I Really Did Have it All

 

     This is what I'm used to seeing and what I now see all day every day and night.

     In years past, this is what I'd be doing: I'd commandeer the bedroom first and wrap presents and stuff her stocking. Then, when she was able to, she'd take the bedroom and do the same. We'd place the presents under the lit tree "with care" then I'd take out the pork loin so it would be thawed for tomorrow's dinner. If I remembered, I'd put the Riesling in the lettuce crisper to chill.

     This year, there's very little of that. To keep my hand in and to preserve a sliver of one of our Xmas traditions, I wrapped for my older son a Tibetan notebook bought at a town fair back in 2010, one made completely with Tibetan rag content. I wrapped it with a set of pens I also got him. My younger son, because he spent $500 on a handbag for his girlfriend at Nieman Marcus, is getting a gift card I know he'll need before his next payday.

     The three of us went to Boston on Friday night so he could get that handbag. After making it to Nieman Marcus with less than 15 minutes to spare, we went out to an overpriced Italian restaurant in the North End called Eatily, which isn't so much an Italian restaurant as it is a mini mall for Italian food. Since number two son was acting like the Aga Khan after getting paid that day, he footed the bill for dinner. I ordered some pasta with a Bolognese sauce.

     Taking the T Green Line back to Newton, I burst into tears as my sons sat on either side of me. Why? Bolognese was Barb's favorite sauce. For about 10 minutes I couldn't stop crying while a pretty young black woman stared at me. I never once took Barb to Boston much less that restaurant but just the sauce I had put me in mind of her.

     I'm not going to lie to you. This Christmas is going to suck and I sincerely cannot wait until it's fucking over. I'm sick of hearing Christmas songs because they sound cruel at this point. The singers almost sound as if they're sneering at me.

     I know some of you have lost loved ones. We all have. But every loss is unique and there's no complete overlap. It's like a Venn diagram. And while I am a writer who usually finds the words I need to express what I'm thinking and feeling, for once they fail me. I can't tell you or anyone how much Barb meant to me, at how deeply I was in love with her and why. At some point, it's like trying to describe color to a blind man or music to a deaf person.

     Every day, I still wear the ugly shirt Barb got me on December 23rd last year. It was the last one she ever bought me for the last Christmas we ever spent together. It's about five sizes too large and is plaid. I hate plaid. Always did always will. But that shirt she got me is the most beautiful one ever because she bought it for me, with her own money, because it was the last one she'd ever buy me.

     The rest of my presents are still in the paper bag they came in because she wasn't able to wrap gifts any more and hadn't been able to since 2020. I still haven't looked at them since Xmas last year because I just can't bear the sight of them.

     In the last novel I ever wrote, Hollywoodland, there's a scene in which the villain, Sarah Prather, meets her future husband at the Landmark Tavern in Hell's Kitchen in January, 1900. They spend the night together and the next morning, Sarah goes through his suit trying to learn something about this inscrutable man she'd bedded. She finds a tintype, a photograph of a young man, and discovers to her horror it's the man she'd murdered in Central Park just days before. She'd slept with the boy's father the very day he'd attended his funeral.

     She turns around and discovers him standing right behind her. He points out the two parcels that were found near his son's body beneath Huddlestone Arch in Central Park. She was with him that day right before she murdered him as he bought his father a pipe and a pound of pipe tobacco.

     The dead boy's father, Zeke, explains to her why he hadn't opened the parcels.

     “They found these parcels near his body, his blood still on one of them. Whoever did him in didn’t take his money,” he said as he faced her. “Just stabbed him over and over in the liver.” 

     “I am terribly sorry, Ezekiel. You don’t have to speak of this if you don’t wish to.” 

     “Naw. I suppose it helps to talk about it, Inga. I haven’t opened these presents because… I guess if I do, it’ll be the last thought Clem ever had of me and then once I know what it was, then he’ll be silent forever."

     That's where I am right now. Yes, I saw them, pulled them out of the bag a year ago tomorrow but I've forgotten half of what she got me. And I'm afraid if I go through that awful bag again, she'll be silent forever.

     Coming up on Christmas last year and for a few before that, I'd wonder if that would be the last one we'd ever spend together. And last year was the first we could no longer dodge that bullet that always had her name on it.

     I can't tell you how much I loved that wonderful woman, by far the best one that ever walked into my life. I can't tell you in words what those excellent reasons for loving her was. But they were excellent ones. For over 13½ years, I had it all. May we all be so lucky.