The Fourth Annivesrary

I would like to get a sectional couch.

Why?

Well, Shadow, the 71 pound lab mix, takes up one side of the current green couch. I sit on the other side. And Joe sits in the middle.

It’s crowded.

If Joe doesn’t want to sit in the middle, then he sits on the rocking chair, which is across the room.

Plus, this couch is old.

Ray and I bought it almost 10 years ago. It’s still comfortable to sit on, but the fabric is thinning and wearing out in some places, and I guess I’d like something new.

So the sectional couch.

This afternoon I drove out to the Slumberland clearance store.

And I wandered through a huge room of couches, love seats, and sectionals.

For a while, I was the only one in the store.

And then the couples started coming in.

And there was me, just a single, alone, with no one to discuss couches with. No one to help me decide on a color, a style, or firmness.

It got a little overwhelming, because today is the fourth anniversary of Ray’s death, and going to look at sectionals, alone, probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do.

I forgot about couples.

Right after Ray’s death, I hated couples. Lucky them, I used think, they had each other, and I’m flapping along alone in the wind.

The hatred faded over time, but when I saw all those couples coming into the store, it welled up inside, and I just wanted to SCREAM!

Ray and I had shopped in that store many times. We bought our mattress and box spring there. We bought that green couch there. We made decisions together at that store.

So I left and went home.

I went online and found the couch I liked and I can click, pay, and select a delivery date. And that’s the way I’ll go – no couples to envy.

I didn’t take Joe, because he’s trying to get his stuff organized for the last push to get out of his apartment by the end of the month. Plus, he hates shopping more than I do. And he’s not Ray, he doesn’t make decisions fast or easily.

And that’s one of the many thousands of reasons that I now know that Ray is the only person I’ll ever really love from top to bottom from inside to outside from fire to ice and from cold to warm. He was the one.

I can be a girlfriend to Joe or Frank or John or whoever, but we’re not walking with the same steps. Joe helps me keep the edge off and I can do what my brain is meant to do, take care of someone. I enjoy listening to his activities and what he thinks about and what he’s interested in.

And I have someone to talk to as well.

Just as long as I’m not buying furniture.

Before I went for my walk around Como Lake this morning, I stopped by the cemetery to leave my traditional black rose at Ray’s grave, read a poem, and reflect on my life these past four years.

I’m getting my mojo back. After four years wandering around in the wilderness, my thoughts are more coherent. I’m sticking up for myself again after spending so much time in the submissive position. My thinking is more organized. I’m gaining the respect of my coworkers. I’m not a bag of mush anymore.

Ray would be proud.

I make double the income I did when he died. I have a feeling Ray has something to do with that, although I have to work hard to keep it happening. How else can I explain finding a job on craigslist that is only four miles from home and pays me so well?

I still have moments of pure sadness and I’ll cry. It comes at weird times, like right after a great workout and I’m stretching, when I just suddenly realize my life is a piece of shit without Ray. He was the person who stood behind always and now I’m standing alone, twisting in the wind like a broken wind chime. I’m all out of tune. Ugh.

But I have more normal times, too, and when I think of Ray, and I’m able to go on without sadness.

And as the days, months, and years, have passed, I don’t dread the 25th of the month or Mondays anymore. I love Ray more deeply than I did when he was alive.

Death has a way of making us appreciate the gifts our loved ones leave behind.

On the way to Slumberland, as I was driving along the Mississippi River, I saw two bald eagles soaring above the open water.

And I thanked Ray for that wonderful gift.

The great and sad mistake of many people is to imagine that those whom death has taken leave us. They do not leave us. They remain. Where are they? In darkness? Oh no! It is we who are in darkness. We do not see them because the dark cloud envelopes us, but they see us. Their beautiful eyes, radiant with glory, are fixed upon our tear-filled eyes. Our dead are invisible to us, but they are not absent.

The surest comfort for those who mourn is this: A firm faith in the real and continual presence of our loved ones, a clear and penetrating conviction that death has not destroyed them nor carried them away. They are not absent, but living near us, transfigured. In their glorious change, no delicacy of their souls, no tenderness of their hearts, has been lost.
–Bishop Bougard