My wife left a couple days ago — it has been exactly 46 hours and 11 minutes — for a 16-day visit with family in another country. Our home feels depressingly emptied out.
When I read in the obituary section of a bachelor or an old maid — maiden lady, as my grandmother used to say — dying at the age of 80, I marvel. But I am puzzled.
How could such an isolated person survive so long?
Why would he want to live past 20 or so?
Driving home last evening, I took a circuitous route. Why rush? No one was waiting for me. It was dark inside, vacant and probably a little chilly.
Briefly, I considered sleeping in my office. But there isn’t an accessible shower.
Puttering around the house has become my new favorite pastime. Water the indoor plants when you remember. Water the outdoor plants no later than next week, if you remember.
With the sympathy-hire housekeeper having just left, it is time to turn the photographs around, again, so they no longer face the wall. Adjust the spigot in my shower so it is no longer aimed at the ceiling. Since we keep a kosher home, now that the housekeeper is gone, we can liberate the meat and milk dishes, which used to confuse her the same way weeks did when Tuesday came after Wednesday.
It is stunning how consistently tidy the house is now that my wife is gone, although that may not be the reason. By the way my clothes are arranged on the upstairs couch, at least she will be able to see how I dressed each day she was gone, and she won’t have to wonder.
When I opened the refrigerator, I thought I was looking at a re-run of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Last night’s pre-pre-prepared dinner tasted like biting into a stubborn can on a grocery shelf.
Who Hears the Telephone?
By 9 o’clock I was in bed. At 10:45 my wife called, at least according to the telephone records. When there is nearly a dozen hours’ time difference, it can take us awhile to achieve synchronization.
I revisited the refrigerator this morning. No magic elves had stopped by overnight to replenish the pathetic shelves.
I threw out a couple of gnawed-at deli containers. But that did not make the top shelf more appetizing. Aesthetically, it didn’t help, either. It merely reduced this evening’s unappealing dinner options.
Fourteen days to go.
The first morning Diane was gone, I walked into my favorite service station. My young friend behind the counter cracked, “Party time now, eh?”
It is — but only if you mean sitting on a freshly cleaned couch in an eerily silent home, one lamp burning while you leaf through three newspapers that suddenly feel stale.
After two vacant nights at home alone, my mind feels threatened by atrophy — and that seems like an excellent reason never to appoint a bachelor or a maiden lady to a position of much responsibility.
