It’s a Tuesday night, about five and a half months, or a lifetime, since Jack died. The house is quiet and I am thinking.
The reality is that life is not what it was that November evening when I walked to the car with my husband of 33 years, to drive him to the hospital after a week of sleeplessness and pain. The disorientation was just starting, but I did not realize it’s import. I thought that his off-task talk had to do with not sleeping for a week due to unrelenting back pain, rather than the fact that he had an infection at the base of his spinal cord which would shortly bring about brain death.
So when I got him to the ER and he was admitted, the facts quickly became apparent: his beautiful mind was to be no more this side of Heaven, and now I needed to get used to life without it. Oh, how I miss his mind!
There are regular reality checks that I am now doing life solo.
I am now free to buy chunky peanut butter, or anything else I like, with impunity. This turns out to be less of a big deal than was once thought.
I acknowledge Allstate’s mailed confirmation to my policy: “What Has Changed? An Operator has been deleted.” Couldn’t you say that some other way? “An Operator has been changed.” You got that straight—he certainly has been.
Reality hits like a coffee table that cuts me off at the shins as I navigate my parents’ dimly lit living room at night: I can identify my bedroom, the place of rest, across the dark space. I cautiously make my way from the baby grand piano to the kitchen island, and inch to the sofa, only to be cut off at the knees by the coffee table I never saw coming.
Reality takes some getting used to.