I wrote this over five years ago and posted it on Facebook. As this blog is becoming something of a record of my personal journey in the aftermath of John’s death, I decided to preserve it here, as well. Because, well –
“The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.” Cicero
“John died two months ago today. When you lose the person you loved the longest, you cherish the big things – your wedding ring, your photos, your memories of the happiest times. And that is bittersweet. As some wise ancient Greek said, “There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.”
But sometimes it’s the little things, the mundane things, that kill me. In the grocery store, passing up the celery and cheddar cheese, which were the components of John’s lunch just about every day for our whole life together. Wondering what to do with his hearing aids. Washing up the coffee maker, that only he used.
It was 1969, our first Christmas together as man and wife. We had no money. We were both going to school (Grade 13 for me and second year university for John). After school, we were working every evening for as many hours as we could get at minimum wage jobs to support ourselves and our coming baby. Nevertheless, we managed to scrounge up a total of $10 to spend on each other for a Christmas present – $5 each. I bought a bottle of cheap cologne or aftershave, the top of which came off when I was carrying it home and it all leaked out into the bag. Fortunately, I had also bought a cheap tuque.
Pretty unimaginative and mundane presents, but I was seventeen years old, shopping with five bucks. At least the tuque was practical.
For my non-Canadian friends, a tuque is a close fitting, knit winter cap, akin to a watch cap or stocking cap. But it’s not either of those things. It’s a tuque eh?
John wore that tuque for years, until the bobble at the top was a distant memory, and the thing was shapeless and full of holes.
As time went on, he acquired many other tuques and winter hats. Every time we moved, or did a clean out of old clothes for the Salvation Army, I would agitate to get rid of The Tuque. It always survived. I would put it in the discard pile and somehow, next time we were sorting through stuff, there it would be. At some point though, it disappeared. When we were downsizing prior to retirement in 2014, everything was in play to be gotten rid of one way or another. I don’t remember seeing The Tuque. If I thought about it at all, I assumed it was long gone.
Last October, we packed our last remaining clothes and some essentials into our eight suitcases, put the things we couldn’t bring ourselves to part with into storage and headed to Cuenca. We enjoyed seven months of balmy weather and happiness and then John died.
When our son Joey arrived shortly after that cataclysm, we started going through John’s things. I opened a cupboard in the front hall where I knew some of John’s shoes were. I pulled out the shoes and some other stuff, and reached into the back of the cupboard. I felt something soft, pulled it out, and – yes – you know where this is going. Joey grabbed me and held me, as for the first time since he’d arrived in Cuenca, I nearly collapsed in a mess of great, wracking, gasping sobs and tears. To his confusion, I was clutching a ratty looking tuque.
Now let’s pause to consider this. John didn’t have a wedding ring. When we were married, we could only scrape up enough money for mine. Some years later, when we were more affluent, I gave him a choice of a present for some occasion or other – a wedding ring or a brass engine for his model railway layout. He chose the brass engine.
Yet my darling sentimental John not only managed to keep The Tuque away from my efficiency sweeps over the course of nearly fifty years. He had smuggled it to Cuenca, secreting it in the back of a cabinet where I had no reason to go. If he had merely wanted a warm head covering in case it got inexplicably cold in Cuenca, he had others to choose from. If he had only wanted it as a keepsake, he could have left it in storage in Canada. But he chose it to bring with him.
The Tuque, a cheap little Christmas present, a mere nothing among the hundreds of much more impressive Christmas, anniversary and birthday presents given and received over the fifty years we shared our lives, is now a sacred relic and safe from destruction for the rest of my life.
The mundane little things, that yet somehow manage to embody everything that mattered.