Shel’s been gone from this world for four and three-quarters months now, and I’m having a hard time of it. I’ll think I’m doing better, and then suddenly, the no-Shel reality slaps me in the face once again.
I woke up in the middle of one night so sick I almost called 911. What stopped me was the realization that I couldn’t even get upstairs to open the door for them and I’d hate to see it broken into. Shel wasn’t here. I’ve been CT-scanned, ultra-sounded, and now antibiotic-ed, physical therapy-ed, and am feeling somewhat better. Shel never knew about any of it, and he wasn’t here to help me get through it.
He also doesn’t know that Zazou has been gone for the same three weeks that I’ve been sick. I’m so glad that he doesn’t know, because she loved him the most, and he’d have been so sad to lose her.
He doesn’t know that I had an 80th birthday party for our friend Sheila, and that I baked her this gorgeous cake. The last time I made this treat was for Shel’s own birthday, his very last birthday cake. I don’t even want to think about what jokes he told at his very last Thanksgiving, what I gave him for his very last Christmas. I still haven’t emptied his closet – those things he wore are so dear to me now, they touched him, still look like him.
I’ve written three articles for publication this month, so it hasn’t been all fainting couches and Kleenex, but I’m feeling it so deeply these days. He’s gone, he’s not coming back, just like Beppo and Zazou. It’s the end of an era, an era I loved above all my other time on Earth. He’ll never know what I do next, how I feel, what I’ll become. He’ll never know how I die, and I guess that’s a good thing. He’ll never see how our sons turn out, won’t see Eric marry, won’t see my hair go grey, if it ever does.
His life is actually over. That’s so hard to fathom. I’m not a wife. That’s even harder to grasp. Alone on the day-to-day sea, trying to stay afloat.