So, I was painting some brake parts metallic purple and they looked amazing. My very first thought was, “I can’t wait to show bride these things.” Most everything I restore or build ends up with some purple in it. Partly because purple is the coolest color. Partly because Bride thought so too. She would have appreciated purple brake parts that no one would see. And on this car, she wanted to keep it pure from an observer perspective so hidden purple was the answer.
And at that moment it hit me. For just a moment I wasn’t living in August
of 2026. I was living in a past version
of my life, one where I would walk in the house holding a freshly painted car
part and she’d immediately understand why I was grinning. This still happens a lot to me. Random little things. Letting her know I Venmo’d the lawn dude for
another 12 weeks. Scheduling HVAC
maintenance. Seeing some dumbass doing
dumbassed things in traffic. Nothing
important. In fact, mostly the exact
opposite. Just the ordinary stuff in the
day to day of life that we spent years laughing about together.
My brain’s first instinct is to tell her about it. It’s like my brain is in two places. One knows she is gone, and the other still
expects her to be there. It’s like my
brain is living in two different time zones.
One time zone knows she is gone. One
still expects her to answer her phone, which I have left on. One knows I am doing this project by
myself. One still thinks she’ll be
sitting in the garage ponder chair giving me grief about something.
For those few seconds, time folds in on itself, in some
twisted sort of time paradox. I wasn’t
standing in the garage in August of 2026.
I was standing in one of the hundreds of ordinary days from the times
before. The kind of day where I‘d walk
in with some car part she didn’t really care about, and she’d smile anyway
because she knew I was proud of it.
What I have realized is how often this happens. It is a great reminder of how our day to day
together was, it was pretty damn good! It still
has a random feel sometimes and catches me off guard. Like when I pick a steak and always look at
the filet mignon, her favorite cut.
Sometimes those moments are comforting, sometimes they hurt and as I
have talked about here, sometimes both at the same time. I guess this is what 38 years of marriage
looks like after losing our partner in crime.
Not because I haven’t moved forward.
I feel I have, at least a little bit.
Not because I don’t know she’s gone, I very much do. But because over those 38 years, I built a lot
of habits and instincts. The instinct to
share, to call and to show my honey purple brake parts, because who in the hell
does that.
And for a few seconds every now and then, my heart still hasn’t quite updated to the right time zone.
Damn it, I miss that Gurl.
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