I’ve been working on the office. The little box room where Seb would spend each day. The confusion of wires and myriad books has changed. Things have been stored, I have put him away; collectables wrapped and preserved for a time when LP will resist the urge to pull them apart. They are all hers. It has taken weeks. Little by little. There is a world for his comic books created in the cupboard space next door. I can stand in it and touch the sides. You could fit Batman and Robin in there; they’d push against the walls as they closed in on them, resisting the mechanism with open palms- panicked by the notion of being squashed by their legacy.
This task has not been undertaken lightly. I felt so many things. I made such effort to get it right with the acute knowledge that whatever I did would only be right for that moment and if I was lucky perhaps a little longer. I didn’t want his space to become like a school boy’s bedroom; preserved in the state he left it in when he went missing in 1982, glanced at in half-light accompanied by a long sigh.
I have come to acknowledge that all of this activity is a product of my apparent hope. I require space. I have things to do and my own legacy to work on. I am moving forwards. For my soundtrack I’d like some brass now; the past three months have been such solemn strings.
There is a thread than runs through it all. A baseline of sadness; a hum. Each day I draw lines all over it. Peaks and troughs. There was a time when I couldn’t think beyond today, but now I can see next year and I want it. I am vaulting over December in favour of the tomorrow that has twelve shiny new months, rather than those I’ll leave behind this year. They stink. Death all around. The end of the year can do one.
It seems unfair that there isn’t a set of instructions for young widows. Let alone young widows with children. It’s a strange feeling to climb the ranks in such a horrific way; the reluctant survivor. I’d like a code of conduct.
When you reach a point when the person you loved has really gone and have spent months clinging to every memory, there is a time when out of nowhere you seem to be able to just put down what you’ve been carrying. Their personal possessions become just things. You forget their t-shirts carefully tucked under your pillow and are surprised to find them there. This must be the brain at work. Seb has been preserved and is resting in the pantry with a date stamp. I am saving myself.
Our girl remains at the centre. I wonder what will happen as she grows. She is sick of the way things have been- she wants her freedom back; she wants to ride the bus, browse the shops and sit on a bench with a bun. She’ll remember her daddy then and she’ll tell me all about him while happily gnawing at pink buttercream. If I want to find Seb, I know where he is; because he can’t be found in things any longer. Lost Property.