I’m sitting at my kitchen table today, sifting through strewn credit card statements and dog-eared receipts attempting to reassemble our life in 2008. I’m surprisingly nostalgic. Ah, that dinner at Le Trois Cochons in Paris, that great lunch with mom in Sarasota. Some shocking trends emerge. Did we really spend that much on wine? Geez, we went to Lowe’s a lot.
Then, I just stumbled into April 2008. On American Express, a line for Mike’s flight to Cancun, where his dad had a stroke. On the Visa statement, my crazy expensive same-day flight to Miami, where they flew Floyd in for emergency surgery that he never received. Here’s the crumbled receipt for the Thrifty rental car that I picked up at the airport, filled with hope that his dad would be OK. The same one that we dropped off a week later, dazed and exhausted after our final good-bye that morning.
In the middle of this, I realized that Easter marks the one-year anniversary of his death. It made me sit back, and not knowing what else to do, feel for the keyboard. Doesn’t Easter symbolize rebirth, renewed hope and expectations? I want to believe that. But now, I feel like I’ve been sucker punched with grief, delivered by otherwise benign slips of paper.
As I seem to do in all moments of distress, I need to go cook. I need to be in the kitchen, rooted firmly in my clogs. I made my favorite lamb recipe once for Floyd, and he loved it. So this one will be for him.
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