Little Things

I made lemon scones a few weeks ago. When I went to bake one (I make and then freeze them, and then bake them from frozen when I have a craving), I searched the refrigerator for lemon glaze. I was pretty sure I’d made some for something else a while back, and I wanted to set the container on my stove top so the heat from the oven could warm the glaze.

I found the container pretty quickly, and then stood there holding it, staring at the lid. “Lemon glaze,” written in Sharpie on a piece of masking tape, in Dave’s handwriting.

This is the kind of thing that is hardest for me as I work through my grief. The big things, the holidays and birthdays and such, are hard, but you have some warning and can try to prepare for them. These little things, like seeing his handwriting, are what make my breath catch in my throat and my eyes well up.

(As an aside, I always loved Dave’s handwriting. I was very into pen pals from my youth until the late 90s, and because of that I really noticed and appreciated handwriting. One of the first things I told Dave after we met in person was how much I liked his writing.)

Then yesterday, I was out running errands and stopped to fill the car tank with gas. Out of nowhere, I remembered that the day I took Dave to the ER (which was the start of his last hospitalization that led to his death) he insisted that I stop first and put gas in the car. I’d completely forgotten about this.

He had asked me to take him to the ER because he got up from the couch and immediately started to fall. He made it to the kitchen table but was weak and woozy. I wasn’t even sure I could get him to the car, but somehow we did it. So when he insisted that I gas up the car, which had a half tank of gas already, I argued with him. I mean, I wanted to get to the hospital as fast as possible. But he insisted. Although it’s not like I don’t know how to put gas in a car tank, he had been the only one doing it for many years at this point and he had such a strong instinct to take care of me, even when he was so sick. He wanted to talk me through it, in case I had questions. And then he added, “And this way you’ll have enough gas to make at least five trips.”

I didn’t ask him to elaborate, but I wondered about it at the time. Five trips? To and from the hospital? I was really thinking we would go, they would give him an IV because he was probably dehydrated, and we would come home. I wonder now if he knew he’d be admitted, and figured he’d be in there for a number of days and I’d be going back and forth from home to the hospital.

So I relented, because he was really serious about this. I put gas in the car. And I did make exactly another five trips back and forth from the hospital to home before he died.

Even a little thing like a trip to the gas station can be emotional right now. I can accept that. It’s learning to sit with those emotions and not avoid them that’s the hard part.