Nomad

It is an unsettling thing, this grief. It feels like it’s going to strangle me every night but sleep keeps it at bay until the alarm goes off. As soon as I roll over to stop the beeping it grabs me by the throat as if to say don’t you dare mistake today for an ordinary Monday. No, honey, daybreak likes to remind me. This is another day where you are here and he is God knows where.

Since going back to work after Mark’s funeral, I find myself often feeling resentful on the drive there. A drive anywhere makes me cry so by the time I get to my desk I look and feel exhausted. Would staying at home be better? This home that we’ve had for twenty-six years, the only home we have ever owned, doesn’t seem to fit me very well these days. For years it was too small for us and the kids, the cats, and a dog. Now it is too big, too empty, too quiet. It unnerves me at night. The constant drone of cable news that Mark could watch for hours irritates me and so I accept most offers for drinks, for dinner, for any distraction in order to not come home. Sometimes it works, but more often I feel sad and lonely midway through and want to bail, so I drive and cry and then sit in the driveway wondering what the rush was to leave friends and food and conversation for a dark, empty house.

A few days before Mark died I went to Target. I texted him while I was there to see if we needed dog food. He never answered. When I talk of his last day and say he left his phone at home, people gasp. A sign they say that he had made up his mind and didn’t want me or anyone else to call him and divert his intentions. Maybe, but Mark always left his phone, wallet, or keys at home on a daily basis. He was in every way the absent-minded professor, so when I texted him and he never texted back that was not at all unusual. It turns out that while I was at Target he decided to walk the creek near the house and see what was living along the muddy bank.

I find comfort in going to Target these days. When I am there my life feels normal so long as I avoid the aisle with LaCroix, the refrigerated case with the flavored creamer, the menswear department. I get dog food and toothpaste and long sleeved tshirts to layer for the approaching cold weather. I look at sheets and throw pillows and blankets. Sometimes I end up buying them and more often than not they get returned. I load the car and drive home and if it’s like that Saturday in September, Mark will come in the door a few minutes later with a big smile on his face and say, “I was down by the creek.” He will sit at the dining room table and pick seed pods that cover the front of his pants and dump them into the trash can. I will smile back and say, “I think it’s great that you did that. You need to do that more often like you used to do before you got so busy with work.” He will say he thinks you’re right and you will unpack the bags and put things away and show him the new flavor of creamer you got. He will tell you that one looks good and weeks later you’ll try to remember if his eyes seemed sad.

But it’s not September any more and the house is empty when I pull in the driveway. The pants he wore that day have been washed and folded and put in a drawer I don’t open because those are the pants he wore whenever he worked in the yard. The same ones that he wore to the creek that day and the sight of them would send me down even further and that seems risky these days.

Whenever I have told the story of how Mark and I met I say that I knew on the first date that I was going to marry him. After looking at dozens of houses, I knew the minute I saw this one that this is where we would raise our family. For all these many years, it was this sweet, old, cape cod on the corner that felt like my refuge from the world.

It’s a beautiful house and I am grateful to have it but it was Mark who was my home.