I looked around, picked up an old snow globe. It had hearts in it, hearts and snow and scrawly font on the bottom. My Darling Wife.
He took it from me and shook it, holding it up to the light as the hearts swirled. “I gave her this at the beach, one rainy Christmas when we were first together. She liked silly novelty toys, and desk ornaments, silly random things that I never saw the pleasure in. But I did see the glint in her eye when she spotted this amongst the tat in one of those cruddy souvenir stores.” His eyes were wistful, and he laughed and the sadness in it hurt my heart. “ She wasn’t even my wife then. You’d think I’d bought her the earth the way she reacted.”
“That’s really nice,” I said.
“And gone, Helen. It’s over.” He put the globe in the box with everything else. “Nine years and it’s still like she never left. She’s everywhere. Her stuff and mine, still mixed up together so I wouldn’t have to face she was never coming back. I couldn’t bear the thought of her not coming back, Helen. It was easier to be weaker, easier to let her stay.”
“That’s not true…” I said. “You’re just… you miss her.”
“I’ve been living in a tomb.”
“No…”
“At best it’s a museum. The Anna and Mark museum.” He sighed again and picked up a handful of old postcards. “Her friend, Dawn, used to send her one of these every holiday. Anna would do the same in return. Always stupid ones, nothing to do with the location.”
He flicked through them and his hands were shaking. “I didn’t think this would be so hard.”
“It’s ok,” I said. I reached out a hand for them, hoping, just hoping he’d let me in. “I can help. I want to help.”
“I wasn’t going to pack up everything, but everywhere I looked there was more. Always more.”
“It’s ok,” I said again. “Really. I can help.” He looked at me and I risked a smile, just a little one. And he let go of the postcards, gave them up to me. I put them in the box, neatly and safely, tucking them in beside some other letters.
“She was my whole life,” he whispered, and it was a horrible hollow sound. “Everything. When she died, I died, too. I just didn’t realise it.”
“But not now,” I said, and my voice sounded strange and hollow, too. “Not anymore.”
He choked back his grief and blew out a breath. “I want to make a new life. With you. I want to live again. I want to fill this house with new trinkets, new stupid memories, new clutter and tat and life.”
“I’d like that, too.”
“Help me.” He pressed his forehead to mine. “I want this done, but every memory hurts. It feels like she’s dying all over again. In my memories, in this house, in the things she loved.”
“She loved you,” I said. “She really loved you, and she’d want you to be happy. I know she would.” I brushed a stupid tear from my eye. “I know she would, because I love you, too. And it’s what I’d want.”
“There’s so much here. So many memories… It’ll take all night…”
I wrapped my arms around his neck and I cried. Cried for his grief and his pain, and the beauty in the new life he wanted, for us. For me.
It took all night. We moved from room to room, slowly and steadily until the sun came up and the crows outside greeted us to a brand new Boxing Day.
I asked him about every single item, every single memory, and I listened as he lived them one last time before they were packed away.
I heard about first dates, and holidays, and little quirks, and Anna’s dreams and her ambitions and her pet hates.
And her loves. I heard all about those.
I heard about their arguments and their reconciliations. How Anna would fly off the handle, erupt like a little firework, only to still again at the touch of his hand. I heard how he learned how to love her, how to hold her, how to make it all better again.
And it all choked me up. His pain choked me up.
It choked him up, too.
And some memories broke him. It wasn’t the big ones, that he’d relived over and over again. It wasn’t his wedding day, or their first kiss, or the time he got down on one knee. The pain was in the small memories, the lost memories, the memories that sprung from the back of cupboards to bludgeon him and cut him and make it all real.
I cried openly for his loss, and for the woman whose life I was coming to know. I cried for the woman who’d loved the man in my arms, and loved him well enough to leave him broken in her wake. I cried for his broken heart, and the years he’d lived alone and lonely.