Dust
Nothing moves in this house without you. Don’t get me wrong, unimportant things do. Plates, cups, TV remotes, dog toys. Those all move, with the inertia on them that the living apply. I pick up my glass and take it to the kitchen, the dog grabs his toy and wanders around with it. I set the TV remote someplace that defies logic and there it sits until I’m able to locate it again. Such is the normal pattern around a home.
What I’ve noticed is that your toys and things, Bobo…. they no longer move. They sit, unmoved and untouched. All children had rotating favorites. So it isn’t odd to see toys sit in a corner for awhile before they get put away in a storage area after you no longer cared about them. But our house has been in stasis. The toys left behind when I lost you. They’ve sat. And as time marches on and they don’t move, dust collects. When I used to pick these things up it was as if you’d just left them. I’d preserved them as such to keep the feeling of you near through them. Now when I do I notice my fingerprints left on them as my hands have disturbed the fine layer of dust that’s gathered. I find myself using my hands to knock the collection of fine particles from the toys, trying to get them back to that point… months ago where you’d set them down and moved on for the moment. As I stand over these toys and spaces now, it’s a debilitating reminder of your loss. At times these spaces can make me feel so close to you, as your noise and your activity runs through my mind. And at times, all it brings me is emptiness and I feel that place inside me that will never be filled, wherever I go from here and whatever I do.
These moments are stark reminders of the little moments and times that as you sail through your day, you don’t realize how much you treasured them. I can at least say I knew it when I was in it. I knew the moments were important. But the gravity became different when I lost you. Now thinking back, while I was present in many many of these moments with you, I still wish I could roll them back and play them frame by frame in my head. To recall in graphic detail the interaction and the time we spent playing with these things. To move thorough space with you again… that’s the missing piece. My love endures, my memories endure, that place in me that you occupy endures. But the ability to re-create the actual tactile experiences with you… that’s the part that I can’t retrieve. That’s the basis for this loss.
And here it sits in front of me…. gathering dust.