From the deep, dark secrets of early widowhood, Part Two.
Married women- and men, surely- it’s no secret that there are things about your partner that annoy the crap out of you. That’s life.
With Tony, well… we’ve discussed Tin Lizzie before. A hulking shell of a ute, who, between her and her plentiful accessories, took up my entire garage.
I don’t know why everyone was so surprised when, after Tony died, the first thing I wanted to do was get of the bloody ute, clean out our garage to get rid of all his crap- he was such a hoarder, never threw anything away (and that rope was laying there, that orange rope, for months, in amongst all that stuff, so sinister... why didn't I see that?). It was almost as if I was supposed to keep all that stuff, to mull over it. Some kind of shrine.
Why, when all it was, was something I'd never liked, which now caused me pain to look at, to think about...? I didn't want it to become a weight. I needed to do it, while I was still in shock.... because I knew it would hurt too much, become a useless attachment, if I let it sit.
It annoyed me when he was alive. That didn’t change, once he died.
Some things- the way he’d leave his clothes laying around (if I think about that, I can smell the scent of him on work shirts, laying on our bedroom floor)… things that annoyed before, the absence of them breaks my heart now.
But other things.. like his ute… well. As I said, I didn’t really like it when he was alive. Him being dead made it no different.