Eye of the Needle

When Michael’s new home was finished and closed on, he was moving from an apartment he had lived in for a few months, emptying a storage unit and moving the contents, and continuing to work. He had been juggling a lot for many months and I offered to unpack some of his things on my days off.

Much of his belongings had been sold in an estate sale. The things he wanted to keep from the house he and his wife, Marlene, had lived in for years was packed with the help of his sisters. Both of them would put professional movers to shame. There wasn’t a single thing broken – everything carefully wrapped in paper, bubble wrap, or both.

In the empty house during the cold and overcast days of December, I opened the boxes marked Kitchen, upwrapped every piece, and then gathered everything on the island until I had amassed all the wine glasses, all the plates, all the pots, the silverware. Then I would open drawers and cabinets and figure out where everything should go. The daily things next to the stove and the things used less higher up in the cabinets. The house was deathly quiet with no tv or music to distract – only me and the contents of a kitchen from a woman who had loved and built a life with the same man as me. It was unnverving, sad, and surreal.

When Michael came home he was apologetic. “We don’t have to keep any of this,” he said, “we can get all new stuff if you want.” It would be months later before I moved in so that didn’t seem like a logical decision. “It’s fine,” I said, thinking that him seeing the things of a life he no longer had in a kitchen with someone else in it had to be even more unnerving, sad, and surreal.

I moved in during late spring and added my own things, but much of what we use every day are things Marlene bought. She had very good taste. The dishes I reach for over and over are classic blue and white. There is a panini maker that had never been used. I always longed for a Le Creuset dutch oven but could never bring myself to pay for one. In the boxes I unpacked was an orange one that I have used many times. There is a rice maker, a Cuisinart toaster oven/air fryer, and spices that I have never used. All the belongings of another woman’s kitchen.

In this new life there are many times I think I don’t deserve any of this. Times when I look at this house and know this came to be because of what Michael and Marlene built not Mark and Kathy.

But when my grandson has a soccer game it is Michael and I that sit and cheer from the sidelines. When my granddaughter had a piano recital we sat next to each other watching her. On Sundays my kids come for dinner. When they leave all three of my grandkids hug us goodbye, often running towards Michael with outstretched arms. Children that are the result of a life Mark and Kathy built not Michael and Marlene.

Last month the two of us took a short trip to Maine. We have been using a car service to go to the airport whenever we leave town and have gotten to know the driver. He was very chatty on this last trip and told us about all the hobbies he dabbles in. Some we knew about but this time he told us about his love of biking and how he has taught himself how to sew and now alters his own clothes. Later Michael said to me, “Don’t you think it’s interesting that Robbie loves doing the same things as our late spouses? Marlene with the sewing and Mark with the biking?”

There are many things that feel foreign to both of us and probably always will, but then there is this driver who showed up on our driveway shining light and unbridled enthusiasm on what we thought we had lost.

If you were to lose someone you dearly loved tomorrow I would tell you that the veil between here and there is as slim as the eye of a needle. Time after time it beckons you to look through it, and when you do you could swear that everyone you ever loved has never left you.