I was thinking
that one has a certain amount of time with one’s lover to essentially memorize their responses and reactions to things; to download, as it were, their “software.” During this period one obsesses over their loved one’s least gestures, tells stories to their partner in their own mind—and they imagine the lover’s response.
They have many repetitions planned to test their hypotheses and adjust their expectations.

So that then, when one lover is lost, the surviving lover can continue, to some extent, the connection.
They can still speak to their lover and imagine their response.
They have memorized their touch and their laugh, their gait.
It is as if they can still see them. But the difference is, 
Before they departed, their lover could surprise them.
The lover was always capable of being funnier, more beautiful, even,
than he had imagined in his mind—
more perfect—more correct, somehow—than he remembered.

Someday the image in my head of you will not surprise me like you used to.
And I will find
That I am not surprised by you anymore, but composed of you.
That you have given me structure—a reflecting wall inside my own self.
And when I am no longer surprised by you it will be because
You gave me all you had to give.
And I will do the same for you—that is, to give you all I have—
In case it may be I that runs out first.

That was a good one. There’s probably a poem in there somewhere.
I should tell the lady. I’ll tell it generally, because I thought of it generally. But of course,
no matter how generally I present it she’ll still instantiate my abstractions, i.e.
bring them into the particular by applying them to herself, and then she’ll cry.

Maybe I shouldn’t tell her.

“Hey lady, do you wanna hear something I just thought of? I think it’s quite interesting but it might make you cry.”

“Are you gonna talk about you dying?”

“Umm, well no, not about me dying but about any couple in which one member dies first. So I guess me? Or you.”

“Don’t tell me—you know I’m gonna cry.”

Maybe she’s right. I probably shouldn’t tell her. But I suppose all that should be in the poem too. Or short story?

I think someday I’ll have her read this.