As my great decluttering effort continues I am still finding scraps of paper with notes from Doug - often something as ordinary as a shopping list, sometimes a deeply personal note to himself. His handwriting in and of itself is a message from the past, the words add another layer of meaning.
When I was a child, mum read me poetry at bedtime, often from the anthology of her childhood, Other Men’s Flowers. (“I remember, I remember/ The house where I was born,/ The little window where the sun/ Came peeping in at morn (Hood)”) and dad told me stories about his childhood, growing up on a dairy farm during the Depression. (“When I was a little boy in Nova Scotia . . .”)
I don’t remember being read fairy tales, but I must have been (I do remember being so impatient to read them to myself that I rushed through some words. For several years all my princesses lived in “places” - which made sense - doesn’t everyone live in some place or another? I distinctly remember the day my grade one teacher, Mrs. Sears, asked me to slow down, and I discovered that Cinderella was attending a ball held not in a place, but in a palace . . .)
I believed in fairy tales.
For years I have held tight to that fantasy despite all evidence to the contrary. Unicorns, rainbows, good luck, hard work, a positive attitude, a stiff upper lip, a glass half-full . . . My fiction rarely ends with a classic HEA (happily ever after), but there is often hope, or the possibility of hope.
Doug and I had a fairy tale wedding. I would like to say our marriage was also a fairy tale - but that would be a lie. We were (we are) both human. Imperfect. Fallible. Though with the clarity of hindsight I see myself as the most flawed.
There were days I came home from work to discover the breakfast dishes still sitting in the sink where we’d left them hours before. There were occasions he didn’t meet me somewhere at an agreed time, or ever. Frequently I assumed he’d done nothing all day. It’s too late for me to apologise to Doug for being short tempered back then, when neither of us knew what he was dealing with.
I wish . . .
I wish . . .
I wish I’d known he was already struggling with memory issues. I wish we’d talked about it.
I wish I’d understood then how unimportant things like clean dishes were. I wish I’d not been disappointed by what I assumed was his lack of energy.
I wish . . . I wish . . .
Too late. Too late now to wish I’d reacted differently.
A short note recently rose to the surface of a pile. It's not one I wish to share. I must have said something unkind about his memory; he must have been heartbroken by my callous disregard for his feelings.
This is one thing I’m glad to know he’s forgotten.
I’m ashamed to admit I don’t remember that day, that moment, what I was thinking, why I lost my temper, why I didn’t keep silent, why I didn’t separate the illness from the person I loved.
That I broke Doug’s heart then breaks mine now.
I wish I had apologised immediately after I spoke.
I hope apologised immediately after he wrote the note.
I hope I asked his forgiveness. I hope he forgave me.
I don’t remember.
(And now it's too late.)
