Sometimes when I'm down and all alone

I just keep moving till something happens to distract me. Four feet is usually enough around here. I started putting dishes away yesterday and ended up thinning out the glasses and coffee cups. It's not that I won't have large groups on occasion but hey, I can put a stack of large hot and another of large cold cups in the cupboard and cover that. One person doesn't need as much stuff as two.

It ripped me up. I keep finding more things that are reasons to have a partner. Like I can't bring home a couch from a yard sale and just take out the old one and put in the new one without finding someone to go with me... I can only lift one end of anything. And I will have to drag the step stool in from the garage for the tall cupboards. I can't reach them.

I don't have a back up at home to come get me if I break down. I may keep the little red truck and the little white one and just get one fixed up and put on ice till I need it.

And how am I ever going to move the TV stand and stereo set up! He's the one who knows where all the darn wires went. Yes, I used to play in a band and I can figure out the wiring myself - but it will be a two day tear down and rebuild because he's not there to do that while I do the other things that need getting done to rearrange.

And I have become one of the dreaded minority. The single woman in a group of couples. It's not quite so bad for me as it would be for other women. For one thing I have always been part of the male group whenever possible, hanging in the garage, fishing, drinking around the fire, playing poker...it's where the mate was and what I grew up with. But now the guys will feel weird around me because the mate isn't there and the ladies are going to want me with them....not with their men....it will be strange until they all learn I have no interest in any men and just want to hang with our friends like we always did.

Maybe some other lady could be looking for a male friend to comfort her or even be thinking about who she can pair with next but I can't. The mate is in my head and heart and soul so tight that it killed me to shop the other day. I had no reason to get cashews or string cheese or check out the movie bins....no biscuts for gravy..so many things I used to look for just to get a treat for my friend and I have to walk past them and leave them behind.

I am entering the last of days. Last package of swiss cheese he put back for me because once I told him I craved swiss and by the time I wanted it he had finished it and he always got two packages after that. The last laundry is done for him. The last time I will have a card from him. The last time I will put his hat away....so many days stretch out ahead of me filled with another last time in them that I cringe from going there in my mind.

Even as he lay on the floor I realized I was drinking the last pot of coffee he would ever make for me. I always put the pot on the night before but the last one he picked only made 8 cups. Not enough to give me a large to go and still two cups to drink with him. So he would pour it into a carafe and make a second pot for my home cup with him and my to go and he would have the whole first pot to start his day. So when I pour my first cup after all the fiasco it was the last cup he would ever make for me. It's funny what you think of.

So I look ahead to running solo a lot this summer. The vehicles are all good for it if I keep them looked after. I can get a book on the bike and I can do a lot myself. I like fishing, too and sometimes the best way to go is with no one else.

And the kids will be riding. I can go with them sometimes if I feel the need. And the chapter wanted me back enough to offer me ACD. (assistant chapter director leading to chapter director) I told them no. No more commitments right now.

The death certificates, PROPER ones, will be here soon and I have to figure out how that will go. Once the paper work is done comes the harder part of letting his loved ones take the things they shared with him now that he isn't using them anymore and finding things to fill the hugh space in my life that it will make to pass them on to the right people. But I don't need them.

It's the right thing to do and I will find it easier to update the house with "stuff" thinned down. I am getting rid of a lot of my own things, too. The stuff you keep expecting to do something with someday that just gathers dust in a box. The craft supplies and such I will get to someday. I will keep what I am using, the rest goes.

I had a thought. That the photos and wave files and clothes and treasured hats and wallets and such are like the shattered shards of a crystal glass. They are of the glass but they can never BE the glass again. My precious one is gone and the things that remain will never BE him, they can only call to mind the memory of the man. It is in every square inch of this place. He was so much the motivating force here.

And it came to me because the pain is so sharp. From picking up a misplaced hat to the last time you wash his coffee cup it is like handling shattered glass. It cuts and you bleed grief from your eyes until they are swollen and tender. But you reach for them still because the faint aura of him surrounds them. And you try to smile because he loved you so much he put hat hooks all over the place to try and keep them up neatly. But you cry because you found one in the seat of his chair today. He never really did hang them up. He left them sit and you hung them on the hooks he put up for you.

So you go on, until the cousins come and spend some time. And you go to your sister's to see her cabin. and you eat out with them on their way home. Then go to the stores and get the things you need and go home.

The dogs greet you gladly as you get out of the truck and you have been fine for hours until you walk under the motion sensor light he hung this fall for you so you could see to get the key - that you had to turn up the wrong way because he got the guts of the door knob upside down - in the lock and burst into tears because he lighted your way and upside down or not, made sure you were secure when the door was locked behind you. Because he love you and he wanted you to be safe.

But you just can't smile anymore.