My wife passed away on a Tuesday in February, which I remember because Tuesday was the day we always drove out to the farmers market in Almonte together. Thirty-one years of Tuesdays can settle into a marriage so quietly that you do not realize they have become the frame holding your life together until one of you is gone and the frame is still standing there, empty. After Marguerite died, I still drove out there sometimes.
I did not always buy anything. Some mornings I simply parked near the edge of the lot, where the gravel gave way to winter-brown grass, and sat with a coffee cooling in my hand. I watched people carry canvas bags of apples, jars of honey, and bunches of flowers wrapped in brown paper.
I listened to the low hum of ordinary life and let myself feel like I was somewhere we had been together. That is the kind of thing you do not tell people because they worry about you. They tilt their heads.
They suggest groups, hobbies, trips, dinners, anything that might make grief look more manageable from the outside. But grief does not follow a schedule. It does not care how many months have passed or whether the calendar says you should be better by now.
I was sixty-three years old, and by then I had learned to let myself feel what I felt without apologizing for it. My son—I’ll call him my son because that is what he is, even now, even after everything—his name is Spencer. He was twenty-nine when all of this started.
Good-looking kid. Always was. He had Marguerite’s eyes, that clear steady look she used to give people when she wanted the truth and was willing to wait for it.
He grew up watching me work long shifts as an electrician for the city of Ottawa and watching his mother stretch a grocery budget across three people while still making every birthday feel like an occasion. We were not poor, but we were careful. There is a difference.
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