When Things Get Back to Normal (8 page)

No buyer for the house as yet, but I have convinced myself that I will be well rid of it.

My friend A. left this morning for Toronto. She is relocating there. She stayed with me overnight, and when she drove out of the driveway I couldn't watch her departure. I came in the house, and an Irish jig was playing on the radio. Guess what I did?

I step-danced. Yes! Step-danced! Tears streamed down my face. What a madwoman!

Later, in the afternoon, I painted the lampposts in the driveway and the veranda railing. I even replaced a broken back step. I'm so tired tonight I may even sleep.

M.J. – niece and godchild – came to visit. The two of us took off for Maine. It was a sentimental journey because we visited all of the places you and I frequented. Went to our favourite restaurant and were seated at a table for three! I could almost reach over and touch your hand. But all in all, it was the most pleasant few days I have had since November 22.

The first thing I do every morning when I wake up is to determine whether it is a weekday, a weekend or a civic holiday. Civic holidays are positively the worst, closely followed by the weekends.

A nice surprise! A package arrived from Toronto. Giorgio perfume from A. Extravagant woman! I'm having lunch today with another friend – the one who gave me this journal. As I said earlier, how fortunate I am to have friends.

Have had several prospective buyers for the house. I can't deal with their coming, so I make an exit well in advance of their arrival.

Summer is ending. I dread the beginning of the university year. I still fantasize about things being “back to normal.” In actual fact, from time to time I find myself thinking, I'll do this or that when things get back to normal. And I still can't find solace anywhere. Everyone should have a place where they can feel safe and secure and at peace. I used to be able to find all of these in this house.

Finally cleaned out the garage. I even painted the concrete floor. It looks so great, I envy the new owner.

I went to the market today. It was the first time since November. The new produce was piled high in the different
stalls. A couple I knew spoke to me, and because this was the first time I had seen them since your death, they offered their condolences. Later I saw them buying cut flowers, smugly sure of their togetherness – at least it appeared so to me. That hurt! It seems everywhere I turn I run into pain.

Neighbours had a party. They didn't ask me, although last year we both were asked. They reasoned that I wouldn't have wanted to go. I wouldn't have, but I still would have liked to be asked.

Lately I've been flirting with death, or, more aptly, death has been flirting with me. Yesterday I drove up along the St. John River. The water had that soft summer-evening calm you see in late August when the wind has died down and dusk is just beginning to drift in. As I drove along, glancing from time to time from the road to the river, I idly wondered whether there was as much quiet and peace at the bottom of the river as there seemed to be at the top. In the midst of my wondering, a seductive, siren-like voice – the voice Circe must have used to lure sailors to their death – whispered in my ear. “No need to keep wondering about the river, Jean. Find out for yourself. Just ease your grip on the steering wheel.” Obediently, but ever so gingerly, I loosened my grip.

The soothing voice coaxed, “Loosen up a little more. A tiny bit more.” Just as I was uncurling my fingers, a commanding voice ordered, “Don't do it! What if you bungle the job? Think of the consequences!” Afterwards I wondered whether it was your voice that gave the command. It did have that reasoned and reasonable tone of an engineer. But no matter who spoke the words, they were good words. What if I did indeed botch the job? I thought about the two women I know who recently, but for different reasons, tried to abort their stay here, each unsuccessfully, and now their lives are worse than before. I jerked the wheel to the left and made a quick U-turn and headed back home, hugging the far edge of the road all the way.

But the temptress returned again today. I was walking to work, and just before I was to cross the main street of the campus – the one between the bookstore and the forestry building – an indescribable sadness enveloped me. The weight of it shackled me to the spot. I stood there unable to go forwards or backwards, like the Ancient Mariner with that damn albatross on his neck. The paralysis panicked me, and I snapped an order at myself to think of something,
anything
, that could bring a little joy into my life, and it didn't matter how ridiculous or outrageous it might be.

I dredged up decadent and deliciously sinful acts deigned to send the blood coursing through my veins. A half gallon of butter pecan ice cream with a can of extra sauce. My stomach lurched. I've binged once too often this year.

An affair! A short but blazing affair. I tried to come up with names for my little tryst, but none would come to mind. Besides, where would I get the energy to go out and buy new lingerie?

I dropped down on the grass. Nothing or no one could help me. Despair flooded my being. Then a picture blasted into my brain. It was a neon sign, and the word DEATH beckoned tantalizingly in an array of colours. Peace replaced the despair. No more worrying whether I was doing the right thing by selling the house. No more phantom footsteps on the staircase. No more higgledypiggledy cheque book. No more student assignments. No more searching for umbrellas, gloves, credit cards and other belongings that won't stay close to me. And no more missing you.

I stood up and, without a thought for the traffic, walked out into the street. Cars careened around me. Brakes squealed. Drivers shouted. I walked across that crowded street as unperturbed as a cat strolling across a window ledge.

Later in my office I chastized myself severely. Enough of this nonsense! Enough already! I ordered. There's a season for everything, and life is not yours to arrange or rearrange.

I went for a long walk today on the outskirts of town. It was a golden autumn day, and it brought to mind words from D.H. Lawrence.
Autumn always gets me badly as it breaks into colours
.

Are you aware that by dying in November you spoiled my very special season? I'll never again be able to look at October without thinking that November is not far behind. Until November 22, only good things happened to me in the fall: my first job, meeting you, marrying you, entering university.

Fall is now a season of endings. I wonder whether when university opens, I'll be able to take delight in the smell of new books and the taste of chalk dust. Will I still enjoy meeting new students and reuniting with old ones?

