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.

Six Months

Six months. Six months, and I have not yet cleaned out a drawer or a closet or thrown out a single sock. Among the stuff I have not thrown away is a Lincoln phone list dated June 5, 2005. And MacInTax disks for a mac that's been gone since before Kwaj. And in this pile of keys is a key to the Daytona (the chick magnet, which he sold for $400 in 1998), and probably a key to the house in Rochester, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if there was a key to the house in Woodside.

I see the key to one of Tom's ex's here

I wear his t-shirts as nightgowns, and I wear his underwear every day.  I wore them in Niagara Falls, and I wore them in Hawaii, and Pennsylvania; and yes, I have them on right now. It makes me feel like Tom is still taking care of me.

Yup, probably ...

This is not a new thing, this obsession I have with his underwear (briefs, not boxers). I had an ER visit once for an asthma attack, at least ten years but probably much longer ago than that, and poor Tom was mortified to discover I was wearing his underwear. "Ew, gross! What if the doctor finds out?! Won't you be embarrassed?", I remember him asking at the time. (He did, and I wasn't.) And I know it traumatized Tom, because his first question before any subsequent ER visit, I kid you not, was always: "You're not wearing my underwear, are you?" Ever the Good Wife, I always changed into my own underwear for an ER visit.

Since we've been married, I've always worn his underwear and had my morning tea in his mug when he travelled. What he doesn't know won't hurt him, I suppose I thought at the time. Nowadays, I guess I do it because I just like having his cooties.

Six months, and counting.

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.

Ready, Steady ...

It had been a long eighteen months, and absurd as it sounds, Tom’s death was sudden, and unexpected. I had read all the books, attended all the support groups, had the counseling, dragged my kids, quite literally kicking and screaming, into counseling. As prepared as I was, I wasn’t ready.

I would have told you I was ready, of course, and I would have believed it myself. I had a list of account numbers, and login id’s and passwords. I had a list of phone numbers, and email addresses. I had a wallet card of medications, and doctors names and addresses. I had a durable power of attorney and a medical proxy. We had talked about his wishes, and I was comfortable with his requests. I had a funeral home picked out: I wanted it nearby and convenient, but I didn’t want to drive by it every day and think to myself, “That was where Tom was …” It couldn’t be en route from our house to one of the kids’ friends’ houses, either, so they wouldn’t think, “That’s where Dad …” every time they visited that friend. So I very cleverly picked one on a side street in Medford. I was prepared. It was all under control.

I was not ready for the wheelchair, or the seizures, or the night nurse, or the falls, or the ambulance ride. I was not ready to sit in the living room until the kids were awake to tell them Daddy had died that Sunday morning.

I am not ready to make sauce, or lasagna, or meatballs. I am not ready to balance the checkbook, or pay the taxes, or fix the fence; but I do each one of these tasks as they come up, and it turns out some of them I do pretty well.

But I will never be ready for the silence I hear where his snore is supposed to be.