Haunt me, please.

Stephanie was walking, which happens sometimes in my dreams, but this time she was proud of walking. She knew she'd been unable to walk, and now she wanted to show off that she could.

And she knew she'd been dead. She was proud of that, too, like she'd beaten death and then stopped by to say hello. Even for a dream, this was unusual.

She was a spirit in great spirits, and it was great to be spending time with her again. 

"Why don't you come around more often?" I asked. She's only in my dreams two or three nights a week, and I wish it was seven. Dreams of Stephanie are almost always good dreams.

"I don't want to haunt you like a ghost," she said. "You need to be able to get on with your life, and pretending you have a wife at home can't be helpful."

After that the dream went off on some crazy tangent, or maybe I woke up, but that's all I remember. Wait, I also remember that she was teasing me because I'd made a corny joke, which she always called "Doug jokes." My sense of humor is almost entirely "Doug jokes," barely amusing puns and asides.

The joke wasn't funny and the dream was over, and I hadn't had a chance to tell my wife that I have no life to get to get on with.

I am present; that's all. Life goes on, even without the person who made it all worthwhile, and I'm doing all right, but I'm never going to get on with anything. I am not looking for new adventures or new friends or a second wife. Not, emphatically not, and absolutely not.

Between watching an old movie now and then and goofing around on Reddit and reading The New Yorker and eating corn dogs, I'm not totally bored. Everything stinks and it's never going to get better, but I'm OK with that. I'm making do. But whatever genuine happiness remains comes only from memories of Stephanie, and from the dreams, like last night.

There's never a day — never an hour, and rarely ten minutes — when Stephanie Lynn Webb isn't on my mind. I would love to talk with her like we used to talk, about huge things like health and death and war and politics, and about things she loved like Jane Austen and Judge Judy, and about tiny things like the new silverware holders I bought because the old ones were beginning to rust. So yeah, of course, I'd like to see her more often in my dreams.

Stephanie saved my life, not literally but really and truly. By nature I'm not much of a man; there's nothing interesting about me. I mostly want to sit in a chair and read, so my life before Steph was always boring, predictable, and just OK. Life after Steph is like life before Steph — boring, predictable, OK.

For twenty years with Stephanie, though, life was never just OK. Every day was fascinating and challenging and there were adventures and unexpected things happened. There was someone who loved me and accepted me, no matter how many dumb "Doug jokes" I made, no matter how often I misspoke or made mistakes or farted at dinner. The one-third of my life spent with Stephanie wasn't OK; it was absolutely marvelous.

If I had never met Stephanie, wow. "Without love, where would you be now?" If I was still alive I'd probably still be living in a dilapidated residential hotel in San Francisco, a life lived all alone. Instead I've lived in Wisconsin for fifteen years and I love it here, but I'm only here because Stephanie brought me here. Never, ever would I have moved to Wisconsin without Stephanie.

And everything I like about Madison, it's all thanks to Stephanie. Without her, even if I'd somehow moved here, I'd be living alone and I'd be a hermit and I wouldn't know any of the things that make Madison and Wisconsin marvelous.

Same can be said about Kansas City and Missouri. Everything I know about what's interesting there (which, let's admit, really isn't much) I know only because Stephanie always wanted to explore that city and the surrounding area. Walking around, seeing what Kansas City had to offer, eating at this restaurant, going to that rummage sale, picnicking in Loose Park and laughing at its name — that was all because of Stephanie.

Same can be said about Racine, Wisconsin, and Milwaukee, and Grand Island, Nebraska, and everywhere we ever went.

Same can be said about San Francisco. I'd been living there for several years before Stephanie moved in, but still, almost everything that's cool about San Francisco, I only know thanks to Stephanie. She made that city an adventure, in ways it had never been before she landed at the airport.

She made everything an adventure. She made doing the laundry fun. She kind of made vacuuming the carpet fun, which sounds ridiculous and I can't possibly put into words how she did it, but dang it, she did it. She made shopping fun, which is impossible but true.

Before Stephanie, I sustained myself mostly with fast-food, night after night. Steph cooked, and darn well. She made meals an adventure, too.

Without her, I eat mostly frozen entrees. No fast-food, but even that's because of Stephanie. She read a book explaining how unhealthy and dangerous fast-food is, and she shared the book with me, and we decided together that fast-food was only for rare and especially lazy nights.

She made me a better man, in ten-thousand different ways. No, that ain't quite accurate; she didn't make me a better man; she made me a man, period. There's very little about me that's manly or grown-up or even interesting, except for all the things Stephanie brought into my life. 

"I don't want to haunt you like a ghost," she said to me an hour ago. 

I don't believe in ghosts so don't take this literally, but if Stephanie changed her mind and wanted to haunt our apartment and my life, that would be fantastic.

I'd be happy as heck to vacuum more often, like the old days. We could do things on the weekends, have adventures like we used to. She could play with our new cat, and re-read Jane Austen, and hold my hand if that was metaphysically possible. Being haunted by Steph would be a dream come true.