Kayaks

 It's January, and I've slipped back into the disconnect where part of me is here, and part is in Gainesville with Bob.  I look at my car in the driveway and wish I could just get in it and go home - but home was wherever Bob was, and doesn't exist anymore.
A random line from a poem that drifted by:  How heavy nothing weighs when it is in the shape of you.
Or the line from the Tim Minchkin song:  There's a hole in my heart that the light passes through, and the pattern it makes is the shape of the absence of you.

It was all brought home again today.  Rik and Christy came over to  return the cat condo they had borrowed, and then we loaded up the kayaks into his truck; he knows someone who wants to buy them, and he's going to take care of that for me so I don't have to deal.

We bought them just at 20 years ago.  Bob was starting to have trouble with his legs (it didn't help that his ACL was missing) and we couldn't take as long of hikes as we used to.  So we bought a couple of kayaks.  We took them other places a few times - like the Wakulla River - but mostly we just used them on Lake Talquin.  There were times that we'd get the urge to go out even in the afternoon for a couple of hours (against Bob's usual feeling that everything always had to be done First Thing In The Morning) - it was easy to toss them in the back of the truck, and the landing was only a few miles away.

It's at this point I should post a few pictures of us in the kayaks - I know they're floating around in a folder on the big laptop, or on a thumb drive somewhere.  Some day they'll pop up.

I love the way kayaks glide.  Bob called me his little water bug.  Sometimes I'd pack snacks, or a picnic, and at some point we'd pull the boats together and nosh.  We'd spot alligators and moor hens and blue herons, watch young osprey learning how to ride the wind, and one time just over our heads a bald eagle and osprey were fighting over a fish (which eventually got dropped so they both lost).

I took mine out once since I lost Bob.  It was still beautiful out there, but I couldn't stop trying to spot him somewhere, feeling so alone.  And then there was the problem of getting it back into the truck.  I had been able to put it in the truck to get there - but that was on level ground.  At the boat ramp, at an angle, it was almost more than I could manage; I was starting to wonder if I would have to just sit there until someone else came along to use the ramp and I could ask for help (that thought was enough to give me the oomph to get it in there).  And, of course, I have since parted with the truck, and even if I got a rack for the Honda I wouldn't be able to get it up there.

I think things should be used.  A boat that never sees water has lost its reason for existence.

So they're gone.  I did hug them goodbye.  I hope someone loves them as much as we did.  I was expecting it to hurt more than it did, but it was more of a feeling of resignation.  I came inside, had some tea and a couple of Gill's scones, and just sort of shut down for a couple of hours.  It was just another example of how much of yourself you lose when you lose your life partner.

So yeah - I'm a little down.  Starting to sleep on the couch again.  Starting to stay up until 1 or 2 a.m.  But the good thing about this blog/journal is that I can look back at previous years, to see how I was.  And I'm always like this - and I always see it through.  I'm just going to miss the idea that I might take my kayak out again some day (of course, I might take another one out, maybe a rental, but it won't be this one, and I'll never look across the flats and see Bob paddling towards me)