred death to the depressed, paralyzed life you were living. As hard as it was, I came to accept your longed-for end to your suffering. Neither of us was prepared for your survival. Now your sixty-year-old brain is in a thirty-year-old body so unlike yours you hardly know how to manipulate its sturdy young muscles, and I now have a husband whose body is thirty years my junior that I cannot recognize in the slightest. What a tragic pair we have become.

Where does the essence of a person reside? You have always said you are essentially your brain—that every other part of you can be replaced with transplants or artificial parts or simply amputated, and as long as your brain remains intact, you are present. But you are wrong, Andrew. You say you are still the same person because your brain is here with all of its knowledge and memories and feelings, but I cannot see you, nor hear you, nor feel you. I hear your words, but they come from the voice of a stranger. I see your smile, but it is not the smile I always loved. I look into your new dark brown eyes for some small trace of the familiar, but they are not as expressive as your old, liquid blue ones I adored. Your body is hard and muscular, not long and lean like the one my hands have caressed and memorized over our many years together. You are all new, a stranger in my bed. The husband I have cherished for thirty-five years is gone. You are as dead to me as if you had not made it through the operation. Dead! Gone! I cannot have a thirty-year-old stranger for a husband, Andrew. Surely your new eyes can see we are mismatched now, and your brain must tell you we no longer have a viable marriage. You are just too loving and kind to admit it. So, I am saying it for you.

I have loved you thoroughly, Andrew. You have made my life rich with happiness and little joys. Your love and gentle ways sustained me through the heartaches I have suffered over the years: the loss of my parents, the four miscarriages, and the bitter news that I would never be able to have a child. And it was the strength I gathered from your steadfast love that sustained me through your tragic accident and through the agony of seeing you suffer every single day physically and mentally for five long years. I railed at the Fates for ruining your body, but I thanked God every single day for sparing your mind.

But you were more than a brain to me, Andrew. It was the whole package I loved. Even crumpled in a wheelchair, it was still you, my wonderful, brilliant, kind husband. I have always thought of us as kindred souls. I was sure my love for you was complete, perfect, absolutely unconditional, and yet I find to my surprise that there are limits after all. Except for God, I cannot love someone I cannot see.

And I wonder about your soul. Surely you have one, but whose soul is it now? Is it still the one you had before the operation? Does a person’s soul convey with the brain? Or is your soul mixed up with the one whose body you inhabit? Or worse, do you now have that poor deceased young man’s soul? I sometimes detect a difference in your personality, an impatience or an irritability that wasn’t there before. Do you even know what sort of person he was? Even though I know you don’t believe in souls and consider these kinds of questions silly, you know they matter vitally to me. I do pray for your sake, that your “friendly agnostic” soul, as you have always called it, is still your own and God, who gave you the strong scientific power of doubt, will pardon your inability to do otherwise.

I am so sorry, Andrew. Please forgive me. I simply am not strong enough to handle this, to live the life we now face. I cannot be your wife anymore because I cannot have who you are now as a husband. When you think about it rationally, you will realize that by virtue of your operation, I am now old enough to be your mother. You need a young wife who is vigorous like you are now, who can give you the children I couldn’t.

So I am filing for a divorce, if in fact one can divorce a man who has been officially declared dead. As you know, I have adequate assets to live comfortably for the rest of my life, so I want you to keep the house and farm and everything for your new life. Just send any personal items when you get to it.

Please don’t try to stop me, Andrew; do not come here to try to change my mind. I am absolutely resolute. I cherish the memories of our life together. I want to remember you as you were, as we were. We were very happy once, just one unit in this world. That is how I want to remember us. I never want to see this new person who calls himself my husband again.

I know you still love me, as I do the memory of you, but I pray that in time you will find someone younger and better suited for the person you have become. Now is your chance to start over and have the family you always wanted. And you will be able to get back to your lab and continue your important research.

Andrew, please, I beg you, make the most of this blessing, this miracle. I truly wish you a happy and fulfilling new life. As for me, I am going to stay out here in California with my sister. We will be two widowed sisters, really, because my husband is now dead too.

My dearest, dearest Andrew, I am so sorry. I am heartbroken. I mourn the loss of the only man I have ever loved, and I always will.

Margaret