Story for the Week
I won’t be buying a Valentine’s Day card for my husband this year. My daughter won’t be buying one for her father, and neither of us will get one from him. Dennis passed away in September (For My Husband, We Miss You), so we’ll probably keep Valentine’s Day low-key this year, much like we spent Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s and how I suspect we’ll spend other key days as well.
It’s still hard, and I know that’s normal. It will be hard and sad and different for a while. We are settling into a new normal, establishing a new routine, still expecting him to call or text when we’re out running errands. Key days are still especially raw and hit a little too close to home. So on February 14 this year, we’ll be at our local PetsMart learning some tips and tricks in the first of 12 puppy classes with our shih-poo puppy Oreo.
It’s been about four and a half months, and I just went back to work this past week. My plan (ha!) had been to go through everything gradually, but you know what they say about the best laid plans. My actuality was that for the first three months, I spent more time binge watching Netflix and Amazon Prime because I just couldn’t bring myself to do anything else, and the deep dive into going through all of Dennis’s things was mostly the last month and a half or so.
Packing up his clothes for donation was the easiest part, if any of it could be described as easy. We decided on a few things to save, figured out what we could give to friends and family, and the rest went to Goodwill or The Salvation Army. What was a little surprising was the sheer volume of clothes and shoes we gave away. I always knew Dennis liked clothes, but it looks like a lot less in the closet than it does in bags to be donated.
The top drawer of his dresser was full of “stuff”—watches, greeting cards, watches, a Swiss Army knife, watches, random souvenirs, watches. He had a thing for watches. It’s a big part of the reason we chose a mantel clock to hold his ashes. A couple of days before we went through his dresser, Corinne told me about a dream she had where she promised Dennis we would keep his watches. I am a big believer that the universe sends you signs, and I took this as a message from Dennis, so I told her we would keep his watches. Little did I know he had nine watches in his top dresser drawer! But Corinne promised him we would keep them, so we kept them.
Going through his desk…that was the toughest part. That was really the only space that was “his” as opposed to “ours.” I knew what was on his desk because it’s in the home office where I work every day. What I didn’t realize was everything that was in his desk. Some of the things made me shake my head in disbelief—the 12 internal hard drives, which became 22 once I got to the closet in the office. (He loved to build computers, but even I was amazed by that number.) A lot of them were bittersweet—all of the birthday and anniversary cards we had exchanged over the years (including the identical anniversary cards he gave me in back-to-back years). A handful of them made me cry—emails he had printed out and saved (two from his father who passed away the year after Dennis and I got married, and one from 1999 from the brother with whom he just reconciled before he passed away after not speaking for 20 years). The hard drives went back to Western Digital for recycling. The rest of it went into a drawer or a box for safekeeping.
I decided that I would go back to work using Dennis’s desk, and Corinne took over my desk. I feel like it will bring me a little bit of peace to be working in “his” space. Corinne told me at one point that she felt like we were throwing away all of his things. I told her that we are keeping the most important pieces of him. I made a bit of a tribute wall in the office that I think will bring comfort to both of us. I hung soccer pictures and scarves that he had, a Star Wars picture, a photo of him from the Disney cruise that we took in January 2020. We’re keeping the most meaningful things, and we will always have the important memories. But the “stuff”? That’s what we need to let go.
Dennis and I didn’t have a perfect relationship. No one does. Over the years, it was easy to lose focus on each other because other things needed more attention—jobs, kids, bills, health. We never stopped loving each other—even though sometimes we forgot to act like we did, even though sometimes it didn’t sound like we meant it when we said it. But going through his things, seeing all of the little things he held onto…. It feels a little more perfect now.
A while back, I read a book about a woman who felt overshadowed by her parents’ seemingly perfect love story. It’s worth revisiting now.
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
5 Stars for Love in a Mist by Sarah Harrison
226 pages
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Publication Date: November 1, 2018
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Severn House Publishers in exchange for an honest review.
Publisher’s Description
Everyone envies young Flora Mayfield: she has the best parents in the world. A successful, handsome father and a gorgeous, vivacious mother who adore each other, and no siblings with whom to share the limelight of their love and attention.
But Flora has always known there’s something rather different about her family life. Her parents, Nico and Zinny, set an impossible standard—of beauty, of success, of romance. Clever, plain Flora feels condemned to live in their shadow. But just as she begins to blossom, having fallen in love for the first time, a devastating piece of news forces Flora to confront her parents about the past, unearthing a series of shocking secrets and causing Flora to question her very identity.
Love in a Mist is a compelling tale about the corruption of lies, the terrifying discovery of truth and the hard-won freedom, finally, to love.
************
Love in a Mist reads like a memoir—the story of Flora Mayfield and her path to love. Flora tells her story much like you would have a long conversation with a trusted friend, weaving past and present together. We learn her parents’ love story, which she seems to put on a pedestal. She tells us of her childhood, her insecurities about her place in her family and her ability to live up to what she feels are impossible standards in a relationship.
This is presented as a romance, but it feels more like a beautiful journey of realization. There are surprises along the way, but what kept me reading was the author’s remarkable ability to tell the story and paint the picture. I could see the movie in my mind.
This is an incredible story that may make you cry and will definitely tug at your heart strings and make you smile. I will be looking for other titles by this author.
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