One of the universal truths about human beings – and we are not shy of universal truths here - is that some people are very much better at ‘tidying’ things than others.
When faced with a major change in life (like a terminal diagnosis) some of us will immediately reach for sock drawer and begin the long task of corralling those maverick socks and reuniting them with their long lost partners. We might then discretely burn the odd embarrassing letter and delete some numbers from our mobile phones. We might do this, not because we have anything very much to hide, but just in case it might cause distress and confusion later – very, very much later, we hope.
(There are probably extremely tidy people who have lots to hide who never have this problem with socks and the other loose ends in life. They, presumably, cover their tracks and sort their socks as they go about their duplicitous way. If there are such people, I don’t know them.)
And then there are the others who don’t tidy at all. They don’t because they think that those in the medical profession are all lying sods and they are going to live forever – or at least for another thirty years.
Our Hero was in the latter category, as you will have guessed.
This has left the grieving ‘widow’ with some problems on her hands, both practical and emotional.
While I ricochet about in what might pass for life, trying to hide from the world this howling, maimed creature that is my grief, I am having to ‘tidy’ things up.
And what tidying there is to do.
I think that the old bank statements and ‘final demands’ date back to about 1997. There are sacks of the stuff lurking, mouse-nibbled in the garage. However, clearing the garage has to be done because the studio also has to be cleared, and where else is everything to go? The lease on the studio will have to be given up and there are more stacks of papers there that will need to find a home in the garage, where they, in their turn, will be mouse-nibbled. (I will not even mention all the paints and brushes … and so forth.)
But, as I blunder through all the bags and boxes, I find old birthday cards, anniversary cards, and letters, written to each other very long ago.
And then there are the forgotten photographs – the ones taken, so casually, at a Christmas a decade ago, or at the launch of a new business. As I unearth these things, I find that my memories are being telescoped, compressed, and the very young man I first met, and all the men he became, are being collapsed into one. And all these images feed my grief. I miss all those men.
However, there are other things that have been unearthed. There is the photograph of him with his arms around another woman. There are the unknown numbers on the mobile phone. And there is the scrap of paper that has, very carefully written upon it, Monica’s number.
Who the hell is Monica?
There is whirl of activity as I really start tearing the garage apart, and the bedroom, and the cupboard under the stairs, and every other possible nook and cranny. I search for evidence of some husband I didn’t know I had. There is a terrible feeling of vertigo as I seem to be swaying about on the teetering edifice of what had seemed a marriage build on the firmest of foundations.
Part of me knows that this is all nonsense – that really there is nothing to fear, but I look nonetheless. It is almost as if I want to find something which will prove that he really wasn’t such a wonderful husband, that he really didn’t love me as much, and then, perhaps, I won’t miss him quite so terribly.
However, I find nothing else incriminating and, when I have calmed, and the flurries of paper have settled, I realise that the photograph is not so compromising after all.
Finally, I have the courage to phone Monica.
Monica, it transpires, is a client who has patiently been waiting for Our Hero to do a job for her for months. She sounds rather kind and elderly.
Part of the problem, of course, is that Jonathan is not here to answer those questions that have arisen as I have been going through his things.
Part of the problem is that grief is a sort of madness.
There is a lesson for us all in this, somewhere. Perhaps we all need to do a little more than just reach for the sock drawer, and try not to leave questions unanswered.
PS The Hounds do not seem to mind their very un-cool old Ford Focus estate that we now rattle around in. Phew.
