things no one remembers now but me

• Our first night in our new apartment we had one $5 bill between us, ATMs were not yet a thing, it was Sunday night, no bank open, neither of us had a credit card yet. Exhausted from moving up three flights of stairs we walked down to the IGA grocery and decided, after much discussion, on a package of bagels, cream cheese, and a quart of Miller High Life. But we forgot to account for sales tax and in the end had to put the cream cheese back. We went home and drank beer and ate toasted naked bagels and watched the Cardinals beat the Brewers on the black and white television my parents still had from grandma’s days in the nursing home. Those were the salad days of Ozzie Smith and Whitey (Herzog) Ball, the Cardinals won and we slept that night in sleeping bags on the living room floor. Our kitchen had bright yellow formica that I thought was just awesome.

• the way you wanted a waterbed because it was so much cheaper than a regular bed, then would freak out about the cost to heat the water and so turn the heater off and layer sleeping bags between the icy bladder of water and the fitted sheet. the way, when P. found out I’d been living like this for more than ten years, threatened to hogtie you and take you to the mattress store, and how he laughed when I reminded him at the funeral, and then we clutched each other and cried and cried with all the leftover love we still have for you

• my first airplane trip, us going to Vegas one month before our wedding and me standing at the slot machines waiting for you to come back from the bathroom and someone asking me how much? me not realizing that my insistence on dressing up every night sent a different signal than I thought. Going up to the hotel room at 2a and staying up and watching It’s A Wonderful Night for the first time in my life, the lights of Vegas spread out before us

• eating my first correctly cooked steak, which you ordered for me at a restaurant, begging me “to please just this once let me show you the right way to have it, I’ll give you a thousand dollars if you don’t love it more than well done” and me giving in and being a total baby about the red juice being ‘blood’ ew ew and then taking my first bite and chewing and crying and chewing and nodding and chewing and agreeing it was sooo delicious and regretting all the well done meat I’ve ever eaten, really starting to bawl (but still chewing and smiling) because you loved me so much to make me try it and feeling absolutely angry about all the good meat I’d been missing, you just calmly smiling and saying “told you”

• you taking me home to live with you and your dad when my apartment was so full of roaches you found some in the toaster, and even dead in the freezer. It was my roommates place, I was just supposed to stay there for a week before moving to grad school, but you said you couldn’t allow it, and we spent the week riding your sister’s scooter around town meeting all your friends who you’d known since kindergarten, and most of whom I saw again at your funeral, C and L, P and M, K and R, everyone still coupled up. When I hugged each of them, we could hardly stand it.

• that time we said, let’s write down all the times we fought, and exchanged what we wrote, and it was the same thing, just that one time

• that time we walked into your grandma’s house and found her supine on the living floor, the surge of panic until we realized she was laughing, having gotten down there to try some sit-ups because “I have a bit of a tummy you know”. She was seventy, and when she farted as we each took a hand and pulled it nearly knocked us all to the floor it was so funny. You’re both gone now, I’m the only person in the world that knows that happened.

• that time we went to a book fair, miles and miles of tables of books, and we separated and walked around browsing and when we met up hours later found we’d picked up the same book

• that time you were planning to go on a company golf trip with jean shorts, ‘til I talked you into stopping at the mall on the way to the airport, and getting you a couple of outfits, you sneaking away to call me and thank me for saving you from yourself, then wearing those outfits almost exclusively for the next five years, always winking at me

…and that other time

all those times…

day 114