Six Years

Can't sleep.

Don't know why, really, but I turn off my light and put my head on the pillow and every cell in my body wakes up. It's miserable.

Of course, the longer I lie there awake, the more I think about this day, not that it is what woke me. Nothing woke me; I just could not go to sleep.

But this is the day, the 13th. Six years today. And I wondered if I would write about it, about Wayne. Certainly I do not need or intend to go back and go over it again, even though it still seems--and probably always will seem--wrong that he died. Certainly I cannot write all I have learned in these six years--about him or about me or about death. Who wants to read it anyway?

I've been asking myself this question: How long does grief last? I know the answer. It lasts as long as you live. That is to say it will last as long as I live. I think no one can see that I am still grieving. That's good. And I do not weep through my days. But I think of my husband and miss him every day. That's every day.

I miss knowing he'll be home soon, and his particular, or maybe peculiar, kind of wisdom and good sense will help me, help us all in some way. He was a problem solver.

When he worked at Everest & Jennings Wheelchair Mfg. Company he had an accident at work, cut his fingers, messed one of them up pretty bad, had to go the hospital and have it stitched back together, and when it healed, that one finger was a little bit crooked. I can close my eyes and see his hand.

He never read in bed, by the way. Some people do. He didn't. But he read a lot. National Geographic cover to cover; Reader's Digest the same; books of fiction and non. When we took Newsweek, he read that. When we took a newspaper, he read it front to back. He liked to know things.

There's more, of course, and I don't want to forget, even if I do want to live in the present. Know what I mean?

But here is something about grief: I think it is not always sad. I mean, I miss the fun things about him, how he'd fold together the top of his ear and slip his wedding ring over it, and it would stay. I miss his corny jokes that made me laugh, even if I didn't always want him to see he had made me laugh. He made up jokes, you know, and some were really corny. But they were his. I mean no one else would ever think the way he did or say the things he did.

And I remember those probing questions of his, which he would ask unexpectedly, like How long is a Chinaman? or What's the difference between a duck? And who can forget Does it have nuts in it? Or long ago he might talk about the banana in his ear or challenge any of us by saying, "I bet you can't guess what I have in this bag full of oranges." And when I think about all of that, I chuckle and I feel fine.

I hope you all feel fine and smile as you remember him.

It's after two o'clock. I'm going up to bed now. Maybe I'll sleep.

P.S. I was about to turn off this computer when I saw Ann's new post--about her dad and that night she spent with him, the night before he died. Maybe, when you're frightened because your dad's lying there not looking like your dad and you wonder if he might die, you just don't know what to say. But if you are there and you rub his feet and hold his hand and sing to him and make small talk, it matters to him. He'll probably speak about it when you see him next time. I know it matters to me.