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21. Monuments

3 min read


They are all around us.

Written Friday, October 11, 2019 / Day 60 / Afternoon


Today is the 60th day in the new state of grief. It has been an emotional week. I was mentioning last night at the last of the “Coping with Grief through writing” class - that I am the least capable person to be able to evaluate how I am really doing.


I seem to be getting along at an operational level. Emotionally it is a total unknown.


On my way to do several things today I made some small yet I’m thinking significant changes.


I had all of the correspondence about my wife along with all the materials from the funeral home on the dining room table. The dining room has become my war room right now as I struggle to get things together both the household mechanics, finances and the new computer and all that goes along with it.


I was arranging some other papers and then I grabbed all of the correspondence and took it off the table and placed all of it along with their storage pouch on to the floor next to the server. One small thing perhaps.


Then I was cleaning up from lunch and thought I need to write a shopping list for when I get back from the Buffalo trip on the 22nd.


My wife’s purse was on the counter as it has been since I brought it home on August 12th. She would have been bothered with it on the counter since it is always resting on the floor and she was always quite alert to germs and contaminating things.


I looked at the purse and thought - how long are you going to leave it on the counter? I had taken the cash and credit cards out but all of her other things were still in it. I paused for a moment and then remembered she would always hang it off the open right desk drawer next to her chair when we got home.


So I moved it there.


I was not prepared for my response.


I cried like a baby. Whatever touched me about this struck me at the depths of my emotions at an overwhelming level. It seemed like the right thing to do.


But I think I touched a monument. It had been sitting there for 60 days. A reminder of the day that placed it there. And every day for 60 days - a monument to that time - the beginning of my world of grief.


So to change its location apparently cut across a wide range of emotions.


Cut in a way I could not predict the effect.


Well, it was quite dramatic.


And yet when I got it to its place - a place where it regularly was kept in our pre-grief life - there seemed to be a settling effect.


Who knows what it means. Two monuments to the current state of grief changed their locations on the 60th day. As the over-active Systems Analyst I can not help but see a pattern there. But I see patterns all the time - it’s the way I look at life.


But today the pattern was ever so much more significant.


Only time will tell what will happen to those relocated monuments or how many other monuments to my past and current life will emerge in the future.


Now there’s the couch and her pillows and throw she covered herself as we watched TV. Or the small stacks of Bibles and note books on the kitchen table. Right now - these are going to remain monuments to my sweetie.


Their day may come.


But for now they will remain as monuments to my love for her and sadness that she is no longer here to enjoy them.

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