Pulling the Grief Trigger

Cory Days- #14


What do you do in the middle of the night when you can't sleep and you are missing your girl like crazy?


Well, if you're me, you tiptoe through the mostly dark house into the dining room, and kneel down in front of the wooden bench by the entry way.  On top of the bench, some seventeen months in counting, sits Cory's bright pink purse.


I moved Cory's shoes from their spot by the back door when I took them to Italy, but her purse is still where she last set it.  I didn't approach it earlier to move it, but just to touch it, maybe look inside, which is something I've done only a time or two since placing her broken phone case inside it carefully, and walking away.


Once, since the last book we'd been reading together was The Things They Carried, I set out to make a list of all the things she'd had in her purse, but I gave up pretty quickly, finding that it was too painful to go through the things she considered important enough to lug around on her person most days.


A little while ago, I knelt in the silent house, a cat rubbing up against my cold legs now and again, and just took a peek inside.  There was the bird zip pouch I'd gotten her on our last Christmas together.  Think my hand trembled a little as I unzipped it?  It did.  I looked inside to find an emergency pad, her house key on a key ring of baubles including a rabbit's foot, and her EOS lip balm. 


Nope, nope, nope.  Still too soon.


Hurriedly, as if I'd been caught pilfering through my mom's vanity as a little girl, I zipped it up, tucked it back inside next to the broken cellphone case, and backed away.


What is nineteen months to your heart?  Not a damn thing, people.  Nothing.


I remembered her as I touched her things; I did.  She could have been in the bathroom, towel drying her hair.  I wanted to grab her by the hand in her pajamas, and make a crazy midnight run to Family Fare so we could make a cheesecake we just happened to have a hankering for after too many episodes of Frazier on dvd, as we often did on the weekend or a holiday break.


I'd grab my purse, and she'd grab hers.  And we'd just go.  Partners in crime.