I want to kick myself to Botswana and back, for all the
times when Stephanie and I spent the evening doing different things. She'd be
playing video games, or watching Ru Paul's Drag Race, and I'd be reading
a magazine or goofing around on the internet. We were nominally spending time
together, but not really.
Of course, on the side of my brain that thinks things
through, I know that what we were doing those nights was smart and made sense.
We were two different people with some different interests, after all. But
there she was, alive and well and right there in the room with me, and
inexplicably I didn't spend every minute of all that time telling her how
marvelous she was and getting to know her better? How could I waste that
precious time when we were together?
We were stupid. We were wasteful. There certainly was
advance warning — she had three diseases where
the long-term prognosis is death. So of course, we had big conversations about what
to do and what to avoid in life-prolonging medical treatment, and about what
the surviving spouse should do after one of us dies. And we knew that the
surviving spouse would be me.
But if we'd known that the end was approaching so very
quickly, we would've talked more about love and appreciation and memories and
passion and regrets and dreams-come-true. How different some of our last
conversations would have been if we'd known that the magic was ending, and said
the things we'd never have a chance to say again. Our idle chit-chat about the
news, or my work, or a movie she wanted to see or some amusing article she'd
read online — all that would've been superseded by heartfelt words about what
we'd meant to each other. I know the things I would've said, and I want so much
to hear the things she would've said, if only we would've known that we had so
little time remaining, that the clock was running out.
There are so many things I
want to ask her, so many stories she told me that I wish I could hear again, so
many things I should've told her when she was alive, and so many things I did
tell her but wish I could tell her again, more emphatically. I'm trying to say
it all on this little website, and wishing there was a way to reach her one
more time, but that only happens in the movies. In reality — time's up.
* * * * * * * * * *
After several weeks of thinking about Steph's Shrine in the
living room, today I started putting it together. The Shrine will include some
of Steph's favorite books and other possessions, displayed on a couple of
bookcases, as well as several of Steph's favorite items of clothing, some
tacked to the wall and some hung on a coat-rack purchased for that purpose.
Also included will be her half-finished knitting or needlepoint project (I
never know which is which, and she did both), some of her oft-nibbled snacks, a
bottle of A&W root beer (she loved the stuff), the Afrin she sniffed
nightly at bedtime, and a thousand other bits of Stephanie memorabilia.
Even at our best financial state, we were never quite
middle-class, so all of our bookshelves are either particle-board units that
you buy and assemble yourself, or they're something we found at a garage sale
and dragged home. Steph's shrine will include one shelf-set of each pedigree.
This morning, I dragged our biggest particle-board shelves from their long-time
spot in the spear room to their new spot in the living room.
Stephanie always did the assembly of our particle-board
furniture, and she was good at it, so the shelves hardly even wobbled in the
move. Nice work, Love. There was nothing she put her mind to that she
didn't do well. If I had put those shelves together, they would've fallen
apart.
So, the Shrine is underway, albeit barely. Most of the
shelves are still empty, the coat-rack is bare, and nothing is yet on the wall.
Eventually it'll be a much bigger Museum of Stephanie, displaying everything I can
squeeze into the space. Right now, it's perhaps 5% of what it's
going to be, but still, when I sit in my chair it dominates my view of the
room, and it warms my heart.