Daily reminders

As I made my dinner last night, I realized how many reminders of Sandy populate the ordinary moments of my day. In the meal preparation, I used the cast-iron skillet I bought her for her 50th birthday in 2010, and then I drained pasta in the colander she bought me for my birthday a decade or so ago, and then I ate the meal from a bowl she bought me for my birthday a different year. I drank water from one of the case of glasses she bought at a restaurant-supply place to indulge my preference for American pint beer glasses.

Here she was on her 50th birthday, the day I gave her the cast-iron
skillet and a bunch of other things. That skillet was a big deal, both
because she wanted it and because I walked up a steep hill (Denny)
carrying the heavy thing in my backpack. Talk about love!

 

I took my dinner into the living room, where I curled up on the blue leather sofa that was the culmination of a search that consumed our energy for many months a very long time ago. I caught up on slog, the blog of our local alternative newspaper, The Stranger, a blog Sandy and I both read regularly. (Often, conversations would begin with one of us saying, "Hey did you read slog today? Did you see. . .") When I got chilly, I tucked my bare feet under the blanket Sandy's sister, Mindy, made for her in 2010, a huge comfort for Sandy as she miserably hung out on the sofa during the early days of cancer treatment.

I watched a couple of episodes of "The Office" on DVD on my laptop, and was all too aware that Sandy hadn't cared for the show. But, as I said aloud, if she came back, she could decide what got played; if she insisted on staying dead, I got to watch whatever I wanted.

When I finally crawled into bed, I pulled the quilt over me, a quilt that was yet another birthday present from her. (You'd think all we did was have birthdays!) As I read, Nada kneaded one of Sandy's fleecy jackets that I keep on the bed to keep Nada's claws off of my flesh. And pictures of us together looked down on me from the wall over the dresser. (Sometimes, I lie in bed and just name the places and times each of those photos were taken, spending a minute or so with each one, soaking up the memory of sitting on the base of the Campanile in Venice, getting trapped in a fort during a flash flood in Corfu, attending the Adobe holiday party, biking in West Seattle, etc. I can be there with her, and I'm younger and more hopeful, happy, for a few minutes.)

It's not just the objects that remind me of Sandy, of course. Songs, news stories, smells, places, people, even the very air bring her to mind. And that is such a blessing.

When she was dying, I knew that I'd be surrounded by reminders of her every day, and I thought that would be too painful to bear. And then it occurred to me what a gift it was, that I'd be able to remember her and us and our life together because of all those reminders. I told her that, a few days before she died, at a time that she was unresponsive. I said, "Your presence will make up for your absence."

I do believe she interpreted that to mean that she'd actually be present, and was expected to be. She certainly has been, anyway. But my intended meaning was accurate, too. Each memory of her keeps her closer and reassures me that I am loved.