- nose prints on the window by the front door
- a wheelbarrow in the garage
- I made it through the garage, in the door, and up to the guest room — the old room where I slept when we visited her every year for Christmas when I was growing up, a room in which absolutely nothing, not the carpet, not the chair, not the floor lamp, not even, much to my short-term detriment, the mattress, has changed in 20 years — I made it all the way into the guest room before I fell apart.
- a 133MHz Pentium with 16MB of RAM running Windows 95 and AOL 4.0
- honeymoon pictures in India
- a spice rack that hangs on the wall and has a door the length and width of the entire rack that is held closed by a delicate little latch on the side and swings open to reveal instructions printed on the inside of how to use and combine a variety of herbs and spices
- a picture of the three of them from 1959, when they were teenagers
- Grief comes in waves.
- a Snuffles bear
- a fondue pot
- a Koosh ball
- a picture of my grandfather Wilfred, who died the year before I was born, of whom I am, as they say, the spitting image
- Tears are contagious.
- a hammock
- a rusty chain leash on the patio which had, over the course of 24 years, been attached to the collars of 3 different dogs, one after another in rapid succession
- She never owned cloth napkins, because she felt they were unsanitary.
- everything, apparently, that Joan Baez ever recorded
- an unopened box containing — and this is only an educated guess based on the mailing label and the postmark date — the ashes of her former dog, a golden retriever
- a videotape of family gatherings, culled and converted from some old video camera format to VHS, and soon to be digitized and converted to the next format once I get home
All of these things have one thing in common: they’re not her.
I had held back so many tears this past week that my left eyelid had become puffy and was on the verge of becoming infected. This is no longer a problem.
In the midst of all this, today is my two-year anniversary of sobriety. Two years from today could be yours.
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