When Things Get Back to Normal Read Free Page A

embarrassed by your wet-with-perspiration uniform, especially with that battle-scarred sweater. But you didn’t come to me, and later, at home, I lay on our bed and waited well into the night for the call that would announce you had been revived.
    How could you be dead? You were never sick in your life. You’d get a touch of a headache, a touch of the flu. Surely what you had suffered at the rink was only a touch of a heart attack. But as the night wore on and friends and relatives came, I knew you were gone – permanently gone – and it was as though someone had dropped a wet tarpaulin over my head and smothered the life out of me as well. In those very early moments, I could feel the loneliness of the years ahead.
    I huddled on top of the bedspread, drew my legs up towards my chin and let the night slide into morning.
DECEMBER 6 –
Friday
    I don’t know which is the more difficult to do – leave this house or return to it after I’ve been away for a few hours. When I am inside its walls I feel safe, but once I go outthe door I become vulnerable, my wounds uncovered. I cringe as if a thousand arrows are waiting to jab at my naked self.
    When I return home, even if after only a brief absence, the silence of the house assaults me. One night last week, I slept at a friend’s house. I came back before the neighbourhood had wakened up. How still the rooms were! Even the refrigerator with that ever-running motor was silent. The reality of your death and the rawness of my widowhood made me sick to my stomach.
DECEMBER 7 –
Saturday
    Two weeks plus a day since you died and the first weekend without you. This is not technically correct, but the other two weekends, like the weekdays, went by in a blur of disbelief and horror. I am conscious of today. I am conscious of being lonely.
    We had our first snowfall last night. A really big one. I spent the morning shovelling the driveway. I forgot to put your car in the garage so I had to broom the snow off it as well. I raged at you with every swipe. Why did you have to skate yourself to death? Why did you have to die in the winter? Surely you, above everyone else, knew how much I hate winter.
    Once I had the cleaned-off car moved into the garage, I attacked the driveway. I must have looked a patheticsight, wielding that big shovel of yours, because our neighbours’ boy came over to help. I worked along with him, although I wanted to pitch the shovel in a snow bank and come in where it was warm. When I finally did come in, my hands and feet were so numb I had to sit in a bathtub and let warm water thaw my flesh. I wondered if warm water would thaw out a numbed heart.
DECEMBER 8 –
Sunday
    I’m sitting at the kitchen table, staring at your empty chair while sounds of the neighbours leaving for church filter in through the clapboards.
    I miss you so much even my hair hurts. Your death has blinded my eyes to beauty. Do you know I can no longer see in colour – just black and grey?
    I stood before the bathroom mirror this morning and sized up my reflection. It’s the first time since the funeral that I have given more than a hurried thought to my appearance. I’m sure there must have been many days during the last couple of weeks when I looked as unkempt as if I had spent the night under newspapers on a sidewalk grating. The person who looked back at me from the mirror was a stranger. She had a stupefied look. I was reminded of a cat I had as a child. She liked to sleep in the rocking chair by the fire. We all respected her wish – all except Grandfather. He would come in and, with ascoop of his hand, land her on the floor. She would stand there blinking in confusion, a dazed “what happened?” look on her face.
DECEMBER 10 –
Tuesday
    The weight of my grief has slowed me down almost to a stop. My friends say I should seek therapy, but I say I have a right to this grief and don’t want to pay big dollars to have