Painting without him

When I first started this whole "process" of grieving, something or someone suggested painting my interior walls, redecorating, or rearranging furniture to help make my space different especially since I am not leaving the home we shared together.
Well, Roger and I were already planning on painting our house to get rid of the standard lovely sand home builder color. We had mostly decided on colors and it was on the year-two year plan of things to do.
But Roger's death and the suggestion upped the timing.

I had finally decided on a pale yellow for the formal living room and dining room.
And on a whim, because that's really how you should pick paint colors, I decided to paint the arch that divides the room a darker yellow (feather gold per Home Depot).
I started painting today.

And like most things, the whole process brought me back to Roger.
He creeps into almost everything I do at every moment of every day.
So again, why am I surprised?! I am not sure.

Roger and I had painted his master bedroom about eight months into our relationship.
Someone told me when we started that painting a room together was a good test to any relationship.
And it was.
At first, we couldn't really figure out how to work together efficiently. Once we/I figured out that Roger was a better ladder person that me, that became his responsiblity. I took the lower half of the walls and I did a lot of the prepping.
That project tested our patience with each other.
I would just want to get through a particular step when Roger would be ready to take a break. He would say something about eating or going to the bathroom or some other essential bodily function.
But when I was doing a project, I put all those things on the back burner.
But we made it through. We painted the room in a day and a half. We still loved each other and all was good.

Today, I missed my companion. My teammate. The person who told me "Hey, maybe we should eat about now."
And it takes a whole lot longer to do without him.
I also remembered why Roger was the ladder person. I hate being the ladder person.
I hate moving the ladder around the room. I hate mounting and dismounting the thing a million times.

As part of the prepping process, I had to take down our "wedding niche" with our official wedding photograph, some candid shots, our guest signature frame, the basket from our honeymoon, and our unity candle.
Damn unity candle.
We are one. Yeah right.
He left me. He f#*%&ng left me.
What do I do with a damn unity candle now besides throwing it against a wall?

The cats were quite amazed at whatever I was doing to the wall. They watched me with a lot of curiosity. I later found some paw prints of paint across the tiles on the dining room floor.
Of course, that again brought me back to painting with Roger.
I paint barefooted so I can feel when I step in paint. But Roger being the ladder person wore shoes. He liked to track paint around the room too.

I hate painting without him.