26. an increasing divide

written 7 months and 18 days after

this T-shirt of his would eventually have so many holes in it and still, he would keep wearing it

Back when I started doing a few mornings a week at the apartment my sweet man and I shared the entirety of our relationship, I began to notice an increasing divide in the space.

As I worked up to being able to sit in the living room for a few hours, I spent most of my time, unsurprisingly, in the living room, which is also a seamless part of my writing corner and the dining nook of the open floor plan.

Gradually, those spaces began, not to feel comforting, but less charged with an immediate flood of overwhelming sadness. Part of this was exposure, yes, but part of this was also because I changed the actual appearance of the space quite a bit.

What I did not think about, as I did those mornings, was that there was an entire back half of the apartment that I had not attended to.

This occurred to me, though, the other week or so, when I found myself walking down the hallway, towards the room that used to be his study, and what used to be our bedroom.

I forget what took me down the hallway, I think I needed a pair of sweatpants or something, or perhaps I was watering the plants, either way, when I walked into the bedroom, for the first time I really saw the space.

Unlike the living areas, there is not much I can do to change the bedroom’s appearance. Within a few months of his dying, in fact, we had already entirely transformed our bedroom. This had come as a particular relief to us both as, for years previous to the change, our bedroom had been the second-most chaotic room in the house (second, of course, to his study).

Up until 2020, we didn’t have a bed frame and none of our bedroom furniture matched; it was all a mismatch of his old college-room furniture and my childhood dresser and end table. There was no art on the walls and three IKEA Billy book shelves stood beside each other, packed with my books.

The jumbled nature of our room had always lightly bothered us but as the pandemic settled in during the summer of 2020 and we rarely, if ever, left our apartment, I suggested that we make some changes.

“Oooo!” he said, excited. “Yes!”

In the end, creating our bedroom was one of our most collaborative projects, with the exception, of course, of our relationship.

He found our unique swirled teak wood dresser on a special sale because it was a floor model with slight markings on the top. After scrutinizing the ton of photos he sent me, I said, “Green light.”

When we installed the dresser, one day while he was still at work, I carefully oiled the entire surface of the dresser. Several coats and a few hours later, the marks that had knocked so much off the price had entirely dissipated. This time it was me that sent him photos, glowing at his praise as it came through.

“WHOA! Great job.”

Then, we picked out matching end tables, mid century modern, with legs that he carefully angled as he assembled the pieces. He bought a brass and black lamp for reading, to replace the portable camping light he used and with the help of my family, we sold his old dresser, my old bedside table and dresser too. I selected a hand-dyed French linen cover for our bed, which draped in smooth puddles down to the carpet.

He bought a print created entirely by artificial intelligence and framed it. I bought a print hand-lettered in New York and he custom-mat it for me. We set his Neruda coffee table book, which I bought for him in our first year of dating, on the new low dresser, and I arranged his and my geodes from when were children on a small shelf in the corner of our room. 

The final thing we changed was at his insistence.

I had said it would be madness to get a bed frame before we moved and, at first, he agreed.

But, then, he showed me a few online. He told me to imagine leaning back against a padded headboard, instead of the decidedly uncomfortable apartment wall that we had been leaning against for years.

“Imagine,” he said, half-signing the Lennon song.

I didn’t take long to change my mind. We piled into the car and went and sat on a bunch of different bed frames, ultimately choosing a dark grey one with a ridiculously comfortable, padded backboard. After it was delivered, and after he put it together (a process that turned him as close to grumpy as he ever got — which wasn’t very), he and I stood in the bedroom and looked around at our handiwork.

The bedroom looked completely different.

“I feel like we’ve gone keto and changed our whole lives,” I said and he laughed.

“It’s like a hotel,” he said. “It’s so fancy.”

Now, the room is exactly as we left it, except that it has been rearranged (a kindness done by my mother for me). Everything looks the same, but is set at an entirely different angle than before.

I sank down onto our bed, which used to face the mirrored closet and now faces the teak dresser and gallery wall he so carefully hung, with a level to ensure every print was perfectly straight. I turned from the art and looked down at the bed, caught a glimpse of the stack of our pillows, two on his side, two on my side.

My pillows were dark grey and his were pale grey. He used to call my side of the bed, “Grey zone,” and he declared that it was the better side. Often, I would wake up and his dark head would be sharing my pillow — “Hey!” I would protest. “You have your own side.” He would pat my pillows affectionately and said, “But it’s so nice around here.”

He loved floppy, loose pillows, which I never understood as a staunch supporter of firmer, downier pillows. The bed was perfectly made — a tic of his that we always disagreed upon. I never saw the point of making the bed only to unmake it by the evening. Still, he made it every morning.

I reached out to touch the pillows, his pillows, and remembered how, early in our relationship, I woke up in our bed, the one that didn’t have a frame, and saw his pillows, lumpy beside me, his body notably absent.

I checked my phone and noted that it was almost 1 a.m. on a weeknight. The bedside lamp was still blaring and I could see the kitchen light was switched on too, which was unusual.

I padded down the hallway to see what was going on. There was the sound of clanking.

