There are several days during the year that I make sure I have a small drink - and they are all related to significant days that I shared with my late wife. Today would have been our 38th anniversary, and there will always be a part of me that misses her.
How would I describe my late wife? After 27 years of being widowed, many of the little things she used to have faded into the fog of lost memories. Yet, I can still remember her saying things such as EN-Double A-ESS-T-EYE, and letting out her inner child much more often than I could. Yes, she didn't know how to cope with things at her office, as it was a small business that didn't bother with obeying important business rules, such as having a non-smoking office. At the end of her life, she was angry because she was the only non-smoker in the office, and the only one that suffered with cancer in that office.
I'll never be sure how much she loved me, or whether she stayed with me because she feared that she'd have no place to go if she left me. I know that her problems with money triggered my insecurities, and frustrated me until the day she died. Yet, I find it ironic that I may have more female clothes than she did when she died - and that I gave away 12-16 bags of those clothes to a local charity when she died. I think she would have a big laugh if she were to see me and that closet today.
The other day, I made a short mention of my late wife to Vicki #1, and she went off into a diatribe on how my wife may not have grown with me, how we might have gone into couples' therapy and failed at it, and so on. It was not what I wanted to hear, as I wasn't in the mood to be convinced that my life is better because my wife died - I know that, and felt a little sad because it is so. I was simply subconsciously reminded of her, and reacting to that stimulus.
Yet, I'll always wonder now and then - what would have happened if my wife had lived? And this is where Vicki and I agree - the odds are that we would have gotten divorced, and that I would have approached new relationships with a certain lack of trust. Could this be why certain divorced women are attracted to me as a friend? Who knows? But I don't think I'd be able to have my relationship with RQS if I had been divorced. I needed the assumption of goodwill that only being widowed can bring to a potential relationship.
If there is something after death, I only hope that my late wife is having a good laugh seeing how my life has progressed so far....
