Two steps forward, one step back
Thursday night I decided to do something about the growing collection of books being shoved and piled near and around others on my bookshelf by appropriating a bookshelf from the front room that held a few knick-knacks and putting it in my office. I have amassed quite the grief-related library in the last 11 weeks (tomorrow), and there are more on the way. (Amazon loves me this year, although we’ve been close for some time.) While I was rearranging the books, I spied the Office Depot file box that has been sitting under my music stand pretty much since A brought it to me last October, filled with books he was lending me. I didn’t mention them to anyone in his family. I’m keeping them, which is fair enough, seeing as somebody, maybe his ex, has quite a few of mine that I’ll never get back.
So much I’ll never get back.
Awhile back, I decided to take the books out and shelve them with mine, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t change anything from the way it was when he was still in the world. It was enough change that he was gone; too much change. So I put the books I’d taken out back in the box, put the box right back where it was, and let it sit there in state.
Last night I was able to try it again, and I pulled the books out, added them to my collection. I can see his books from anywhere in the room, and I like that. I like knowing that he touched every page. A’s books were important to him. He once said he wondered if he collected so many of them because he felt inferior about his lack of formal schooling. He’d started but never finished college. I did both, and told him he wasn’t missing anything, and, in fact, as far as self-directed education went, he had advanced degrees in a number of subjects. Such a reader he was, interested in absolutely everything. That was one of the many things I loved about him. I can barely recall an instance where I mentioned something and he didn’t know something about it. And when neither of us knew, we’d Google and find out. So the books have been moved, and integrated into my life. That’s progress, I guess. However…
You do not expect that at some point in your life, the most pressing issue on your mind will be what to do with an empty, nondescript Office Depot file box. You do not expect to engage in 5 minutes of internal debate as to whether to keep the box because he touched it, which seems not all that unreasonable, regardless of the fact that the box has little value otherwise. It’s a box, after all. You do not expect to spend another couple minutes examining the box to make sure there’s nothing else in it…a forgotten bookmark, a stray hair that he could hardly afford to spare. You do not expect to smell the box to see if there is any trace of him in it. And yet, you find yourself doing all these things, and others like them, when you lose a loved one. When you have lost much, when you have been living with the brutal reality of how little in this world you really can control, you’re unwilling to lose anything else through your own carelessness.
The box is in the hall; I decided it wasn’t worth adding to the shrine. However, it’s a good box, with a top. I’ll keep it in the garage. In case I need it.