The Kitchen

Mark and I always kept a long wish list of things we wanted to do in the house. We both hated the thought of using a chunk of our savings that we had worked so hard to accumulate, and so we would put off improvements year after year, instead counting on a money tree to show up in the backyard. The number-one-and-never-changing item on the list was renovating the kitchen. The layout never functioned well, none of the drawers closed, it was a total gut job. A gut job we dreamed about for years. A year after Mark died, the kids suggested that maybe it was time to get this done. I loved them for that because I think they desperately wanted me to get excited about something. My son, who is an interior designer, came up with a design, we started looking at cabinets and I was immediately overwhelmed. They all looked fine, they were infinitely better than what I was used to, and I hated them.

I hated that I was doing this with my son and not my husband (although Mark would have gladly opted out of the whole thing and said whatever I wanted was fine) and felt like a deer in headlights. I couldn’t make a decision on anything and early in the process I bailed. Everyone told me I deserved a new kitchen and that was true. I cooked a lot of good meals over many years for the five of us in something that never worked well, and yet I wasn’t capable of changing any of it. What I felt most deserving of was to have my husband back and that I couldn’t have.

In the meantime, I was making small changes around the house. Painting rooms, refinishing dressers, changing up bedrooms, and all of that helped my mental health when little else did. Those were things I always did anyhow, and Mark never cared that this house and yard were my creative outlet. He knew I needed that to be me, and he’d show it off and say, “This is all Kath,” but the Kath Show was so much better and happier when Mark’s light filled up the spaces.

After the new year, and I’m sure with a strong suggestion from an older sister to her designer brother, the renovation of the kitchen was brought up again. This time it felt right and so Will and I started over. The cabinets have been decided, the appliances have been picked out and paid for, the countertop and tile have been chosen, the contractor has been secured. It’s probably the worst time to do all of this as so many things aren’t available or delayed due to Covid, but I’ve grown accustomed to operating in less than ideal circumstances.

In the time Mark has been gone, I have looked a thousand times from the dining room into the kitchen and pictured him at the counter making salsa with his homegrown tomatoes. He cooked very differently than I did. He usually had everything everywhere and by the end it looked like tomatoes had barfed on every inch of the kitchen. It made me so crazy that I usually left the house until it was done and cleaned up.

So what’s changed since the first time I attempted this reno?

The sadness within the walls of this house looks different from where it was nearly three years ago when every inch was coated in loss. The one place where it has remained firmly planted, though, is in the kitchen. In order for me to keep moving forward I have had to slowly let go of the things that keep me cemented in the before. I am a reluctant student of that lesson, but I have kept showing up for class even when I prefer to sit in the back row and pretend I’m not listening. If I could put something in the universe’s suggestion box, though, it would be that there should be an award for calmly picking out a new refrigerator and faucet and not taking it out on anyone around me for the unimaginable way my life turned out.