A view from the toilet

After taking down most of the artwork in the apartment, I definitely started to feel better. It was a large blank, but that is better than painful sentimentalism.

But that is just me.

When my wife made an unexpected stop to pick up some financial info, she didn't find the removal of her traces comforting at all.

She in fact threw, what is known in the psychological field as, a "tizzy". That wasn't fun.

Not only did I miss lunch, as I tried to explain my reasons, but I further destroyed my appetite as I grew angry and started shouting at her. I stormed out, and went to work.

When I returned, already feeling remorse at having a STUPID argument, I got aquainted with the feeling of empathy. In other words, I knew exactly what she felt when she walked into the apartment. I knew this, because, she had, in my absence, completed the job I had only begun.

Now, anything at all that had any trace of her was removed and put into the spare bedroom, and the door was closed. I felt robbed. I couldn't handle the art, because art was so much a factor of her personality that it would constantly remind me of her, but I could handle little knick-knacks, and signs we had put up as goofy affirmations, and her collection of hats in our bedroom, or the spare clothing left behind.

Why I could handle some and not others, I don't know. You've been reading this... just try and figure me out.

I stood there, shocked. I do that often these days.

The bedroom seemed the most empty. All the little nails, ringing the ceiling, stared down at me through the night. Empty, they whispered, as I slept. The closet was a gaping maw, yelling at me in the morning, as the sun hit the white of the walls, that hadn't seen sun in so many years for the forest of clothes. Empty!

Then the most curious of things happened.

Where most of the empty spots seemed all that more empty for what I knew wasn't there, there was one spot, in the bathroom, that seemed even more empty, because I realized I couldn't remember what was there before.

I sat there staring at that lone nail, desperately trying to recall what had greeted me before. Granted, that particular moment is not one where we debate, internally, the finer points of color theory, but it was one of the few pieces that would have gotten a guaranteed viewing EVERY day.

I just couldn't recall.

So, I did the next logical step. I entered the forbidden zone. Pushing open the closed door seemed so bold and defiant. Here was territory, although formerly mine, that was clearly designated as off limits. Do not enter, the door said. My pushing it open actually took some force. I was not just pushing a free swinging rectangle of wood, I was pushing the limits of decorum. Wars have begun on much less grounds.

I pitied the pile of hats, so uncermoniously dumped from their former glory. The collection of stuffed cats seemed homeless, and I think I heard mewing. Plaintive mewing. I know this because my live cat came rushing into the room, looking for something- I'm sure he didn't know what.

The few pieces of artwork I did find around were not the one I was looking for. Some that I knew were missing, indeed were still missing from that room. Had they been too valuable to leave in my care? Or were they so tainted from my viewing them, that they had been discarded and were now forever gone?

Either way, my question had not been answered.

Still, in my mind is a hole.

Probably only the first of many, that tells me there are going to be things about your life- your former life, that you will forget. Slowly, they will slip away. That is both a comfort and frightening.

Early on in this split, my wife called me crying. She was scared because she said, "Who is going to remember the things about me that I forget?"

Well, I said, maybe nobody, or maybe your friends, but the great thing about that is, you will also forget that you don't know these things. If you don't realize that it is missing, then it isn't.

Unless there is a nail there to remind you it is.