I always said it would be a cold day in hell before my husband learned how to put away his stuff and clean up after himself.
And sure enough, it’s cold out, and I’m in hell. But he still didn’t learn how to do those things. Seems he’ll never get the chance, either.
We just got back from the funeral.
I’ve cried so much over the past two weeks that my head aches and I’m all out of tears.
I’ve been so caught up in the chaos that followed the accident and the funeral, that I luckily haven’t had all that much time to myself.
But now I’m sitting in an empty bed, looking at a hamper without any clothes lying on the ground next to it, and I’m praying to God that this is all some kind of horrible nightmare that I can wake up from.
But I won’t.
And now I desperately wish I could have my husband and his sloppiness back.
Because now I know what it all means.
You see, he constantly was “losing” his keys because I was always putting them where he belonged. Which I’d inevitably roll my eyes every time I found them on the counter or on the couch or wherever he dropped them.
But now in the silence I realize that he was dropping them where he stood because he was walking in the door from work and running to pick up our two-year-old daughter as she screamed, “Daddy!” at the top of her lungs. Keys get in the way when you’re spinning your little girl above your head, so he had to drop them then and there.
Why was that something that would ever bother me?
I also noticed how there wasn’t a stray dish to be found around the house. This is partially because his family has been over every day since the accident to help take the load off and to keep the kids busy. But now I wish I could find a bowl with milk film at the bottom of it on the coffee table. Cereal was his go-to midnight snack. And whenever he’d get out of bed to comfort one of our kids if they woke up crying or if they were sick through the night, he’d always stop by the kitchen on his way back to bed and fill up on cereal.
And somehow those bowls bugged me before.
And let’s not forget about that damn hamper sitting perfectly in the corner of our room, not a sock or pair of underwear anywhere on the ground next to it.
He either had the worst aim or he was the most forgetful person in the world. But those clothes never quite made it into the hamper. And how quick I was to snap a picture of his dirty clothes next to the hamper and send it to him via text while he was at work with the caption, “notice anything wrong with this picture?”
I could have been sending him a love note or a simple kissy emoticon. But instead I let the minor annoyance of some clothes on the side of the hamper get to me. Now, as I think about getting up, getting the kids fed, and getting myself ready without my wingman there to help herd these cats, I suddenly realize how much help he was. And that maybe he was too busy helping brush our five-year-old’s teeth to notice his smelly socks missed their mark.
I want the mess back. I want the chaos. I want the good, the bad, and everything in between about my husband back. But that’s not going to happen. And I’m left to think about how much I let the minor little things get to me. And I’m left to wish I could have him bug me just one last time.
