The Things We Carry

Margaret stood in the doorway of the garage, the summer heat pressing against her back. Inside, Richard's workbench remained exactly as he'd left it three months ago—scattered with half-finished projects, the cable coil still wrapped around his drill like a sleeping snake. She hadn't touched anything. Not yet.

That morning, her doctor had prescribed vitamin D supplements. "You're not getting enough sun," he'd said, as if sunlight could fix what had been broken since Richard's heart stopped.

She walked to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. The bag of spinach had turned slimy at the edges, another thing she kept forgetting to use. Richard used to make salads with dinner every night. Now she ate toast over the sink, staring at the backyard where the hose still watered the empty garden twice a week, automated like everything else in her carefully curated widowhood.

On the counter sat his fedora, the one he'd worn to their daughter's wedding last year. Margaret picked it up, the felt still holding the faint scent of his hair product and the cigarettes he'd sworn he'd quit. She ran her thumb along the brim, remembering how he'd looked dancing with their granddaughter, the hat tilted rakishly, his laughter cutting through the reception hall.

"You need to let go," her sister had said yesterday. But how could she explain that these objects were the only things still tethering her to the woman she'd been? The spinach and water and pills—that was survival. The cable and hat—that was memory.

Margaret placed the fedora on her own head. It slid down over her ears, too large but familiar. She caught her reflection in the microwave door—a sixty-two-year-old woman playing dress-up in her dead husband's clothes. But for the first time in months, she didn't look away.

Tomorrow she would clean the garage. Today, she kept the hat on and ate her toast at the table, watching the water hit the hydrangeas Richard had planted for their thirtieth anniversary. They were blooming despite everything. Despite her neglect, despite the silence. They were blooming anyway.