The time clock is silent. There are no churnks as someone presses the lever to print the time they arrived at work. There are no clicks as its internal workings advance from one minute to the next.
The presses are silent. There are no whirs and clicks and clanks as paper advances from plain to printed. There is no pressman to bring them to life and never will be again.
The building is mostly silent. The computers are humming but the fluorescent lights aren't buzzing as much because the new ballasts somehow prevent some of the buzzing. The refrigerator died a few years ago so the sound of its compressor is no longer here. The furnace hasn't run for a day or two because of the warmer weather. The phone seldom rings.
There is no Greg. There is no fussing at the press because it isn't printing to suit him. There is no singing and guitar playing. There is no asking me what I want for lunch. There is no conversation with a buddy about gun trading. There is no Greg.
Many times through the years, when Greg was elsewhere, someone would come into the shop and say, "It's quiet in here." I'd usually reply, "Greg's not here." I was halfway joking, but it was true -- Greg was the heart and soul of the shop. Although I was here more hours than he was, the building always seemed to need his presence.
The tables by the presses, where ink knives, cotton pads, and bottles of alcohol and blanket wash reside, are unchanged. The ink in the presses is drying in the trays and dust settles on the frames -- but not paper dust. The amount of paper in the shop is dwindling.
I sort, discard, shred -- each thing I touch gives me pause. Did this job give Greg problems? Was it difficult to print? Was he pleased with it when he finished printing it? Did the customer appreciate Greg's expertise and caring?
Perhaps a silent building says it all.
My darling Greg was diagnosed with cancer in May last year. He died in August. Between May and August, thirty years of our business records were shredded. Things of import -- tax papers and their ilk -- were kept.
I am still finding things that need to be shredded.
That cross-cut shredder does less shredding of my life than each morning when I arise knowing Greg isn't home. Today would've been his sixty-second birthday. He had joked last summer about not being around to draw Social Security.
While we wouldn't have done much "birthday" stuff, we would've gone to a restaurant we liked and had a nice meal, possibly closing the shop for the day so we could just ramble around wherever the mood took us. We never did do much celebrating of our birthdays and anniversary, sometimes because of work schedules, other times because of lack of funds, or simply because going home and doing nothing sounded like a better plan.
Whether or not we did birthday or anniversary or holiday celebrating, we were together, nearly all day every day, for forty-two years. So many little things have brought me to tears since August, little silly things that we don't think are important but make up the day-to-day fabric of our lives. Things like wanting to tell Greg something funny one of the cats did or how many deer I saw cross the road as I was driving to work, wanting to ask Greg about someone whom he knows better than I do, deciding what -- in our case, where -- to have for supper. The list is endless.
My life is in shreds. No calendar event will ever change that. Nothing I do will ever change that.
Oh, I can carry on with chores, put up a Christmas tree (Christmas did not hit me as hard as today has.), purchase things as I need them . . . but my life will still be in shreds. Because . . .
There's no Greg to talk to, laugh with, fight with, travel with, listen to music with, just do nothing with . . . tiny bits and pieces that can never be put together again.
