Tough Couple of Days

It’s been a tough few days, and it started when I called her phone so I could listen to her voice message just to hear her vice again.  When I did, it sort of put me in a spiral, sorta feels like an out of control carousel that I have not been able to figure out how hop the fuck off.  I never liked carousels, and even less the last few days.  The loneliness has been a bit louder, and I am not a fan. 

Not hearing her voice, not being able to kiss her, not being able to touch her, not be able to hold hands, not be able see that little smile she would give me when I kissed her on the cheek and said “Mornin Beautiful”.  I don’t get to thumb rastle, I don’t get to touch each other’s fingers when we were looking at the TV, not being able to pinch her butt when she was cooking or doing something serious. I miss staring into her eyes and telling her I loved her and spooning when we went to bed.       

The loss of touch, of intimacy, not necessarily the sex part but the closeness part, has been the hardest part so far and the last few days have been particularly difficult.   I think because it is finally sinking in, maybe I am coming to the realization that my life is something very different now. 

Our life together was comfy, cozy, and deeply known to each of us.   It was hard to tell where one of us started and the other one ended.  We were one with the force.  It was not the kind of comfy that was missing any sort of adventure or excitement.  It was more like the comfiness of just knowing how she would show up and just be her in almost any situation, and her knowing the exact same thing about me. 

That intimate understanding of my favorite human, that comes with 38 years of knowing each other.   We knew all of it about the other one, the good, the bad, the ugly and the simply amazing.  And she had the amazing part dialed in, it was not something she had to do, it was simply who she was.      

Maybe this is the part where my new reality really starts to sink in.  Maybe this isn’t just a moment I’m trying to get through, maybe this is the life I am going to have to learn how to live.  I don’t just miss her, I miss us, and it fucking sucks!  

Bride and Her Control Chair

Bride had what she called the control chair.  If you have ever watched The Big Bang Theory, think Sheldon’s spot, only he was an amateur at it compared to Sandy. 

I got to laughing today about it, which felt nice to do, so I thought I would write about it.  IT felt good, unexpectedly good.  I think the funniest thing I learned over the last few weeks about it was that none of her friends even knew about it.  This was evidently something only shared with me, but it has been a thing since we lived together in the barracks rooms at the Naval Radio Transmitter Facility, or NRTF in acronym or NavRadTransFac.  Our call sign was NSS9 and we were  right across the Severn River from the Naval Academy.

I will admit now that I am not sure I know all the rules that went into determining how a control chair was selected, but I can share what I do know.   So, every place had one, in our home she had four of them, each selected with purpose, I say purpose because room layout and décor were oft times selected based on the location of the control chair, I never did fully understand the full matrix.   

They existed in other people’s homes, and on back porches.  They existed in hotel rooms, and in beach chairs and they existed on airplanes.  She even had one in our front yard at Smithlandia, hahaha, in the middle of the wilderness that one always made me laugh.

One thing I did notice, although it was not a hard and fast rule, is that she was mostly to my right, we could hold hands and we’d thumb wrestle if something needed to be settled.  Which seemed odd because she was always on my left when walking because we deliberately decided those hands felt better than the other ones when being held.  We had reasons for all sorts of silly things.

She also slept on my left side, even in that barracks bunk bed we started out in.  Yeah, we snuck into each other’s rooms in the barracks pretty much every night, me at the top of the stairs and her at the bottom, boys upstairs and girls downstairs.  Hahaha.  I guess in some ways that was a control spot as well.

The control chair at the dining room table was always the one closest to the kitchen.  She even had control chairs in restaurants.  She would not have a view of the kitchen or the bathrooms.  I would not even be able to count the number of times we swapped tables.  Hahaha, she had high standards and did not budge on them. 

I have been spending time in her control chairs, and Larry seems to like that and it makes me smile thinking about what her reaction would be.  I do know it would include a look like this one, a look I’d do about anything to see again.