A Century of Days

Over 100 days ago.  The worst, saddest day of my life.  In this century of days, I am slowly beginning (to learn how to be a different person.  I must be more independent, more willing to take risks, and make my own decisions.  In this time, I've changed my financial framework from us to me; learned how to build a fire in the wood stove, and get through a major storm on my own.  I have endured the month of December: my birthday and Christmas without the one who cared most about me, loved me the most, and made my life a joy. 

What will the next century of days bring to me?  It will be the middle of spring, my yard should be looking as good as I can make it on my own.  I will be truly by myself: Michael will be living in David's apartment while he is out on the Pacific Crest Trail.  In a way, I dread it and in another, I anticipate seeing who will I become.

A Matching Set

I hate changing the bed but I do like the feel of clean sheets.  Mark usually did that odious chore for us, even up until the end.  Now that I do it, I wonder how he managed it.  It was always perfect, crisp, with tight corners.  He complained about my cute eyelet bed skirt but didn't insist that I get rid of it.   It must have been a terrible effort for him at the end with his sore joints and painful, chemo damaged  hands.  A Tempurpedic mattress is heavy and that bed skirt gets hiked up under the sheets and blankets unless one is very careful.  I may get rid of that thing myself! 

This  morning I stripped off the old sheet set.  As I pulled "his" pillow out of the sham and tugged off the pillow cover, I thought why am I doing this?  I can keep that pillow in the sham, in the slip as long as I like.  No one has laid his head on that pillow for over 12 weeks now.  It's not dirty, not even close.  But I did it anyway.  The outgoing sheets are blue; the incoming silver.  It would be wrong to have unmatched pillow slips even though nobody but me would know. 

It feels wrong in the same way that it feels wrong for me to be alone, unmatched, the only one in that bed.

New Year

Happy?  Not?  Something in between?  I think it will be the latter. 2012 is the first year in my life without Mark somewhere in this world.  Even when we were children, teens, and young adults, he was here, 3 and a half years older than me.  We didn't know each other but I wouldn't be surprised if our paths crossed now and then especially when he lived in Renton.  I like to think of us as waiting for our true loves and we found each other in  October of 1976.  Now only I will see, barring illness or accident, who wins the presidency; how Dexter will turn out, whether the spring is warm or ugly like last year's spring.