Today I made it through the university gates. I've been having more anxiety attacks lately, and when I met with my first class I could feel the shortness of breath beginning.

I prayed as I walked along the corridor to my classroom. Dear God, let me get through this class. Don't let my heart start pounding. Don't let me feel as if the walls are folding around me, choking me to death. Don't let me make a spectacle of myself by pulling a panic attack. I
had the bad humour to end with, God you owe me that much!

All during class I had a difficult time concentrating on my subject matter. All I could think about was coming home to an empty house, a house with a silent voice, and not being able to share my day with you, and how pointless and useless everything is. But I made it through the period, so perhaps the next time won't be so difficult. And perhaps God does remember that I was left bereft a few months ago and that He (or She) really does owe me one.

Just returned from an evening out with very dull people – widows all. Friends refer widows to me now as if I'm a collector of them, as if I no longer want to be discriminating in my friendships. The only thing I had in common with tonight's dinner companions was that death had also snatched their spouses. As the time dragged on, I kept saying to myself, For this I'm missing
Sixty Minutes
and
Murder She Wrote
.

In the beginning, when acquaintances sent widows to me, it didn't matter that the only bond between us was our dead husbands. We talked only about them anyway. But now things are changing. I want to choose my own friends again. Does this mean I'm healing? Or does it
only mean I don't want to go around in a gaggle of widows simply because I am one myself?

Shortly after you died, I joined a widows' group. I thought anything was worth a try. But some of the women there had been widowed ten, twelve and fifteen years. I thought, God forbid. I don't want to make a career out of widowhood. I never went back.

Took the car in for its annual rust inspection today and for a heavy waxing to combat the wear and tear of the salty roads to come. This time last year I had never heard of a rust inspection check. See what a fast learner I am?

P.S. It's my birthday.

P.P.S. I need a hug.

I walk late at night because I don't want the neighbours to feel sorry for me, but then when I'm out on the lonely streets I start feeling sorry for myself. Sometimes I'm so blinded by tears I stumble off the sidewalk. I often scold myself for my self-indulgence, but then I ask, Why not
feel sorry for myself? “You'd feel sorry for a stranger,” I say, “if you knew he was hurting, so why not spare some sympathy for the person you love best?”

I envy widows who wish they'd find a new relationship. They have hope. At this point, I only wish for you. How barren and hopeless my life is.

Depression is settling in for a long siege unless I can find a way to master it. I come home from work, and I just sit and stare. Sometimes I just sit. I have a buyer for the house, and he is pressing for an answer. I won't dicker on the price. Perhaps I'm hoping he'll get tired of waiting. I think that holding onto the house is my way of holding onto the last remnants of you and me.

The anxiety attacks appear to be lessening. I just won't sit still for them any more. If I'm lying in bed and I feel one coming on, I get up and make myself a cup of tea. I still wake up at night and hear your footsteps moving about in the kitchen, going to the bathroom, checking the doors before coming upstairs. I start to drop drowsily back to sleep, knowing all is well with the world because
you and the children are safe in the fold. Then I come bolt awake. There is no you downstairs. There are no children in the fold.

I came across an old cheque book of yours that somehow escaped the purge. Seeing your handwriting unnerved me. They say time heals, but no one says how much time is needed for that. I know now that if I hadn't sorted your things early on, I could never bring myself to do so at this time. It seems now that I finally realize you have gone, I want to horde whatever remains of you, even if it's just your handwriting.

Our wedding anniversary! I got through the morning by washing sweaters and hanging them out to dry in the golden sunshine. I didn't fare so well in the afternoon, and at one point I found myself going up the stairs whimpering like a wounded animal. A friend of ours phoned. She didn't know it was our anniversary, and I didn't tell her. She informed me she was going to an engineering dance this evening. How that hurt! I remembered how handsome you looked last year at the dance, and you would have looked even better this year in your brand new tuxedo. I couldn't recall having told you that night that I thought you were handsome.

Looking back now, I know I was stingy with my compliments.
It's just something else with which to flog myself.

I wallowed all afternoon, I even tortured myself by digging out our wedding photographs. Was your hair ever that black? Was I ever that young? Then the rain came down – a real downpour. It rained the day of our wedding, too. Finally, I could stand neither myself nor the house one instant longer, so I jumped in the car and went to mass. As bad luck would have it, when I entered the church, the soloist – the same man who sang at your funeral – was singing the same hymn, “Like a Shepherd.” I turned around and drove home. But I couldn't go back in the house. I screeched the tires and backed out of the driveway and went to a friend's house – one who is working her way through a sorrow. I was crying so hard I couldn't even get out of the car. I just lay on the steering wheel and cried and cried and cried. My friend saw my car and came and got me. She poured me a stiff drink of orange juice and rum and stood over me until I downed the whole glass.

The foliage is so beautiful this year. The reds are redder and the yellows yellower than I can ever remember them being. It's like looking at an artist's interpretation of fall. I am grateful I can once again see in colour, not just the
black and grey that formed my palette in the early weeks after you died. Students milled about the campus all afternoon, chatting outside on the lawn. Some hung out of the dormitory windows and shouted to the passersby, telling about their plans for the weekend. The girls looked lovely in this year's fashion colours: cobalt blue, fuschia pink, pea-pod green. I haven't bought anything new for fall. And I haven't any plans to make for the weekend. I feel alienated from the whole human race.

I know I should be thankful for all I had and for all I still have, but the plain truth is I'm an ingrate. Is it so bad to want things to be back to what they once were?