In the living room, the innards of our kitchen covered every surface. All of our plates, glassware, silverware, knives, appliances, dish towels, and pots and pans were set in neat piles around our living space, cluttered under the dining table, lining the edge of the media console.

I walked into the kitchen to discover my beloved, dressed in a leather apron, yellow rubber gloves, clear protective squash goggles, with a red paisley bandana tied around his face. He turned to me, his eyes huge.

“Oh,” he said. “Did I wake you up?”

I stared at the carnage that was our kitchen. There were cleaning products littering the counter tops which had been so thoroughly cleaned that they could have been used for operating room tables.

“What are you doing?” I said. I pointed to the time on the oven.

“We have black mould,” he said. “It’s EVERYWHERE.” He gestured wildly.

I tried not to laugh, but did not succeed.

“Don’t laugh,” he said. “That stuff is dangerous. I tried to call HealthLink but it’s too late.”

Then, I really started laughing.

“You called HealthLink?”

“Black mould!” he said, scrubbing at the place where our microwave usually sat.

He told me that he had discovered a piece of toast that had fallen behind our toaster and it had been moulding. After that, he’d Googled and become convinced we were living in one big spore. I tried to explain, between guffaws, that a little bit of mould on a piece of bread did not mean the walls were teeming with it.

“Gloves down, Mr. Safety First,” I said. He grumbled but he was grinning.

“You are wild.” I pointed to our living room.

“I’ll take care of that,” he said.

I glanced around the kitchen one more time and shook my head.

“Classic,” I said.

Even then, even early on, I knew how much he loved to clean. Often, he would take hour-long showers simply because he would spend 30 minutes, with the shower water running, butt naked, spraying and scrubbing the glass and tiles down. Once, I came home and he was vacuuming the inside lining of our pillow sheaths. The inside. He had looked up from the vacuum when I came in and smiled, a charming, caught-out kind of Cheshire grin.

“Do you do this often?” I said.

“First time, I swear,” he said, and I almost believed him.

The black mould night, as he began to move our microwave and mixer back onto the counter, I tumbled back into bed. I fell asleep to the faint clink and scratch of him putting things back into their places.

He was always like that for me — the one who set things right. The one who made us a home.

When he finally fell into bed beside me, I woke up slightly because he leaned over and kissed me gently. He always did this. Even if it was entirely dark, he somehow found my face and kissed me goodnight.

I don’t know why I remembered that moment — the black mould situation — that first time into the bedroom. Maybe it was because of how goofy he seemed, kitted out in his gloves and apron, or maybe it was just the first time I really recall waking up and not finding him on his side of the bed.

I touched his pillows again. A wide, dark patch of my tears had bloomed, turning the color of his pillow cases almost the color of mine.

I can’t imagine how to find a way to be in the space on my own. I can’t change it, nor do I really want to and there’s just so much there, in our bedroom, that is not there anymore. It all comes at me so quickly:

Him, folding his laundry while I look on from under the covers. Him, tucking me into bed. Him, reaching across my body to turn off my light when I’m too tired.

Me, opening the window as soon as it is April because I love to sleep with the fresh air and him shivering, dramatically, using it as an excuse to sleep cuddled close to me, his head on my pillow. Me, filming him while he dances around our bedroom in his apartment, my laughter at his goofiness shaking the camera frame.

Him, spinning his arms like plane wings, glorying in the open carpet space when I finally pick up my clothes and put them away. Him, bringing me a fresh ice pack for my head while I cry into my pillow, seized with migraine pain. Him, taking photos of me asleep, framed in ways that can only be described as tender.

Us, telling each other each time we got out of bed at an odd hour, “don’t worry, just going to the bathroom.”

Me, tucking in beside him while he rubs my head when I can’t sleep.

Him, breathing hot ‘dragon breath,’ into my face. Him, turning his alarm off and off and off and off, until he sleeps through the alarm and I turn it off. Him, coming into the room while I’m napping and falling asleep himself; Him, snoring at night until I poke him in the ribs and he shifts onto his side. Him, coming home drunk and me pushing him out of bed at six in the morning to go to our workout class.

Me, coming home from seeing friends and walking down the hallway where the bedroom is glowing because he’s left the light on from me, and, even though he’s asleep, murmuring in it, “did you have fun, baber?”

Us, talking until the small hours, crying, laughing, making up, looking at memes, reading books side-by-side.

I don’t know how to get my head above all of it.

I wiped my snot on the sheet and longed to hear even the ghost of his voice say, “Gross, baber!” with equal parts show-horror and sincere admiration. I think I finally had to crawl out of the bedroom but I only made it as far as the hallway where I sat for who knows how long.

I thought about bridges. I thought about how if he had been there, he would have helped pull me up off the ground and pushed me gently towards the bedroom. Often, in our years together, he was the one who picked me up nightly, when I was too exhausted to rise, and steered me gently towards rest. I still don’t know how to do that—to continue or to rise—without him. Some days I feel that more than others. This day was a day where it felt impossible that I could keep on being.

Shadows were long on the carpet when I finally stood up because elsewhere in the apartment my phone started to ring. Somewhere, it turned out, someone was waiting for me and all I had to do was answer.

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