Nuts and Bolts

Today I walked into my office with a sheaf of stamped envelopes in my hand. While sipping coffee this morning, I had diligently filled out insurance forms for my aunt and for my husband, financial forms and health forms from my daughter's college, a verification form from my son's college and paid a bill for my mother. As I fed the letters into the outgoing mail slot, I realized not a single one of them had my name on it. I channel all these people.

Right now, I am anxious about my husband. He needs to make a doctor's appointment and he is resisting for some reason I no longer understand, since now I am all compliant and dutifully getting everything checked out myself. But yes, until very recently I wore that same cloak of denial, resisting hearing possible bad news, and then having to do something about it. So I understand. But I can't just let it go. I love my husband. I want to share everything that is to come with him. I want to play with our grandchildren and take trips with him and just putter around the house with him. So he needs to take care of himself.

Last weekend, at my uncle's funeral in New Jersey, my husband and my daughter had to leave the repast early to go to the airport to meet a friend from London who was arriving that afternoon. I stayed on so I could spend more time with my family, many of whom had traveled overseas to be there. There was laughter and the sharing of stories about family members here and gone, and I felt that sense of comfort and belonging I always feel in their midst. And yet, at a certain point as night began to fall, I just missed my husband. A part of me just wanted to be around him, almost like an instinctive yearning, to see him moving around the house, so capable and rooted. My play partner.

I want to say to him: You are not alone in this dance. You have responsibilities by virtue of the fact that you are loved—by me, by your children. You are so loved.