The Little Things
By
Rebecca S. Smithey
Nora Lou Wilson
When someone you love dies, you hear a lot of people talking about the stages of grief. When my wife Martha died, I went through all five stages of them – at least five or six times. What they don't talk about is how the little things will sneak up and cut your legs out from under you. Even now, some little thing – notes from a song, a smell or a vivid memory – will jump up and blindside me. I'll feel the tightness in my chest, the heat behind my eyes, and it is almost as if time itself has stopped, and Martha has just died.
The first time it happened to me, I was driving back to my cabin a few weeks after her death. Durant was enjoying an unusually warm day, and I had the windows on the Bullet rolled down. A truck went past me in the opposite lane, and their windows were down as well. The radio was blasting, and I heard Patsy Cline singing "Crazy". That song had been the first one Martha and I had danced to at a rodeo dance. I heard just a few notes, but it was enough to make me pull off the side of the road until I could catch my breath. Instead of going home, I headed to the Red Pony for a beer or ten.
A few days after a memorial service for Martha (the last funeral I have been to), Ruby, Cady and a few women who sang in the choir with my wife came out to the cabin while I was conveniently out with Henry (their co-conspirator). They went through the closets, drawers and cabinets, clearing out all of her clothes and other belongings. Cady took the jewelry, books and other personal items, but the clothes went to Goodwill earmarked for the Res. At the time, I was furious. I felt like my home and her memory were being violated. But it didn't take long before I realized that they had gracefully removed a real burden from my shoulders.
A few days later, I finally ran out of clean clothes to wear and had recycled as much of the dirty ones that I could. I emptied the hamper in the bedroom closet and started to dump all of it into a duffel bag for a quick trip to the Laundromat out on the highway. At the very bottom of the hamper, I found Martha's favorite flannel gown. The tightness in my chest and the heat behind my eyes hit me full blast. I slid to the bedroom floor and held the gown to my face, drowning in the scent of my wife.
I don't know how long I sat like that. But I finally got up and took everything to be washed. When the gown came out of the dryer, I very carefully folded it up. At the far end of the room, a Northern Cheyenne woman was working on a load of her own. She looked to be about Martha's size, so I walked over and handed it to her. "I think this belongs to you," I said, and I beat a hasty retreat with my full duffel before she could respond. From then on, I took my laundry to someone in town to do for me, instead of going back and taking the chance of seeing the same woman again.
I guess I could have done my own laundry, but for a long time I couldn't get up the energy to do even the smallest of chores. Finally, Henry and Cady shamed into a renovation of my life and living space. After a while, and thanks to Red Road Construction, my cabin began to look like a place where I would not be ashamed to invite someone over. Henry had me running, and Cady was doing her best to pull me out of the deep depression I had been in. She took some of the money she had inherited from her maternal grandparents and bought me a new bedroom set, a new lounge chair and a large screen television with satellite hook-up. When she was done, it wasn't "our" cabin anymore…it was "mine"…and damned lonely most of the time.
But still, those damned little things kept creeping up and biting me in the ass.
Down at the Busy Bee, Dorothy keeps me alive by feeding me three times a day. However, I left there one afternoon without eating a thing. Her "special" that day was salmon croquettes, and the smell wafting through the diner set me back on my heels. She had no way of knowing that Martha fixed salmon croquettes every Tuesday night, in an effort to stretch our household budget. It was also the first thing Cady learned to cook. That day, with the familiar tightness in my chest and the heat behind my eyes, I made a feeble excuse to Dorothy and practically ran back to the office. I think I ate a pot pie that day rather than face Dorothy's questions. Again, it was a little thing, but it had the power to cut me off at the knees.
I do have to admit that, as time has gone by, all of those little things have begun to occur less and less frequently. I guess it is true what they say about time healing all wounds. I am still among the walking wounded, but I can get through most of the time without thinking of Martha more than once a day. And when I do think about her, it is less and less painful and more and more of the happy memories…then, a little thing will pop up and blindside me again.