The unraveling

Souffle

One of the hard things about any task connected to Randy’s life is knowing that nothing is self-contained. I feel a sense of dread with every task because it’s like pulling a thread - one task leads to another and each has a series of memories and emotions that comes along with it.

The other day I realized that Randy’s iPad might have things on it that aren’t on his phone. So I found it and of course it was out of juice and needed to be charged. My phone cord didn’t fit so I took it around to the various charging cords all over the house and none of them fit. And then I remembered that his iPad has its own cord because it’s newer than any of our electronic devices. Randy used his iPad a lot, so the cord should have been plugged into a power strip under the bed so it could charge while he slept, but of course it wasn’t there. Did that mean I had unplugged it and put the cord somewhere? Who knows. Was it in the nightstand drawer? No, but there are the glasses he’ll never wear again and the cloth he’ll never clean them with.

We have MANY cords in the house and in the garage. They’re in drawers, in boxes, attached to outlets, and I probably don’t know what 90% of them are for. I was beginning to think that I would need to order a new power cord and wondering how I would know which type to order. Apple products have names that don’t make any sense to me: MacPro, MacBook, Mac Book Pro, Mac Air? I don’t even know what my iPad is called, never mind his - is the name on it somewhere? Are there numbers that will help me find it? This is the kind of thing Randy would know, the kind of thing I don’t know because I couldn’t bring myself to try to pay attention because someday soon he would be dead.

And there you go. I start with a simple task - get whatever is on Randy’s iPad - and suddenly I’m heading off in a different direction without knowing where I’ll end up, except that I know it will be sad.

After some thought it occurred to me that Randy hadn’t really been able to use his phone or iPad at the end - he was too scrambled when he came home from the hospital after that last pneumonia. So maybe the charging cord was in his hospital bag. Years ago Randy started keeping a bag in the closet packed with toiletries, clean panties, a list of his medications and dosages, eyeglass cleaner, and charging cords.

I went to the closet where the bag lives and I was confronted by what I call Randy’s pharmacy - two deep shelves filled with the many drugs he took to keep his lungs healthy and prevent his body from rejecting the lungs. And it made me so sad to think about how much he went through to stay alive when his lungs failed - the time, the sacrifice - and his lungs were fine and then cancer killed him anyway. Which made me cry - which I do a lot of.

But the cord was in the bag and I plugged in the iPad. And I was ready to begin the original task maybe an hour and several tissues after I started. Once the device was charged enough that I could open it of course I immediately went to look at all the photos. There are so many - photos of him, of me, of kids and grandkids, friends, the cat, the dog we used to have, funny photos of Trump, and an amazing number of photos of meals I cooked. I used to laugh at him taking pictures of food, of the various stages of cooking.

I spent hours looking at all those photos, remembering where and when they were taken, forwarding some to friends, and crying, missing him, blowing my nose, petting the cat because she’s wondering WTF. And I realized that as I throw things away, give them away, pack them away, I’m unraveling his life a little bit at a time. I’m doing it in increments as I can stand it because it’s breaking my heart.