LIFE WITHOUT DAVID, Chapter 5

I planted some fruits and vegetables in hanging containers this past week.  Another new thing for me to try.  Sometimes the new things I do are so satisfying and full of promise; other times, depressing; and many times, both sensations all at once.   Growing things have always had erratic results for me.  If these are successful, I think it will give me a great sense of accomplishment, something that this new Carol did well.  If not, I'll just have to chalk it up to a slightly brown thumb.  My mother could stick something in the ground, and it would grow.  I don't know what her garden in Hawaii looked like, but here, she had pots and pots of all kinds of things growing everywhere.  David and I had tried two or three times to plant a garden, and all that each of them produced were lots of memories that we looked back on and laughed about.
     My sister told me about someone who had lost her husband five years ago, that the first year was full of "firsts."  That is just. so. true.  Nothing can ever be the same again.  I think that might be the most hurtful, the hardest to accept.  That everything we had and did together is over, cannot be brought back, cannot be reconstructed, just can never be again in this world.  So everything has to be done anew.  Without David.
     Sometimes I feel very lonely.  But not the alone type of lonely.  I don't ever feel alone.  And I have always enjoyed being by myself, enjoyed my own company...still do.  It's a being without David lonely, a hole that no one else can fill.  We were a joined-at-the-hip couple...definitely a case of two becoming one.  Even when he was driving over the road, or when I had to travel for my work, we always had a sense of the other being right there, wherever we were.  Now, the David part of me has been severed.  And I feel that loss constantly.  Is this how a twin feels when the other dies?  Like a chunk has been taken out of one's being?
     It's still difficult for me to realize that my time is totally my own.  Some friends asked me to go to lunch with them the other day, and my initial reaction was that no, I want/need to get back home (which I usually did because David was here).  I rarely did anything at the spur of the moment, only when it was planned.  But the realization came to me that I am free to do whatever I want at the moment.  There is no one waiting at home for me, except my dog and cat.  This just feels so strange.  So not only did I enjoy the lunch, but I signed up for some short-term volunteer work at the local art gallery, a once-a-week acrylics class, an 8-week sumi-e course, an 8-week watercolor class, and started back with my 3-times a week water aerobics group.  Never let it be said that I do something half-heartedly.  What did I learn after my first full week of being gone every day?  That I also dearly loved just being home; that I missed the peace of puttering around the house; that I was too worn out to get lost in my painting here at home; and that I missed spending down-time on the couch (my girl-cave) with my dog.  And that the tears still trickle down my face when they darn well please, no matter who I am with or what I am doing.   Rather awkward. 
     It also occurred to me that my living arrangements can be changed to suit me, no matter if it looks funny.  The first floor is completely open, and the furniture creates the kitchen/living room/dining room/studio/small office boundaries.   So I rearranged to make a smaller living room area and expand my studio.   I think I may even have enough room to stretch out my Total Gym that we bought a few years ago.  We were so excited about getting that...we were going to use it everyday and maybe look like Chuck Norris and Christie Brinkley!  First problem:  it took up so much space when it was opened up that we had to step over it to get to our TV chairs and couch (no easy feat).  Second problem:  after I had used it a couple of times, I was showing David how to get on it, do some exercises, and get off (that's how we did things---I did something or tasted something first, then he felt okay to try it.  My big wuss).  He got on okay, did a few exercises okay, but wouldn't get off in the way that I told him and ended up getting tossed off onto the floor.  He swore he'd never get on that thing again. Okay, he just thoroughly swore.  It has been folded up against the wall all this time.  Maybe another first for me will be actually using that piece of equipment.  David would have been pleased with the living room arrangement and my bigger, neater studio.  He used to come to the walking-in part of my studio, pretend he was knocking on a door, ask permission to come in and look at what I was painting...no matter that my painting table faced his TV chair so that we were only about 15 feet apart.  Yes, he would definitely like my larger studio.  But there is no way he would appreciate that dangerous Total Gym being open again.  I know that I will smile each time I pass that spread-out monster.
     Those memories are so very special to me.  It keeps part of David with me.  I baked a loaf of bread today and cut the end -- my favorite part-- to eat.  It reminded me of the times we would go out to eat and, no matter who might be with us, he would grab the little loaf of bread as soon as it was put on the table, slice and butter the end, and hand it to me.  If someone else ate the other end, he would ask the server for another loaf of bread just so he could give me another end piece.  How precious is that?  Although nobody ever said anything, they possibly thought he was a little greedy.  Well, I guess he was....greedy on my behalf.  Did I ever tell him how much that meant to me?  I thanked him, of course, but I don't think I ever said anything more about it.  I wish I could put all of those things I never said to him, all the ways I silently appreciated him, and some extra back scratches and leg rubs in a container and send them to him.
     And yet, as warming as the memories are, I still cannot go back to doing something with David's clothes.  I touch them and, instead of those keep-David-close-to-me memories, I get heart-hurt and missing and tears.  I know it's only been a little over three months, but it feels like forever.  I'm just tired of crying.  The tears don't take the pain, the missing, away.  They don't fill the empty hole in my heart.  They don't give me relief.  What good are they?