Gap

Yr Fthfl Srvnt is discovering a gap occurred just after my wife died.
Last year was the first year I got Christmas decorations up — that’s four years since my wife died.
It was partly because the YMCA in Canandaigua, where I belong, offered to help oldsters like me decorate for Christmas.
What they really did was find my Christmas decorations, buried under junk in my basement.
They strung Christmas-lights on my front porch railing, which my wife used to do. But they were short of time. I said I could put up my electric window candles myself.
I did ‘em again this year, but just the candles. Window-candles are inside — porch-railing lights are outside.
Magazines pile up next to toilets, so some piled up in a window-well next to my master bathroom toilet. The magazine piles have to be rearranged to put in the window-candles, and in so doing I noticed stuff I would have read but didn’t.
Then I noticed the magazine dates all were 2012 after my wife died. I was so devastated things I normally woulda done got shoved aside.
So there they sat five years awaiting my recovery. They’re mostly Trains magazines, which I’ve subscribed to constantly since late 1966. (I’m a railfan.)
“How did I ever miss this?” I ask.
One had a map of Pittsburgh railroads, and I vaguely remember that. Another had features on EMD’s E-unit, plus some lady becoming a locomotive engineer. Stuff I’m inclined to read.
I remember how unreal my wife’s passing was. She was the BEST friend I ever had; also my first female friend. I could tell stories; but I’ll spare you the boredom.
Only to say I was convinced by my parents and Sunday-School superintendent (also our next-door neighbor) I was completely unworthy of female attention. That all pants-wearers, me included, were SCUM.
Yet my wife actually liked me. This was contrary to what I expected. She actually chased me, although I didn’t know it. She was extremely shy. —She too had a difficult childhood.
So suddenly she was gone; the best friend I ever had. I’m not easy to live with, but she hung with me over 44 years. She kept liking me.
When she died a giant gap occurred. It was like after my stroke 24 years ago. Things seemed unreal. Still are somewhat. I plug along, but keep feeling I’m not in the real world.
So now I’m discovering the gap; the hole that opened after my wife died.
That E-unit thingy is gonna get read — five years late.

• I had a stroke October 26th, 1993 from an undiagnosed heart-defect since repaired. I pretty much recovered. Just tiny detriments; I can pass for never having had a stroke.