122-Things

 About a month before the end, I noticed that the newspaper had stopped arriving each morning.  It was her subscription, and we had talked about it weeks before, but I didn't say anything about it now. I knew she had stopped it.  It was a few days later that I noticed that her phone was unplugged;  up to that point we had screened the calls via the tv  (caller id flashes across the screen), the only one that actually rang was the one in the kitchen, and now it was unplugged.

I think that’s when my real panic set in.  Though neither one of us mentioned it, she was disengaging, preparing to leave worldly things behind...Later, after her death, as I was alone,going through her papers, sorting clothes, I stopped and looked around at everything.  It seemed a mess to me.  A pile of papers over there, various  collections of shoes stacked about (she loved shoes, can you tell?), clothes laid out on couches, armchairs, and the dining room table. She had said she wanted her things to go to the children, her sister and other relatives, with rest being donated.

I kept some things, the Christmas sweatshirt, that scarf  (or wrap thing) that I liked seeing her in… because it still has her scent on it.  As I looked around at all of it, a great sadness came down on me, I thought: ‘…so this is what remains, how pitiful, my baby’s things laid out as if in a rummage sale'.  This couldn’t be all it came down to, there has to be more…I know I cried, cried for a long time. 

Of course it wasn’t what really remains of her, and it wasn’t a rummage sale, despite the picture it presented.  As the tears eased and I began to think more clearly, I realized that it was o.k. because she wanted it this way and because she is more than the assortment of things she collected during her life. 

The truth is, Donna is the memory that each of us who loved her, carry in our hearts. She is the effect she had on all of us in this family, and the results are the parts of us she affected and the memories we have.  I began to feel a bit better as I read through items she had buried and left for me, some things from years ago, others more recent.  Some things to be shared, some things that needed no sharing beyond the two of us.  A lot of it was a painful reminder of some of the things we had been through, reminders  of the rougher patches…some of it our ‘highlights’ or, how she felt about whatever the current family buzz going on at the time. There were things addressed to the children too. 


Now I realize that I actually got a lot of healing from doing that when I did it, so soon after her death.  Touching those things, remembering certain things about the various items, I think it all helped me. I needed to do those things right then.

This appears to be something that we all do in our own time if at all, dealing with the remnants of our partners lives.  And I think that’s alright too.

Somehow I think I wanted to feel as bad as I could all at once,  I think I thought I could do it all in one fell swoop and be done with it, this feeling bad part…this feeling sad part. I see now it doesn’t work that way.

No, even now, later, though still early in grief, when I see certain things of hers, it rips through me like a hot knife. I imagine it will be that for a while. The process continues….

pax,

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“I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart) I am never without it (anywhere I go you go), my dear…” -eecummings