The Ties That Bind...

Jim has been gone since July, I’m not even in the middle, I’m still at the start, and living through it as best as I can. But what I can’t do is leave here. I leave during the day to go to work, run errands, and that’s fine, because I always end up back here, at home, the place we lived together for over 25 years. He is everywhere. And not just here, in our apartment, but all the places that make me think of him, and how time goes by too fast. Just passing a furniture store we shopped in years ago makes me feel that day so clearly, it took me by surprise, to be crying as I’m driving past a place I haven’t been in 25 years. Nothing should really surprise me, but sometimes it does.

I will eventually move back home to Long Island, even though it hasn’t been home in 30 years. This apartment feels more like home now than it ever has, which makes so little sense. For years I felt the pull to “go home”, where my family and friends and memories live, but so many are gone now, and the last time I was “home”, all the places familiar to me just made me sad, sad at the passing of time and the losses and how I still want, more than anything, to go back in time.

But now, even thinking about being gone from this apartment for more than a few hours, makes me want to lock the doors. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but you know what I mean. Do you? I don’t even know if I know what I mean.

I’ve had friends ask me to come and visit them, in Chicago and South Carolina and Long Island, but I can’t do it, I’d feel like I was abandoning him. I used to go back “home” every Christmas, and even when Jim stopped coming, I still felt the pull to go home for Christmas, leaving him alone. And yes, I see the irony, but then, it was his decision not to go, and as much as I hated leaving him alone at Christmas I couldn’t not go, and he knew that.

So here I sit, watching tapes and listening to “Hey Mel” (a radio show he did in the late 1980s) and missing him. I’m going through VHS tapes from 25 years ago or more, looking at photos from before I knew him to when we met to just a few years ago. I’ve started transcribing a book he wrote in 1993, and loving every minute of it until my fingers cramp. This, I can do. I keep finding more of his writings (don’t misunderstand, our files are very organized, I just haven’t really looked at them in years and didn’t remember how much he wrote). It’s overwhelming, there is so much, but I’m so grateful for all of it. I know I can take it all with me, and I will eventually, but for now, it’s keeping me grounded, keeping me here.

It’s getting late, and I would write more, but there’s a tape of a comedy roast Jim did back in the 1980s that’s calling my name. I only just started watching it - he’s having so much fun, they all are, that I’m going to hang out with them for a while longer. So go about your business, I’ll be at Eastside Comedy Club for the rest of the night. They’re roasting Richie, so I’m hoping for captions.