The thing I hate the most since Mike died is the silence. Music, radio, tv, phone conversations don’t fill it. There is just no substitution for the sheer presence of another human being.
We might say nothing at all for an hour. We might talk continuously. We might read Facebook to each other. Tell a story. Make a grocery list. Play with a pet. It’s nothing big or earth-shaking. It’s the everyday communication between two people who love each other to the point that we are simply easy in our skins. It’s comfortable. Funny. Sexy. Sometimes angry. Frustrated. Sarcastic. Playful. Teasing. It’s the interaction between us – part of what made us who we were together.
Now that Mike no longer sits opposite me in his chair, it doesn’t matter how much noise fills the house – it is silent.
Silence has nothing to do with absence of speech. This silence is the absence of feeling, the absence of emotion. This silence is sitting, aware of the television, but not really aware at all. It’s dozing. It’s losing track of time, of agenda, of the world outside this room.
It’s sitting for hours, looking at pictures of Mike, of our life. It’s reading his notes, messages, letters to me. This silence is full of tears – angry, loud tears and screams that scare the cat, and that make Gus run to my side to try and fix me. It’s late nights spent wandering the house, begging dawn to come so that life can resume again.
Nothing fixes this silence. And after almost two months of it, I cannot take it any more.
Yesterday was a frustrating day. Too many errands in town, too many idiot paperwork policies to dance around, too many stores to wander through to tick off the to-do lists, too many things done twice or more. I wanted to come home to Mike, to commiserate and bitch, and hear him make me laugh. Instead, I came home to silence – and I went down the rabbit hole, doing all of the nonproductive grief things above.
Finally, I went up to my office. I spent three hours firing up my new work computer, figuring out syncing errors, royally screwing up a few things, and writing down a list of questions for the computer guy. I did some paperwork, and totally lost track of time in a good way.
No music played, no TV was on. The room was totally silent. But it wasn’t. I was clicking along, involved in life, instead of trying to fit myself into a photograph on a screen.
Missing Mike won’t stop. I will miss him every day I draw breath. Once I hit Alaska, it will come at me from every angle. That’s where we fell in love – where we made all of our first in-person memories together as a couple. But I will be busy there. My clients start back in force this summer. There is a ton of work to do at the cabin – and a ton of fun to be had as well. In the meantime, my to do lists are multiplying like those proverbial rabbits as the calendar days tick down to departure.
And maybe by summer’s end, I will be able to once again find peace in silence…at 62.
At 62 