Ambush in the mailbox
A couple years ago, A mentioned to me that his cotton duck shop apron had seen its last, and once he retired it, he missed it. For him, walking into the shop each day and tying on his apron was a ritual he cherished. He said he’d looked for replacements but couldn’t find what he wanted, and had pretty much given up.
Being the resourceful gal that I am, I quietly tasked myself with finding him a replacement apron, searching high and low until I found it in my own virtual back yard at an outfit called the Duluth Trading Co., out of Duluth, Minnesota. They sell work clothes and camping gear and such—rugged, heavy-duty stuff. My brother used to work for them now and again, sewing backpacks on the side with my mother’s old sewing machine. I ordered him two of them and sent them as a surprise. Turns out they were a little longish, but being the resourceful type, he hemmed them admirably with a stapler. Sounds like something I’d do.
Ever since that purchase, I’ve received their catalog, and last year at Christmas I ordered him a fleece pullover like one of mine he borrowed and liked when he was here in October last year. I also ordered him a gear sack and something called Crack Cream, which is like body butter for working men’s hands, only it’s unscented. Working with wood and sawdust all day, every day, took its toll on his strong hands.
And the catalogs kept coming, once a month, and they’ve started arriving every two weeks now that we’re heading into the holidays. The only person for whom I ever ordered anything from the Duluth Trading Co. was A, and every time that catalog shows up in my mailbox, it’s like a slap in the face.
After the September one arrived, I went online to cancel its delivery, but there was some problem—I don’t remember if it was a bug on the website or I’d forgotten my password or what—but I couldn’t get it cancelled. And it kept coming, and I got another one in Thursday’s mail, and I thought “Enough already.” I told E I really didn’t need it coming. “Breaks your heart?” he asked, perceptively. Yep. It surely does.
So rather than wait until the next one showed up, I called the toll-free number and explained briefly the reason I wanted to be taken off the mailing list, and the gal on the other end of the line said she’d take care of it for me. I really thought I’d feel better having done it, knowing it wouldn’t be in my mailbox again, a first-class reminder I didn’t need.
But I didn’t. I felt terrible. And I cried, hard. And I tried to figure out why.
I think it was because that since he died, every single loss I’ve had related to and including him was something I just had to accept. It all happened as it would, and I had no control over it. I just had to yield. This is the first thing I have actively done myself to create one of those secondary losses. I told them to stop sending the catalog, and with that made an active admission that I would never, ever be ordering from that catalog for him again. When all you have to do is say “Yeah, sure…I accept that’s the way it is,” there’s a tiny bit of denial (at least there seems to have been for me), in the fact that I did nothing to make this fact happen. In passivity there is the tiniest bit of room for maintaining the illusion that nothing’s changed—look, the catalog keeps coming just like before! It’s not that I would accidentally order something because I forgot he wasn’t here to receive it. But as long as the catalog was coming, as unpleasant a reminder as it was, it was one unchanged thing, not yet a loss.
But to put an end to it myself means I volunteered for the loss this time. It is a loss, however small, related to him. So I suppose it is no surprise, then, that I cried and mourned it. It will not be the last; of that I’m sure.