When Things Get Back to Normal Read Online Free PDF

Steven’s clothes closet. (He still hoards some of your clothes – but in his room at our house. There isn’t enough space in his small apartment.) I took out a brown linen sports jacket of yours. I wrapped it around myself and curled up in fetal position on your side of the bed. When I woke up, the sun was high in the sky, or as high as it gets here at this time of year.
JANUARY 12 –
Sunday
    Another Sunday. They pile one upon another relentlessly. I’m just recovering from the loneliness of one when it’s Friday night all over again. I often think of the old woman who came to the funeral parlour to pay her respects, although she had never met you – or, for that matter, us. “I didn’t know the mister,” she apologized. “It’s just that I live near here and Sundays are so long.” Her empty eyes still haunt me. Will I ever become so lonely I’ll take to browsing in funeral parlours to while away a long Sunday afternoon?
    A bit of good news. A female graduate student is going to move in with me for the winter. The cheap lodging will help her, and her company will make this big house less terrifying. By the time May rolls around, I should be able to come to a decision regarding whether to sell or not to sell.
    What do I do with the rest of my life? Who will care about me or for me if I get sick? Who will find me if I trip on the stairs and kill myself? I certainly don’t want the children to unlock the front door some day, annoyed because I won’t answer my phone, and there on the carpet at the foot of the stairs they’ll find me, sprawled out as though I’ve been dropped from a helicopter. How ignominious! Especially if I’m naked. Especially if several days have elapsed.
    Yesterday, a recent divorcee told me that she missed theinstitution of marriage more than she missed him. How I envied her. If I just missed marriage, I’d be putting my name in the personals for a husband replacement.
    I’m having phantom sightings of you. I hear your steps on the stairs as you come to bed, having stayed up late to watch a hockey game. The steps creak under your weight. At the end of the working day, I hear you coming up my office corridor to collect me for the ride home. Sometimes I actually pull my chair back from my desk, making ready to leave. When it hits me that my mind is playing games, my stomach sinks.
JANUARY 13 –
Monday
    Bittersweet news.
The Corrigan Women
is going to be published. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh. I sure hope He (She) doesn’t believe that your death in exchange for the publication of my novel is a fair exchange. What is the good of happy news if I can’t share it with you? Still, I do feel a flicker of something akin to delight or excitement. Maybe I’m not totally dead inside.
JANUARY 19 –
Sunday
    I’m really sad this morning.
Really
sad. It seems as though all of the progress I’ve made so far has disappeared.
    Maybe, though, this dip into melancholy is the result of emotional growth. I’m beginning to accept your death – or accept the fact of your death. I no longer get jolted by the unrumpled pillow, and I no longer look for your car in the driveway when I come home from work. But there are aspects I can’t accept. Will you never again rub your beard over my cheek, hug my body, ruffle my hair, hold my hand or warm my feet?
    I’m still furious with God for snatching you from me, but I’m making moves toward reconciliation. I don’t want you being held responsible for the sins of your wife. Still, every time I see a couple, even if they are engaged in something as mundane as picking up groceries, I have to stifle an inner rage. But in the beginning, I didn’t stifle it. I would go home and storm through the house belligerently, asking, “Why! Why! Why!”
JANUARY 20 –
Monday
    Will January ever end?
    My housemate has moved in, and while she’s