Friday, December 5, 2008

Whats in the refrigerator?

It's a question I have used to stimulate conversation in the past for several reasons.
First, a lot can be learned about a person. Do they just have beer and ketchup?
Do they have gourmet ingredients? Do they have lots of leftovers?

I hate what's in my fridge. It's annoying. There is still a lot of Roger's crap. Stuff that I'll never use or eat.
Like spreadable butter. I guess I'll keep it till it expires. Maybe I'll have a visitor who likes it. I just hate the stuff. Too weird for me to have "butter" that is like that.

I also still have jerk seasoning we brought back from our honeymoon in St. Lucia.
It was not that expensive and I think I only got to use it once before the accident.
I want to use it again.. I think.
But I'm scared of the emotions attached to this silly sauce.
It also means I would need to cook a semi-real meal which I also have not done very much.

There is also some weird fruit smoothie thing that I won't drink.
Just one.
I don't have the heart to throw it out.
I wish someone would just drink it.

Someone during the accident brought some drinks to the hospital.
It is still in the fridge too.
No one likes it.
Again, I just wish it would disappear.

The pantry is full of his stuff too.
Some things I'll eventually use.
Like the million and one cans and packs of tuna.
We loaded up when a local grocery store was going out of business and it does not expire for a while.
Roger would eat it for dinner sometimes when I was eating my cereal for dinner and he wanted some protein.

So what does that all say about me?
Who knows.

1 comment:

Candice said...

What does it say? That you're normal.

I read one widow memoir--Love You, Mean It--where the woman describes how for months (years?) she had to keep the empty box of ice cream bars (or something) that her husband loved, despite that it was empty. And then she had a huge meltdown when someone accidentally threw it away, not knowing it was special.

I still have things in my fridge or pantry--despite that I moved--that were Charley's and that I've never touched. A bottle of hot sauce that he'd bought right before he died, spicey pickles, a box of tapioca pudding, some greek olives...and on, and on. I still automatically the same groceries "we" always got for several weeks or months after Charley died, until it finally dawned on me that I didn't need them anymore because he wasn't there to eat it and because I wasn't eating much of anything (much less cooking). And so some of those things sat, for years. I think I may finally have realized how silly it was to keep them and actually threw them out this summer...after 3. whole. years.

So you're not the lone freak here with the food thing....

If you're a reader and wanting grief books to help you feel more normal, Love You, Mean It is a really good one. And while I didn't love the whole thing, Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking had some amazing spot-on descriptions of things that I was doing but wasn't even aware I was thinking--like how I couldn't get rid of things because, as Didion writes, he was going to need them when he came back. I knew he was dead and never coming back, but the weird thoughts in my head sure said otherwise.

Hang in there....

Hugs,
Candice