18 Months ...

Today is 18 months. Tom died at precisely 6am on Sunday, February 7, 2010. It's been a long haul, but I think the boys and I are adjusting okay, and we're getting on with business. The boys have done well in school, we're getting ready for our new school year in a couple of weeks. But I just miss Tom. So. Damned. Much.

A brief list of things I miss would include kissing his bald spot, scratching his back and cuddling on the couch watching the Sunday morning talking heads shows (I think he'd really like Christiane Amanpour on This Week. We patiently held on during the "Sam and Cokie" debacle and the George Stephanopoulos shoutfests, longing for the civilized Brinkley days of yore). I miss hearing him talk to himself in the shower, and the smell of coffee brewing in the morning (and the mug of tea that would have magically appeared in the bathroom before I stepped out of the shower). I miss the sound of his car pulling into the driveway at the end of the work day. And this week in particular I miss C and Ada, who thought Tom walked on water.  And grocery stores will never feel the same to me.

I miss Tom's spectacular garden.   Oh, I've put one in this year, of course, but this garden sucks and it's my fault because I didn't till, because that was Tom's job. He loved to fill the minivan with manure and bags of peat moss and fertilizer and spread it all out and then till it all in. And then he'd till again, deaf to (or more likely ignoring) my protestations that he was just making things harder for himself. I didn't till this year, and I didn't till last year, and so the garden sucks and it's all my fault.

I have had his ashes in one of his favorite pieces of pottery for a year and a half now, sitting on his dresser in my room. Unfortunately, the dresser is becoming increasingly cluttered with a year-and-a-half's worth of accumulated stuff that doesn't have a home.  But Tom hated clutter and I can't imagine he'd approve of his current arrangement. Someone gave me the idea to put his ashes on his workbench until I'm ready to spread them in the Fells (which I'm not), and I think he'd like that.  He'd be glad that I'm taking care of the workbench, using it, even. And with the help of about half a can of WD-40, I recently got the table saw up and running for the first time since the flood. All his tools are neatly sorted and hanging on his pegboard (no, I haven't gone so Martha-Stewarty as to draw outlines on the pegboard to indicate the exact location of every tool, but I'm tempted). There's his hammer and his Wonder Bar (probably his favorite hand tool. No household problem was so big it couldn't be resolved with the booming command, "Get me my Wonder Bar"), and his row of about 23 screwdrivers, sorted by size. I think he'd like to know his tools are okay.

I know he'd be glad to know we're getting there.