I first met Dora when she was taking care of her husband. He had been admitted for a serious illness, and she hardly left his bedside. Every day she looked exhausted, yet she carried herself with a quiet strength that caught my attention. She was beautiful, but it wasn’t just her face that drew me in. It was the way she patiently wiped her husband’s forehead, spoke softly to him, and never complained despite the emotional weight she carried.

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I found myself helping whenever I could. Sometimes it was buying food when she couldn’t leave the ward. Other times it was helping with paperwork or simply sitting with her while she caught her breath. Those little acts of kindness slowly turned into conversations, and before I knew it, we had become friends.

For three weeks, I watched her fight for her husband’s life, but life had other plans. Her husband couldn’t make it out of the ward. He died one dawn. I was home when she called to tell me. She was wailing. I quickly dressed up and went to the hospital to be with her. She cried like someone whose future had been stolen overnight, and all I could do was stand beside her. I held her when she needed someone to lean on.

The family started coming around in the morning, but I was still there for her. I helped with the arrangements to move his body to the mortuary. I stayed through the confusion, the paperwork, the family meetings, and everything that followed. I wasn’t doing it because I expected anything in return. I simply couldn’t abandon someone who had become important to me.

Somewhere in those painful days, I fell in love with her. I hated myself for it. How could I develop feelings for a woman who had just lost her husband? Every time my heart whispered her name, my conscience reminded me she was grieving. I tried to suppress my emotions, convincing myself they would disappear with time. Instead, they only grew stronger.

After the funeral, when things had finally become a little quiet, Dora came to thank me for standing by her throughout the difficult period. Looking at her, I realized I couldn’t continue pretending. My heart said it was alright and that I should propose, but my head said, “Hey, it’s not right. She’s still grieving.” I gave myself a year. “By that time, she would have managed the pain and come out of it triumphantly,” I told myself.

I never pressured her. I never complained. I remained in her life, supporting her the best way I could while respecting the boundaries. Every month that passed, I reminded myself that healing couldn’t be rushed.

One full year passed. I stood beside her again when she performed the widowhood rites that finally marked the end of her mourning period. Watching her remove those black clothes filled me with hope. I believed our time had finally come. I had loved her through thick and thin, and it was time to let her know. I was talking to her one evening when she asked me, “How can I forget about him? How do I heal from this pain? I wish he had given me a child I could hold on to.”

I knew it wasn’t the time to come forward with love proposals. I told her, “Maybe you should fall in love again and see. Healing comes from loving with the same heart that’s broken. It won’t come instantly, but with time, it will all end in laughter again.”

I was selling the idea of love to her, hoping that when she chose to love again, I would be the one she would look at. She told me loving again wasn’t the answer and that she didn’t believe there was another man alive who could love her the way her husband did.

Grief doesn’t follow a calendar, and I knew everyone heals differently. But while I was waiting for her to heal before I proposed, another man entered the picture. I watched him carefully, and I knew exactly what he wanted. Men recognize each other’s intentions. He wasn’t hanging around because he wanted friendship. It was obvious from the way he carried himself around her and the little favours he threw her way. The painful part was that Dora was responding positively to this guy’s approach.

Whenever I asked, she insisted they were just friends, but from where I stood, it looked like something was growing between them. One day, I told her the truth. I told her I loved her and that I had loved her from the day I saw her at the hospital. I poured my heart out while I watched her face change from laughter to surprise and then back to smiling. She told me, “I still haven’t stopped mourning, and I’m grateful you’ve been there for me, but can you give me time to think about this?”

While I’m here giving her time, this new guy is making more progress in her life than my heart can accept. She would drop my call and pick up his, promising she was going to call me back, but she never would. She would tell me the guy was visiting, so I should hold on until he went away. And when she’s with me and this guy calls, and I see the laughter on her face, something dies within me.

I also can’t pretend it doesn’t sting to spend a year waiting only to watch another man walk through a door I’ve been standing outside all along. I want to give up and walk away, but I don’t want to walk away. I feel like I deserve to have her more than this new guy, and that makes me want to stay and fight. But the question is, for how long?

I Called My Girlfriend And Another Man Answered The Phone

I love her deeply, but every day I remain where I am without any progress while this new guy seems like he has already won the game. I don’t even know whether I’m waiting for love or simply refusing to accept that my turn may never come. How long should I wait, or what else should I see before I finally let her go? Maybe I’m wrong about them, but for how long should I keep fighting for someone whose heart may already be choosing someone else?

—Godwill

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