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“Hi, my name is Ben, and I lost my wife to cancer six months ago.
“I’m Leslie. It’s been–it’s been almost a year since my husband was killed in the line of duty. I thought that I could go through this on my own but…but I don’t think I can anymore.”
It was two months after Charlotte died before he realized he needed help. Really needed help. His partner, Chris, almost forced him to a support group, and while Ben went there all but kicking and screaming, it really did help.
It was two weeks of going to the meetings before he had the courage to stand and tell his story. Since then, he’s told his story countless times, but that’s what it was all about. The regulars all knew each other’s stories by heart, and every time a person joined the group, a new story was shared and the pain understood.
Four months after Charlotte died, Ben was finally able to sleep through the night.
At six months, Leslie Knope stood and shared her story.
Leslie Knope was not one to ask for help. She was an unshakable, unmovable force of energy that could withstand anything.
At least that’s who she used to be before Dave died.
Oh, she tried to stay that person, tried to stay the person that Dave fell in love with, but she didn’t know who that person was anymore. Could she even be that person without Dave?
She threw herself into her work, avoiding sleep and the nightmares that came with it.
She tried–she tried so hard. For a year she went through it before a collapse in her office and subsequent trip to the hospital made her best friend, Ann, put her foot down.
“They have support groups,” she’d said. “People that really know what you’re going through and can help you.”
Leslie wasn’t convinced that anyone would know the pain that she felt every day, but she promised Ann.
So one year after she became a widow, Leslie Knope told her story.
“It was so hard,” Ben said. “Going through the chemo, watching my wife get sicker and sicker until I could barely recognize her. Towards the end, I watched her just give up. She was so tired. We all knew we were just biding our time. The cancer had metastasized.” Ben stopped and wiped at his eyes. Not matter how many times he told this story... “Then one day she just told me to let her go. I told her that I couldn’t, but she begged me. Begged me until I said yes. She was gone by the morning.”
Ben cleared his throat and blinked again, looking around the room to the familiar faces that had grown to mean so much to him. There were the looks of understanding, of support, but never pity. They all hated pity.
He locked eyes with the person across from him, Leslie. She was fairly new, but like the rest of them, was going through her own loss. She gave him a sad but encouraging smile, and all he could do was smile back.
“Dave was a cop. A really great cop. He loved his job more than almost anything. He loved helping people and making them feel safe. There was no such thing as ‘off-duty’ for him. Which was why he just ran into that convenience store without backup or anything. He saw the robbery and knew what he had to do. They told me that the person that did it was just a young, scared kid. That Dave was actually talking him down until he heard the sirens in the distance and panicked. Dave…he died on the operating table.”
Leslie’s hands still shook every time she told that story, but it still got easier. She felt a hand grasp her shaking one and give it a quick squeeze before pulling away, Ben looking over at her with his usual small smile of support.
It would be months before she realized it, but that was the first time someone that wasn’t a close friend touched her that way. And the first time since Dave that she didn’t want them to let go.
“Whoa, you want some coffee with that sugar?”
Leslie looked over at him and smiled that brilliant smile that made him feel like he was staring into the sun.
“I like my coffee sweet, what can I say. If I had my way, there’d be a huge dollop of whipped cream on top, too, but gotta make due with what I got, right?”
The meeting started before he had a chance to reply, but Ben made a mental note to bring a can of whipped cream to the next meeting.
She knew that he must have lived in the area if he was in the support group, but after 4 months, this was the first time she ran into him in public. She wasn’t sure what to do at first. The meetings were private for a reason, after all. Should she avoid him and give him his space? Would he avoid her?
She stood there unsure what to do when he rounded the corner into her aisle, but when he saw her, that crooked smile spread across his face.
He waved awkwardly, and she waved back, slowly moving towards him like he was a caged animal about to run away.
“Uhm, hi,” she said.
“Hi.”
“H-how are you? Sorry, I’m being weird, I just don’t know what the rules are outside of the meetings.”
“The rules are whatever we feel comfortable with. If we want to talk outside of the meetings, we can.”
By the time she and Ben stopped talking in the middle of the grocery aisle, the ice cream in her shopping cart had melted.
“What do you mean you’ve never been to JJ’s?!”
Ben took a step back and put up his hands. “Whoa, calm down there. I guess I’ve never--”
“Nope, that is no excuse. You’re not a true Pawnean until you’ve eaten a stack of waffles from JJ’s. We’re going to make this happen after the meeting, mister.”
Waffles never tasted so delicious, and he was more than certain it had to do with the woman sitting across from him than anything else.
