Christmas Card and an Interlude

 You never know when you're going to get blindsided.

There are things that you live with for years, to the point that you don't notice them anymore.  An arrangement of furniture, the pictures of the wall, knickknack on the mantelpiece.   You enjoy having them there, but you don't think about them.

I have a cork board in my cottage with various things pinned to it - small samples, postcards, cartoons.  And a couple of cards that Bob gave me, probably some time in the 1980s (our SCA/Medieval period)

A few days ago I was working in there, and glanced up at them, and realized that I didn't remember what he had said in them.  The one pictured above turned out to have been a Christmas card.

    "Merry Christmas, my love.  It  seems like such a short time ago that we shared our first Christmas together.  And I fear that time will be too short for all the Christmases I want to share with you."

Kinda had to hit the floor and weep for a bit.

I found myself thinking today about having coffee with him.  It was a bright clear day in December, cool but not cold.  We ordered a couple of lattes at the kiosk and went to sit outside at a little table with a yellow umbrella.  We each had our books, and we sat and read, sometimes looking up to catch a glimpse of a smile, or reaching out to touch a hand.  When we finished, one or the other of us said "this is nice.  How can this be so nice?  It's too surreal."  Because we were outside on of the wings of Shands hospital, a couple of weeks before he was due to become a patient, there for yet another round of tests and evaluations.  We had finished one appointment and had a half-hour or so before the next, hence the coffee break.

We were always able to do that - at any given time, form our little bubble around us, a safe little area for just the two of us, no matter the circumstances.  It had been a three-hour drive there, and would be a three-hour drive back, like we had done the week before and would do the week after, and we were both frightened - but for that half-hour we could just sit, sip coffee, read, and relax.

And now my mind wanders to an earlier dinner.  We had been running errands that took longer than expected.  Bob had his model maker's meeting to get to shortly (sometimes I would go and sit and listen to the group, usually with my knitting).  We were hungry but there really wasn't time for a meal.  The meeting was held in one of the upstairs meeting rooms at Publix, so we just went to the deli to grab a box of chicken fingers.  We picked up a small bag of baby carrots, swiped a few packets of ranch dressing from the salad bar, and went to sit at one of the admittedly grungy little tables they had available in one corner.  We ate, chatted, and when we got up Bob commented "You know - that was actually quite pleasant."

We didn't know that day at Shand's that it would be our last time having a latte together.  That we would too soon stop sharing anything.  It's all those little quiet moments together that I miss so much.