Tuesday and Wednesday were really the pits - lower than low and I don’t know why. It’s been 27 days now and it seems like yesterday. Maybe there are just too many unknowns, maybe because of not having closure with his death certificate, or maybe just because I am lonely.
Ironically, his olive-green shirt that I always hated has become my crying shirt. It smells more like him than the others because he wore it to work the last Friday before he died. I remember this because I asked him to change when we were headed to Tia Rosa’s after work for our weekly margaritas and shrimp Mazatlán. I asked him to put on something “fun,” like one of his Hawaiian shirts. He always seemed less stressed in a happy shirt. So, he did, because he always wanted me to be happy – anything to make me happy.
It’s ironic that the shirt that was the one disliked the most has become what I cling to sitting on the floor of my closet every night. Sometimes I sit in the dark, sometimes with the light on – but either way, I cry while I grip the green shirt that I never liked as if my life depends on it. And now it has become my favorite. It’s changed a lot in just a few weeks. It’s covered in tear stains now since it’s made of silk. It's interesting that salty tears dry white on olive green silk. I suspect Don wouldn’t like that much because he wasn’t really a fan of getting stains on his clothes. I remember sitting in the movie theater a few months ago when he dripped butter on his jeans, and he missed half the movie trying to get it out.
This is the crying shirt. After I cry for a while, my nose gets stuffed up and I can’t breathe through it, so it defeats the purpose of holding the shirt that still smells so much like him, because I can’t smell it at all with a stuffy nose. I close my eyes and remember how the silk felt against his back, how the fabric absorbed his cologne so quickly and then hung on to it for so long. I miss the whiff of the fresh spritz of Acqua de Gio every morning as he picked up his overstuffed, weathered briefcase and headed out the door … the sound of his loafers clapping on the slate floor down the hallway. I miss that and I miss him. The closest my senses come to him now is inhaling deeply, holding his green shirt and just going where my mind takes me – seeing him in my mind’s eye at dinner, holding my hand driving to the movie, sitting across the room with his laptop – just being there. So, this will have to do for now, it’s all I’ve got.
Life seems so two-dimensional now. When he was here, he blocked the flow of air from the fan, and his size 13 feet were always getting in the way of something. There was never a question that I could always reach out and slip my arm under his or wrap mine around his waist in the middle of the night, feeling his strong heartbeat. Now the bed sheets and comforter lay flat beside me. I’ve considered placing pillows beside me to try to fool myself, so in the middle of the night I won’t feel so lonely or abandoned, hoping to give my world a three-dimensional feel again. But I know this would be pointless – as pointless as trying to make the crying shirt look like more than the flat, tear-stained laundry it has become.
It would be so much easier if my world with him weren’t so three-dimensional in the first place. That’s why the fall is so hard. It’s like going from perfect vision to blind overnight. Had it been a slow process, at least there would have been some impairment before – some sense of imperfection or preparedness. But suddenly I’m living in an alternate universe. Without warning or explanation, there is no laughter, no joy, no passion, no color. Everything seems so pointless, but I still hang onto the expectation of some return to normalcy when I wake up tomorrow,.
Days are dark now. My lover is gone. For me, it was all I knew. It’s all I can remember. It’s all I want to remember.
In this world I live in, I do not believe, “Time heals wounds,” nor do I want to. As Don wrote in his letter to me 20 years ago, “My heart bleeds for you and cries for you. Only your touch and love can heal these wounds of separation and sadness.” Who knew that I would be writing those very words to him today?
All for now …
Seize today and put as little trust as you can in tomorrow. And always live with no excuses, love with no regrets.
Shelli Netko 2007 (c)
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