In loving memory of my wonderful husband and our life together
I’ve been thinking about that old song by Neil Sedaka entitled “Breaking up is Hard to Do,” that rather corny song about how difficult it is for young lovers, teenagers I imagine, to end their relationship. It’s really a song about teenage angst and sadness but I’ve thought about it in light of my life today. You died almost a year ago and the song has taken on a whole new meaning for me and is anything but corny.
Our relationship will never “break up” as I’ll always be your wife but I find myself “breaking up housekeeping.” This is the opposite of “setting up housekeeping” an old fashioned phrase probably coined in the 30s and 40s when our parents were newly married and buying the items necessary to run a household. Things like dishes, pots and pans, bed linens, towels and, of course, the always-important knick-knacks. We started life a little different than they did. We had each been married before, divorced and had household items aplenty, in fact, when we moved in together, we had a yard sale to dispose of some of the duplicates. Some of the items that we each brought into the relationship are still living in my cupboards, cabinets and on my shelves; and then we have the practical items and ever-precious knick-knacks acquired together on vacations or in shops that had become special to us and that were made by or given to us as gifts by our children. These are the bittersweet items that I have to do something with.
When your father died in 1997, your mother invited us to their apartment, the one where they lived together before she moved into the assisted living facility. She sat with us and went through drawers, cupboards and bookshelves and, with our help, sorted through items that had been special to her and your dad. She threw away many things such as brochures from vacation spots that they had visited, maps of places they had been or planned to go to in the future and things she considered “junk” from your father’s desk. At that time, I was horrified and didn’t identify with what she was doing. How could she throw away her maps and booklets from the Great Smokey Mountains where she and your dad loved to vacation? How could she dump the contents of your dad’s center desk drawer into a box to be thrown away that somehow ended up in OUR house? How could she give me dishtowels, coffee mugs, tablecloths, pillowcases and extra blankets that had kept them warm since the early days of their marriage? How? I thought she was being hasty, impulsive, even fatalistic after all SHE was still alive. How could I know that she was walking down a road that neither she nor I had ever walked down before? She was “breaking up housekeeping” and giving to her children the items that were special to her and to your dad and throwing away the things that she would never use or need again.
Well, now it’s my turn and walking this road is hard and painful. I am looking at objects that are really just “things” a soup tureen and matching bowls that you and I bought at a craft fair from the potter who made them the first year we lived in our house and from which I served gallons of homemade soup over the years. We loved that tureen and had dinner parties with soup and homemade bread just as an excuse to use it. The memory of bread reminds me of how you teased me about my love of “good” bread and my cookbook “James Beard on Bread” that is marked and spattered from its many uses. All of these will be given to one of the girls in due time as I have no desire to use them ever again. I already gave our daughter the big turkey roaster pan, as I will never prepare a big holiday meal again. I remember when we bought it in Bullocks house wares department and how expensive it was. We would take our usual long walks through the streets of Pasadena every night after dinner and often ended up in Bullocks, which was down the street from our house. We looked at that roaster pan for months before we broke down and spent the money for it. How many holiday turkeys, hams and roasts did I make in that pan? Fifteen or twenty at least. And the Christmas ornaments that you especially loved. I teased you every year and called you Father Christmas as you FELT the magic of the season and would sit in the dark looking at the lights on the tree late into the evening and tell me stories of your Christmases as a little boy during World War II. Those days are over and I catch my breath on a sob as I face that reality. Of course I’m still alive to celebrate in some fashion and naturally holidays will come and my children will drift in and out of my apartment but THOSE days are over.
In reality, THOSE days have been fading into the past even before you died. When we sold the house in Pasadena, our love nest, that held all of our children and the two of us comfortably from 1978 to 1996, we downsized, as they say. When we moved from Indiana to Pennsylvania, we downsized further and moved into an apartment, the same one that I am now living in alone. We saved the most precious objects, the knick-knacks from wonderful vacations, the books that brought us both so much pleasure and knowledge, the enlargements of your exquisite photographs that adorned our walls, the antique dishes and glassware from your mother and mine and the antique glass and pottery that we both collected but all of those things are just that – things – and will be gone one day and unless they stay in the family, they will be meaningless. I’m making a list of what child gets what items when I die including the beautiful rings that you loved to buy for me. Oh, how you loved me and lavished gifts upon me.
But today, almost a year since your death, I am giving away household items that I no longer need or will never use again. I’m throwing away the brochures from places we visited in Hawaii, California, New York, Italy, Nova Scotia and articles about the places yet to be visited. I’m giving away towels; serving dishes, cook books and linens. I’m breaking up housekeeping and breaking up is oh so hard to do.
