Between the Tears

Three months after Big Sweetie died.

A torrent of sadness leached the strength from my legs. I sat on the stairs to let the hardwood ground me while I waited out the storm. When it passed, fatigue followed, leaving me motionless, a few steps above my living room. Bent over from weariness, I cradled my chin in my hands, and stared out at nothing in particular.

A piece of driftwood on the bookshelf came into focus. Ben had picked it up from a creek bed after a retreat, and I remember him hauling it into the trunk of the car. A piece of driftwood the size of a microwave—one of the first gifts he’d given me.

Above the driftwood hung a framed photo of of us taken at a friend’s wedding, my hand on hubby’s cheek. Ben had copies of it all over the house, I’d find them when I puttered—taped on the back door, buried under piles of Dollar General receipts on his desk, in a vanity drawer, speckled with toothpaste and its edges curled from moisture.

My gaze landed next on an intricately carved faux ivory figurine of two Chinese men on a little boat, poling across a river. Atop another book case sat a Cherokee carving of Red Hand, who blesses your house and people. He’d bought it at a powwow, fighting through his timidity about claiming his Cherokee great gram. Behind Red Hand was an oversized wooden plate he’d bought, which for him held Zen symbolism. A painting of Don Quixote, Ben’s favorite story, because he’d viewed his entire life as following an inexplicable quest. And a bear—his animal totem— carved from golden oak. We’d bought the bear from a chainsaw artist in Durango, Colorado, who swore he’d never work in oak again. Too hard and too heavy, which proved to be true as we struggled to get the forty pounder home on the plane. Now The Golden Bear occupies a place of honor in our house, greeting visitors at the front door.

Big Sweetie held on to most things simply because they’d been free or cheap, but what I saw around our living room were the things he held in his heart.

I smiled.