Erased

Your desk in our home office is vacant. Everything is just as you left it, minus you. It’s like you've been erased from the scene.

Christmas morning, everyone is here, minus you. Somehow it feels like our togetherness emphasizes your absence. We exchange gifts, smile at the grandkid’s glee as they open theirs. It seems all normal. Except you’re not here. Erased.

I’ve just moved, and my new closet is too small to hang up all your clothes. All mine hang there filling the closet as though complete. No evidence of anyone else having ever shared this space with them. You’ve never existed in this closet.

Erased.

I go out to lunch with our friends. Everything is as it has always been, except that the chair next to me is empty. At later lunches, there’s no longer an empty chair, like you were never part of our group. I’m not sure which is worse. 

Erased.

The shower is filled with flower-scented body washes and pink razors. There is one toothbrush on the sink. The toilet seat is always down.

Erased.

Old friends don’t speak your name for fear of upsetting me. People I’ve met since losing you don’t know your name.

Erased.

Every time a piece of you disappears, it feels like I’m walking away from you.

Again.

Like when I walked away from your body in the hospital.
Like when I traveled to another country without you.
Like when I sold our house – the first and only home we bought together, the one we raised our kids in and welcomed our daughters-in-love into.
Like when I sold our car.
Like when my experiences with God no longer look like the ones we shared.

The chasm between us continues to widen. The distance between us and me is growing. Time pushes me further and further away from you. You are slowly being erased, not only from my own life, but from time itself.

I know you’re gone; your absence is underscored all around me.
In what’s not here, in what’s not said.
In the empty spaces between what was and what is.

Is this all that’s left after we’re gone – a fading echo? It’s like time is a giant eraser, slowly removing us from existence one thing, one event, one moment at a time.

​​​Except for our stories.

​Our stories make up the bridge that stretches across the chasm, that connects our then with my now.

​“We’re all stories, in the end. Just make it a good one, eh?”
— The Doctor, Season 5, Episode 13

​
​Stories like our first hug at a home game when we awkwardly embraced (under the guise of celebrating a touchdown) and the world stopped for what seemed like forever as I felt the warm softness of your fur-lined coat collar on my cheek and I felt safe in your arms.

Like when you asked me to go steady in the parking lot of our high school, and you gave me your class ring to wear on a chain.

Like when we made our first purchase together – our wedding bands. Together they were less than $300; we had to finance them.

Like when we moved to Texas, and arrived with our tummies as empty as our checking account. We got our first meal in Texas at a restaurant, and hoped the card would go through – we had no Plan B.

Like when we made the decision for me to quit work to stay home with our boys knowing that it would take 98% of your income to pay our monthly expenses.

Like when all three of our kids were born, the last one the best anniversary present ever!

Like when we could hardly scrape together $10 for a new pair of shoes for our kindergartner, and when you could buy all your new iThings outright.

Like all those tournaments through the years where you kicked so many butts (and got your butt kicked a few times) earning trophy after trophy, and belt after belt, and when your cancer body lacked strength to open the jelly jar.

All of your stories, from before the ‘I dos’ until the final good-bye, are always and forever interwoven with mine. I will hold them close to my heart, and share them whenever anyone will listen.

---

Thank you, dear reader, for being one who will listen to our stories.

Thank you for acknowledging that his story matters. ​​

Thank you for sitting with me for just a few minutes and helping us all connect our thens with our nows.