I am writing this on a Friday while wind roars in the treetops and rain pelts the roof. It is the third day of March 2023. A day Greg and I would have been together. I don’t know what we would have done, but a good meal would have been included. Maybe a drive down random roads. Maybe see a movie after having an early supper.
Doesn’t matter. We would have been together.
I’m sure anyone reading this blog will notice the gap between December 2021 and August 2022. A gap caused by another drastic change in my life.
In December 2021, I sold the shop building. This wasn’t a sudden decision. In the four or five years before Greg’s death, we occasionally discussed selling the shop. We’d talk about it a little while, and I’d tell Greg to do whatever he wanted. I don’t think either of us wanted to sell the shop. During the thirty-plus years we were in the printing business, the shop was home as much – sometimes more – than our house was.
The shop was where we conducted business, made our living. It was where we worked long hours, where we laughed, where we fussed, where we talked with friends, where we shared meals, where we dreamed, where Greg sang while I typed, where we were Greg and Joyce – in our own place
.
A place we drifted in and out of on weekends, sometimes work, sometimes a meeting place, sometimes a pit stop on the way to another destination.
A place we drifted in and out of on weekends, sometimes work, sometimes a meeting place, sometimes a pit stop on the way to another destination.
The three months I spent clearing the shop of our printing business was hard. Thirty-five years of my life with Greg had to be disposed of in some way. I wept over many things, from notes Greg had written, to the destruction of printing equipment that had served us well.
I stored things. I gave away things. I trashed things. And wept about it all.
I cried at the shop. I cried in restaurants. I cried while driving. I cried at the house. I sat at Greg’s grave and cried; one day I was hurting all over so I came home and slept by Greg’s grave for a few hours . . . it helped.
On the evening of 29 March 2022, I locked the back door of the shop for the final time. As I stood there with the key in my hand, I felt more lost than I ever imagined I could. I had been without Greg for two and a half years. Now another major part of my life was gone. Neither Greg nor the shop can ever be replaced.
I have mourned the loss of Greg and the loss of the shop the past year, and have made several attempts to write this blog post in that time. It has been extremely hard to get words to fit on the page to relate how I feel. I don’t think what I have written today fully expresses the deep sense of loss I have been enduring.
A feeling of being lost in my own life. Without an anchor of any kind. No Greg. No shop. None of the day-to-day things that were my life for nearly forty-five years. Forty-two of those years with Greg. Thirty-eight of those years in Printing Creations.
Years of having my days filled with printing work and other things. Listening to Greg play a guitar and sing. Decorating the lobby for Christmas. Chatting with friends who stopped by. Eating a meal. Making flower arrangements for Memorial Day. So many bits and pieces of my life that are gone and irreplaceable.
This is most likely the last post I will make on this blog. Grief has morphed into sadness that permeates everything I do. The days are slowly becoming easier emotionally. I still cry over Greg; I doubt those tears will ever be gone. I miss Greg and the shop; I doubt that will ever change. I am at a point that I feel anything else I write would become repetitious. If inspiration brings new thoughts on grief to the surface, I will post more.
Until then, thank you to whomever has taken the time to read my posts. The poem below was written at least twenty years ago, but it is as relevant now as it was then.
Holes
In my heart
Once filled with
People
Pets
Possessions
Now gone
Irretrievable
Only death
Will make me
Whole
