100 days and her blue shirt

Katy died 100 days ago.

2 days (I think) after she died, I did laundry for some reason that I cannot possibly fathom or explain. She used to do the laundry; she always told me she liked doing the laundry, and I reluctantly went with it. I guess it was me getting right on with the fact that it was going to have to be me from now on.

This was the last time I did laundry that had some of her clothes in it. I dumped everything out on the bed and folded it, like we always did together.

I put her socks in her sock drawer, because… that’s where they go. She will never wear them again. But what was I supposed to do? Her socks go in her sock drawer. They’re still there.

I was finishing up and folded her last t-shirt. I picked it up to put it away. Then I stopped, realizing that once I did that - if I did that - I would never again put away any of her laundry. That would be it.

A gale of tears later, I left it right where it was.

Day 100.

It’s still there.

Grief had kind of let me up off the mat a little over the last couple of weeks, meaning I was only crying 2-3 times a day instead of 10-15, but it seems like it had a nice rest and now it’s refreshed and back. I’m not surprised, I didn’t expect it to be gone for long.

100 days is a long time. But it’s about 1% of the time I have left if I have a “normal” lifespan. 99% still to go.

I don’t know much. I don’t know anything, really. Except that the one person I could absolutely never live without, who I’ve loved since before I knew what love was, whose existence was my mental and emotional security since childhood, who I had 3½ perfect years with (outside of the cancer), including 17 perfect months of marriage to (outside of the cancer), is gone forever and will never be back. I will carry her in my heart for the rest of my life, and then I will die. That, and that alone, is certain.

I hope that the universe is bigger and weirder than I can possibly imagine, and that even though I don’t get to know it in this frame, there is a larger context in which it makes sense and in which it will somehow be OK, because our love cannot possibly be over. Why would the universe permit it only to destroy it so quickly? This can’t be the end of the story.

You’re not supposed to count the days, I’m told.

But tomorrow will be day 101.

I am hanging onto anything and everything I can hang on to. Desperately.