Two dance practice videos slowly transfer from the notebook PC to the place called YouTube.

Not content to sit and wait for CPU cycles dedicated solely to blogging, my left forefinger types inefficiently but effectively passing electrochemical signals through me and the smartphone screen to the e-ink splotches here.

As I fell asleep last night, before dreams bestirred me consciousness into confusion, I wondered if dying today would be okay now that my wife’s dream of a financially-secure future is set in motion, my task as a quasiresponsible husband completed.

I have enjoyed rewinding myself 15-20 years lately, participating in activities that my current body finds taxing but my younger body enjoyed just as spastically — dancing about like a flailing two-year old running through the house in pure abandonment.

In a few days, the dance lessons will cease, my wife’s only activity she looks forward to no longer fundable (or fungible?), returning the two of us to our lives over two years ago, back when caring for her mother was more mentally than physically demanding.

Saturday morning I woke up to find the house empty of my wife, taking over an hour to see the note she’d posted on our bathroom mirror that she’d gone to get her toenails repainted.

In that hour I let myself feel the pain, fear and loss of abandonment, wondering what I’d done wrong, what I could have done right to have kept my nearly lifelong companion I call my wife.

For my wife, life next week will feel the same way when she no longer has weekly dance practice to look forward to.

My diversions from waiting to die that I call my creative moments sitting in front of this blog are not providing financial means to alleviate my wife’s pending depression, dampening both our moods.

At this moment I don’t know what to do.

She wants to keep going to see UT football games, which she enjoys and which takes up much of our fall budget; I chose a largely unfunded midlife retirement from corporate life (it was partially funded the first year) that has lasted six years now, thanks to my wife’s reluctant generosity and patience.

What do either one of us have to look forward to after this week is over?

I don’t know.

What hope do we plan to lean upon in our relatively comfortable middle class suburban lifestyle, free from but the most minor of worries?