When Things Get Back to Normal Read Free Page B

it lifted from my shoulders. In the words of Richard II,
You may my glories and my state depose, But not my griefs; still am I king of those
. Maybe some people would call this wallowing, but I call it survival.
    My memory refuses to function. I miss appointments, mislay documents and forget house keys, car keys, office keys, as well as leave behind umbrellas, gloves, scarves, purses and whatever else of my personal belongings that can come loose. I’m forever jimmying our porch door open, and the secretary at work has threatened to tape my office key to my wrist.
    I even forget to buy food. Not that eating forms a big part of my life. I’m really into comfort food, though: ice cream, bread, yogurt, chocolate. Already my waist is beginning to expand. But ask me if I care. Two questions consume me. How can I continue without you? How can I spend a winter alone in this house, scared as I am of things that go bump in the night?
    People keep coming up to me and saying, “I’m sorry you
lost
Walt.” I know they use this word because they can’t bring themselves to use any part of the verb “to die.” Still, I come away feeling that I’ve misplaced you, along with my other belongings. Careless Jean has lost her umbrella and her husband. And all within the space of a few weeks.
DECEMBER 12 –
Thursday
    The contents of your office arrived today. I felt like a voyeur going through your cancelled cheques, copies of notices to students, reminders to self, receipts for donations and memberships, etc. As I sorted out the remnants of your life, I had a perverse wish to uncover a secret life – a short tryst, a lengthy affair, a few stolen moments. The anger over your deception would have been a welcome respite from the pain that now saturates me.
    I found no such evidence, though, and, as a matter of fact, the innocent accumulation of material just made me more aware of how special you were. Do you know that some evenings when I’m approaching the house, tired from work, I get angry because you were such an affable human being? I think that if you had been a difficult person to live with, I could cope a lot better with returning to the empty house. Is this crazy thinking or isn’tthis crazy thinking? Maybe I do need therapy. Maybe I am going over the edge.
    People think they can make me feel better by telling me about others who have had harder blows than mine. They don’t seem to understand that at this time I have no capacity for dealing in degrees of pain, and because I am expending all of my emotions on myself, I have none left over for the hardships of my neighbour.
    My soul is dead and my heart is overflowing with emptiness.
    I can’t seem to cope with the neverness of death. Will I never again feel your arms around me? Never? Will I never again hear your laugh? Never? Will I never again watch you getting dressed and pulling your partly buttoned shirt over your head because it’s quicker to get it on that way?
    Sometimes I catch myself playing “let’s pretend.” I look at the picture of us that is hanging in the dining room – the whole smiling family – and I make believe the children are small again, and at any moment you will come striding in from work and scoop us up in your arms. I save this game for especially terrible times because it is scary how tempting it is to permanently slip into a place where the ugliness of reality doesn’t exist.
DECEMBER 14 –
Saturday
    Today I was walking downtown, and I saw someone I knew walking along on the opposite side of the street. He waved a cheery hello, and I returned his wave, equally cheerily, even though I had just mopped away the tears that, seconds earlier, had streamed down my face, unbidden and unannounced. Afterwards, I wondered about the number of people who go about their day waving cheerily while their hearts are weighted with sorrow. Thoreau was probably right when he said most of us