It was a stark realization that left Leslie in tears on the floor of her bedroom.
She liked him. Like, really liked him in a way she hasn’t felt since Dave. He made her smile, talked to her about her interests that were his interests, too.
She found herself making sure she looked just a little bit nicer, put on a more bold shade of lipstick to stand out, gravitating towards him in the meetings.
It felt like a betrayal to the man she vowed to love until the day she died, but he would want her to be happy, right?
But right now, Leslie felt anything but happy.
“Hey, Char,” Ben said as he knelt down and touched the headstone bearing his wife’s name. “I don’t really know how to say this--I guess I never expected to ever have this talk with you.
“I keep thinking back to my last day with you and the promise you made me make. The promise I really didn’t want to keep for the longest time. You told me to be happy, to keep living my life. I guess you know I haven’t really been doing a good job of that, but I think I’m ready now.
“I met someone. She’s... she’s amazing. Smart, funny, driven. I find myself looking forward to the moments in my day when I get to be around her. She’s lost someone, too. She knows what I’m going through in a way not too many people can.
“I don’t even know if she feels the same way about me or if she’s ready, but I just had to tell you. I’ll never stop loving you, but I think this is what you wanted for me. She makes me happy in a way I haven’t felt since you. It might be stupid, but I feel like I just had to get your blessing before I go any farther.
“I love you so much, Char, but I think I can see myself loving her, too.”
“He loved you, Leslie, and would want you to be happy.”
Ann’s words rang around in her head for days after she called her best friend in hysterics. After Ann reassured her over and over again that she wasn’t a terrible person for developing feelings for someone that wasn’t Dave.
She still didn’t know how much she believed it, but it was enough that she didn’t have a panic attack when she saw Ben.
And she saw him more and more lately. They talked long after the meetings ended, went out to dinner and saw movies together.
There was definitely something there that was more than platonic. Leslie felt it between them like an electric current. They didn’t kiss, barely touched, but it was still there.
With every passing day, that guilty feeling grew smaller, and her desire to be with Ben grew until one day, she never once compared Ben to Dave in her head. Ben was the last person she thought about before bed, Ben was the one she started dreaming about at night. He was the one she couldn’t wait to tell about her day.
Dave would want you to be happy.
And for the first time in almost two years, Leslie was happy.
He kissed her on her front porch after their third official date. It was soft and tentative--a first for the both of them after suffering such loss, but it was beyond perfect.
They pulled away slowly, and she smiled in that way that never failed to make his heart stop.
She didn’t invite him in, and he didn’t expect her to. They weren’t ready for that yet.
But he had the greatest feeling that one day they would be.
It was past sunrise, and any other day, Leslie would have been out of bed for hours, but not today.
She watched the way the small sliver of sunlight was shining across Ben’s bare chest, how relaxed he looked as he slept.
When she couldn’t resist anymore, she snuggled against his side and slid his arm across his waist.
“Hey,” he rasped into her hair.
“Hi.” She looked up at him and had to resist the urge to cry--for a good reason this time. She ran her thumb across his lips, Ben pursing them to kiss any piece of her that he could.
“Do you have any idea how happy you make me?” Leslie asked.
“I only hope it’s even half as happy as you make me.”
“Hi, my name is Ben, and I lost my first wife to cancer 4 years ago. It was hard, and there were so many times that I didn’t think I could ever be happy again, but I was wrong. Before she died, Charlotte told me to find that happiness. It didn’t happen right away, but I realized that I had to let myself be happy again. I got help, got support, and found someone that made me want to be happy again.
“Some days are still harder than others, but I don’t have to go through that pain alone anymore. I was able to find someone to love again, someone that loved me in the way Char always told me I deserved.
“I know that sometimes it doesn’t feel like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, but there is hope. There’s always hope.”
“I’m Leslie, and it’s been almost 5 years since my first husband was killed in the line of duty. It took a really long time for me to admit that I couldn’t cope on my own, that I needed the support of others that knew the pain that I was feeling. It took even longer for me to allow myself to let go of my pain and anger and start living again.
“Moving on was one of the hardest things I had to do, but I had so many wonderful people in my corner that made it all possible. I realized that Dave wouldn’t want me to stay miserable because of him, that my happiness was always the most important thing to him and not allowing myself to enjoy life was an insult to his memory.
“I found someone that didn’t want to replace Dave. He just wants for me to be happy and feel loved again.
“If you take anything away from this meeting, I hope it’s that things can get better. It might take a really long time, but it is possible. You just have to let yourself believe that you deserve to be happy again, find people that want you to be happy again.
“Making that choice was the best decision of my life.”