A blown-glass bluebird sits on my dining room table holding a small bit of my husband’s cremains. As I eat my meals, I carry on one-sided conversations. After all, I still have questions. There are things I want to talk to him about. There are loose ends that will never get tied up. Unfinished business.
For instance, I often ask why we never talked about you dying. We put walls around the topic as if speaking about it would make it come more alive. Cement blocks, thick mortar. Higher and higher.
It still escaped and took you away.
I didn’t get a chance to tell you in person one last time how much I love your hands and lips and smile and the eyes that crinkled for me for over 40 years. I tell you again now. Can you hear me?
Oh, and by the way, where are the decorations for our seasonal tree? I don’t know if I’ll continue that tradition and even if I do, I won’t do it as well as you. If I don’t keep it up, would you feel bad?
I forgot so many things in the midst of your dying.
Did I tell you that as I drove to the nursing home after I got the call that you were gone, the car radio was playing softly. Gradually I realized I was listening to a song from West Side Story: “There’s a Place for Us.” You know me and that movie. I would sing and dance it for you at the tiniest prompt.
Now, that song brings me to my knees.
Did you know that your watch stopped? I thought that was urban legend. But when I took it out of my purse after your funeral, I saw it had stopped at 2:22. That’s about when I got the call. I thought perhaps it had been overly handled, perhaps the crown had popped out. None of that. It had stopped.
Two days later it started again. What should I make of that? It still sits on the counter by the coffee maker where I placed it on that day.
And do you know what the nurse said when she called that early morning? I picked up my phone, and she informed me that my husband had expired. “Expired?” I wish I’d had the presence of mind to ask if she thought you were a loaf of bread or a container of yogurt. All these euphemisms for death. You died. You left us. It’s very simple and yet the most complicated process I’ve ever experienced.
A friend of mine whose husband died a long while ago told me she dreamt that he had come back and admonished her for having thrown away his underwear. Funny, yes. But I haven’t thrown yours away. I have a hard time going into your closet. Maybe a sweeping pass along the rails taking everything out. Give it all to your daughters and let them sort it out.
But there’s so much more than shirts and pants and underwear. There’s so, so, so much more. Is every card I ever gave you in there? What would be the point of keeping them? Their sentimental value was yours not mine. I have the last few years of holiday cards from you. I have my favorite Valentine’s Day card from 2019 on the shelf behind me. I found the card I gave you on our wedding day. I will hold on to these.
So much sentimentality. Why do we imbue all these material things with so much meaning? The butter knife that you always washed – never put into the dishwasher. The click of the door locks at night before you came to bed. I’m better at remembering to do that now but in the beginning I would often forget. Your daughters worry about that.
Every. Little. Thing. All part of the life we built together over decades. We accumulated stuff and memories and kisses and fights and loving.
You worried about leaving me alone. I know that weighed on you in those last months. At the end you told me I’d be okay and the reasons why. You came to me in a dream to remind me.
Some conversations will remain unfinished, some questions unanswered. Some things I will figure on my own.
You said I’d be okay. So, I will.
