Here, there, and everywhere
Tuesday has been a day of memories, unexpected minor ambushes. The first happened this morning. I had a dentist appointment, and there was nothing unusual about that until I was actually sitting in the chair, thinking about my last dentist appointment. It was raining that day, too. It was a Thursday, two days before I was supposed to go visit my sweetie, a visit that had been canceled two weeks before when he died. I’d been glad about going to the dentist on that date 6 months before, because I’d be able to flash him my brightest smile when he picked me up at the airport. It was a long time before I flashed a smile at anyone, as it turned out. I sat in that chair and debated mentally with myself as to what the point was of taking care of my teeth if a person could just up and die anytime. I might die before I wore them out. I didn’t share my dark musings with my hygienist, however. And now it’s 6½ months later. No cavities, but for the slowly healing hole in my heart.
Later that morning, a friend turned me on to a library organizing website that would allow you to enter your book collection by ISBN and it would grab all the information for you, or it would search on an author or title. It would even allow you to import your past purchases records from Amazon, which I thought was cool. And then I pulled up all my records, and went to add a book only to realize I no longer had it in my collection; I’d lent it to A, and when his family cleaned out his apartment a week and a half after the funeral, they took all his stuff. There were a few that are now missing; I have no idea where those books are. It isn’t the books that are important; it’s the many reasons why they are no longer mine that hurt. And as I went through them, I found gift after gift I’d bought for A. What was supposed to be an exercise in book organization became a well of memories and melancholy.
I didn’t actually cry, but I felt sad and full of sighs. I suppose that’s a sign of progress, but the day is still young, and I have hours to go before I sleep. The inventory of losses from grief is an endless process, usually completed accidentally as things as mundane as the dentist and organizing your books remind you of connections you didn’t even remember you’d forgotten until they were front and center. It is in this juxtaposition of ordinary activities with memories now sacred that love and connection show themselves, where you realize just how deeply and widely your beloved permeated your life. My life is just shot through with him, and that’s how I liked it.
I suppose I like it now, too, but it is bittersweet. While I’m comforted to know that he is not slipping away from me, that the memories will constantly be refreshed by stuff like this, every memory announces itself as being just that: a memory, a reminder of what remains to me. The loss is implicit in every single memory.