My Wife's Knitted Blanket

The grass beneath my feet is plush and healthy, and damp from the earlier rain. Today is the first nice day of the season; we’ve been getting snow on a frequent basis up until the beginning of April when the weather turned from snowflakes to frigid rain that stings like small needles when it hits your skin. It’s a welcome reprieve from the icy puddles of slush that stagnate in the potholes in the streets. I breathe in deeply through my nose until the back of my throat becomes dry and I wince, because the air is cold, and the cold has never been my favorite. 

I’ve brought with me a blanket today, because today is my wife’s birthday. When we married, I made the promise to her to always celebrate with her, no matter what. So, today I’ve brought a blanket, and one slice of cake, not for us to share, but for me to eat alone, because I’ve learned that if I leave food for her at her grave, the mice and the raccoons and the birds will get to it before she ever has a chance.

The blanket is one she knitted for me when she was sick. My wife took up quite a few hobbies when she fell ill, hoping that having something creative to do would bring her peace, or comfort, or even just simply something to do besides lie in bed and be sick. It’s made out of all one stitch, and a few of them have been dropped, and after six years since her gifting it to me, it’s begun to unravel, making for runs in the wool. I’ve considered learning how to repair it, but it hardly crosses my mind anymore. When she passed, I put all of her knitted creations, all the scarves and dishcloths and coasters, in storage because I could hardly bear to look at them and be reminded of what I didn’t have anymore.

I brought out the blanket just for this occasion, which I typically do. Maybe when I get home, I’ll leave it out of storage, because now that it’s been six years, I can hardly bear the idea of letting her memory leave me.

As still as it may seem to any passersby, the cemetery is full of life. It’s become a reflex for me to count my senses. One of the first things I learned in grief counseling was how to manage my anxiety. Five things I can see, four things I can touch, three things I can hear, two things I can smell, one thing I can taste.

There’s a prickly weed at the base of my wife’s headstone, dense clouds in the sky that obscure the sun, a field of marble crosses, withering white flowers on top of gravesites, and a stony mausoleum in the distance. My wife had twenty twenty vision, and I wear glasses.

I run my fingers over the amateurish stitches in the blanket—they aren’t any less soft because of that. My hand creeps to the edge of the blanket where I instinctively seek a new texture. The grass is cold and sharp, but my sweater around my torso is warm and soft. My foot is becoming numb from sitting cross-legged on the ground. My wife loved the tingly feeling from a limb falling asleep. I find it unbearable, so I uncross my legs.

Waves crash against the rock in the distance, birds sing and chirp and coo to each other, and a light breeze dances through the foliage on the trees and bushes. My wife would sit outside on the back porch in the morning if it was nice enough, otherwise she’d open the windows and let the sounds of the morning inside. She taught me how to recognize the sound of a mourning dove.

Petrichor and air from the sea just below the hill mix pleasantly in my nostrils, stirring within me an emotion I don’t try to put a name to. My wife loved candles that smelled like nature and clean laundry and rain, never artificial scents or foods. She was particular about that.

I take a bite of lemon cake—my wife’s favorite.

“Happy birthday, my love,” I say to her, six feet below me.

It’s been six years now. I have distance from her death, and have learned since then what it’s like to live without her. I’ve found that the world does not stop turning for one woman, as much as it feels like it should. It continues to spin, impossibly fast, so fast that it makes me dizzy when I think about it too much. The sun still rises and sets, the seasons still change, and I change with them, adapting to the absence of a part of myself that went when she went.

It’s hard. It’s always been hard, and will never stop being hard, but I find myself able to say that in six years, it’s gotten less hard. I can remember what my wife’s headstone looked like when it was fresh from the engraving company. Now, the marble is weathered, lichen growing up its sides. It’s not new anymore, and neither is the pain.

Now, the pain is more like a dull ache, like a wound that’s healed, a cut that’s scabbed over, scarred into a gnarled, raised keloid, a reminder of what used to hurt. I’m able to sit here without tears clouding my vision, but I can remember a time when I fell to my knees, hands desperately grasping for purchase at overgrown blades of grass.

I can remember praying until sleep took hold. Praying to God for something, something I can’t even remember. Either God wasn’t listening, or he’s not as benevolent as they all say.

Her death is still painful, but it no longer brings tears to my eyes. I no longer struggle to get out of bed, because she would want me to live my life, with or without her, and I no longer blame God. I don’t blame anyone, in fact, because it’s nobody’s fault. Blame, anger, bargaining, it’s futile.

Wishing things were different doesn’t change anything, and I’m proud to have learned that. She’d be proud of me, too.

I finish my cake, and I say goodbye, and I promise that I’ll visit again on our anniversary. I tell her that I love her with all my heart, hoping that she can hear me. I drive through the cemetery with my radio on, the volume low out of respect for the eternally sleeping, and I keep it that way the entire drive home. I sold my wife’s car two years ago, or else I would be driving hers. Her rosary hangs from around my rearview mirror, though, swinging lightly with each turn and bump in the road.

When I get home, I take her knitted blanket inside. Instead of going out to the shed with it to store until next time, I take it to the living room. It’s warm beneath my hands, soft and familiar, and I miss her so, so much.

The house is silent. Our cat lounges lazily on the armchair my wife would sit in every morning while she had her tea. I breathe deeply, and I drape the blanket over the back of the couch. It belongs.