Two Months

April 7. It's been two months since Tom died. Today Boston will have the warmest temperatures it has seen since September 2009, and I used  the morning to throw some grass seed on some bare spots in the lawn and plant the peas I should have planted a week ago (they like it a little cool while they're germinating).

In every previous year, the day we started the garden was long and frantic. We would already have made at least a couple of trips to Home Depot for peat and manure and fertilizer and whatever else normally goes into the garden. Then on the first warm dry day, Tom would pull out the rototiller and turn the whole garden over and work all that stuff into the soil, and every year he would ignore my protests that we don't need to rototill every year. This year, I planted the peas without tilling first. Admittedly and not inconsequentially, I don't know how to turn the tiller on. Even if I did, I wouldn't have tilled this year, because the garden doesn't need it. But this year I don't have anyone to fight with about it.

Who would have thought I'd miss fighting with Tom? Tom and I both liked to have the last word in an argument, and God knows we argued often. I was clearly superior at getting that last muttered "harumph" in just as he was smugly turning to leave, thinking he had just had The Last Word. That just-under-the-wire harumph would always get a smile out of him. But then he'd go and rototill anyway.

Today I don't hear the rototiller or the table saw. Lights are left on, returnable cans collect in bags, waiting to be redeemed. Circulars are recycled, coupons unclipped. I watch the Daily Show, or Colbert,  or something science-y on Tivo, and I won't delete it, thinking, "Ooh, I have to save this for Tom".

And then I remember. His absence fills every corner of every room, and everywhere I look, Tom's not there.