No one comes from nothing; we are haunted by our past every day. Months ago, while dancing with Joel at our local salsa dive/club I caught sight of a man out of the corner of my eye. He was wearing my husband's shirt. Surely, it was not his shirt; the shirt from Banana Republic he is wearing in a photo of us taken at a Christmas Eve dinner in Monterey, back almost four years ago. But I was still near stopped in my steps, as I had given that shirt away to a local charity thrift store just before seeing this man, this salsero, the one dancing away in my dead husband's shirt.
In the beginning it happened a lot. I would see him driving on the 405 freeway, or hear him around the house. But he is gone. Gone from my life after three and a half decades. And as days pass he is even more so. Still, I sit at his desk, at my business, with much of him around me; his handwriting on files and file boxes; his Cholula sauce still in the refrigerator; the reading glasses at the bottom of a desk drawer. And yet. And yet, he is gone.
Sandra passed away two and a half years ago, and my mom, just two. Eighteen months since he has been gone. I live alone. And I am different. "Funny," he had said to me. "You used to be afraid to be alone." And sometimes still. But I come home late, after meeting a friend, or dropping J off at his home in Agoura Hills. Mostly, I have remembered to leave lights on. I don't always remember to close the gate. But I do my best as days, months, and now more than a year has dropped off. And I am leaving the business. Retiring.
My therapist speaks to me about moving on. My pilates trainer and friend talks about being mindful and present. You can get stuck, so you try not to. You try to build new memories on top of the ones that will always be there. You try to wipe what was bad, or, at the very least, let it go. Drop. In the beginning it was navigating a moguled course. There wasn't a flat space to catch my breath nor look around. You're strong so many people repeated. I didn't feel strong. I don't feel strong. Joel tells me that I don't have to feel strong; that people tell me that because I get up every day and keep going. I run the business, I administrate my mom's trust, and I do my best to keep up a house that is too much of everything.
Moving on means making decisions, not just getting up every day and going, strong or weak. I will try to make decisions before the end of the year: to stop being sad; to be more thoughtful to the people who mean a lot to me, especially Joel; to try to get on the road. I will try to sleep, laugh, and dance more and more. I do understand that moving on means deciding to live, and trying to really live each day. I am ready to move on. Or, as I have been told to think, I choose to move on. Are readiness and choice different? Must they come conjoined in this process? Regardless, I fear both are wishful thinking at this point in time while there are still the dancing ghosts who are wearing his shirts...
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