Surfing

They say it comes it waves. Well, I sure say that. Here’s few of my waves.

The day after Julie died, we went over to Sam’s Club and bought a giant (75″) TV. We exchanged the dark dining room with the bright family room, and set up the TV in what had been the dining room. In the process we had to move a couple of tables covered with tchochkes. The tchochkes we put on the pool table to sort out what do do with later. I thought this would stave off any anguished decisions about what to keep and what to give away. It turns out that I’m now sad that I disturbed her special arrangements. I think there was more of her in the organized clutter of the thousand little things than in the things themselves. Now I can’t put them back.

My kids are awesome, they’re going to get up early and see me off tomorrow for my first day back to work since she started dying in earnest. Haley’s going to make me a lunch to take. That makes me think of all the times that Julie made me lunch. She would pack it in a little lunchbox with a little blue ice thing. Often I didn’t eat the lunch she made, and I was always irritated by the blue ice, which was unnecessary since we have a work fridge. She did all that stuff with it with love, and I didn’t appreciate it. Mostly I didn’t even say thank you. Now I can’t tell her.

She used to like to work in the yard. I detested yard work, and she knew that and it didn’t really bother her. She would do a million things in the yard, and even when the tumor made it hard for her she wanted to do them anyway. We have a bunch of electric power tools that she thought would make it easier for her to do yard work, but it was mostly still too hard for her to keep her balance and manipulate them. Sometime last Summer, the kids and I had to take over and do some things in the yard. She just couldn’t get to them, but she didn’t want anyone else to do them either. That led to some fights. None of that really bothers me. What bothers me, is that after she worked in the yard, she liked to go out and look at it, or just sit on the porch and enjoy it. She would pour herself a glass of wine and go out there. She always invited me to join her. I almost never went. Now I can’t ever go.