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.
