Love loss

She still sets his coffee mug out.

Every morning for 47 years, Evelyn did it the same way. She would wake up before the sun, before the alarm, because Thomas's breathing would change. He'd shift onto his side, cough once, and pat her hand under the blankets. That was her alarm.

In the kitchen, she made two coffees. One black for her. One with just a splash of cream for him, "enough to turn it the color of river water," he'd always say. He'd been saying it since 1978 and she had been rolling her eyes since 1978.

Thomas has been gone eight months, twelve days, and — she checked the clock on the stove — about four hours.

The doctor said it was peaceful. That he went in his sleep. Evelyn believes that part, because his hand was still warm when she found him that Tuesday morning, and his face looked like he was just dreaming about fishing again. She had called his name twice. The second time softer, because she already knew.

Everyone told her what to do after. Her daughter, June, brought over boxes. "Mom, when you're ready," she said, but her eyes meant soon. The ladies from church brought casseroles and said things like "he's in a better place" and "you're so strong."

She wasn't strong. She was just busy. She kept his closet exactly as it was. His boots by the back door with the dried mud still on the left one from the last time he worked in the garden. His reading glasses on his crossword puzzle, frozen on a Tuesday, half-finished. Seven-letter word for 'forever'. He never got to fill it in. Eternity.

But his blue flannel shirt — that was the hardest one. The one with the frayed cuffs and the pocket torn at the corner where he kept his pens. It had hung on the back of the bathroom door since that last night. She would walk past it and sometimes, without meaning to, she would stop and put her face in it.

It still smelled like him. Coffee and sawdust and that cheap aftershave he insisted on buying from the drugstore even though June bought him the expensive kind every Christmas.

For months, that smell was how she survived. She could pretend he was just in the garage. Just outside. Just about to come back in and ask where his glasses were when they were on his head.

This morning was different. Her granddaughter Lily was coming over. Lily was seven, with June's eyes and Thomas's stubborn chin, and she asked too many questions. The kind you can't answer with "because."

And the shirt — Evelyn had finally noticed it had a spot on it. A little coffee stain. She thought, "I should wash it before it sets."

It was such a normal thought. So practical. So motherly. It wasn't until she was standing in the laundry room, holding that shirt in both hands, that she realized what she was about to do.

If she washed it, the smell would be gone.

If she didn't wash it, eventually, the smell would be gone anyway.

That was the choice loss had left her. Both ways, she loses him a little more.

She lifted the shirt to her face one more time and breathed in deep, desperate. She had to search for him now. Press her nose into the collar, into the seams. It was fading.

And that broke her.

She sank right down to the cold linoleum floor of the laundry room, that blue shirt clutched in both fists like a life preserver, and sobbed. Not the quiet, dignified crying she did at the funeral when everyone was watching and telling her how graceful she was. This was the ugly kind. The gasping, shoulder-shaking, stomach-aching kind that has been living in your chest for eight months because you had to be strong for everyone else. The sound that comes out when you finally stop being strong.

"I don't want to forget," she whispered into the shirt, her voice cracked. "Thomas, please. I don't want to forget what you smelled like. I don't want to forget the sound. Please don't let me forget."

She didn't hear the back door open. She didn't hear the little backpack drop.

"Grandma?"

Lily was standing in the doorway in her yellow dress, her hair in two messy ponytails. She was early. June was supposed to drop her at nine, but June was always rushing.

Evelyn tried so fast to wipe her face, to fold herself back into a brave person. "Oh, honey, I'm okay, I was just — Grandma's just doing laundry, sweetheart, it's —"

Lily didn't say anything. She just walked over, sat right down on the cold floor in her yellow dress, and put her skinny little arms around Evelyn's neck. She smelled like crayons and strawberry shampoo.

"It's okay to miss him," Lily whispered, patting her back like Evelyn used to pat hers when she had nightmares. "I miss him too. My shirt doesn't smell like him anymore either."

Evelyn pulled back, confused, tears blurring everything.

Lily was wearing it. Or trying to. Thomas's old work t-shirt, the gray one that said ROBERTS HARDWARE on the back, the one he used to let her wear as a nightgown that swallowed her whole. It came down to her knees. The sleeves covered her hands.

"I asked Mom if I could wear it today," Lily said, her own lip starting to tremble now. "I have a spelling test and Grandpa always said I was his smart girl before my tests. And he always let me wear his shirt for good luck. But I slept in it and now it just smells like me. I tried really hard to keep his smell, Grandma. I held my breath."

And that was it. Evelyn looked at this little girl trying so hard to hold onto a ghost in a t-shirt, and she finally, finally let herself cry with someone instead of in front of someone.

She pulled Lily into her lap, that giant t-shirt and that fading flannel between them, and they sat on the laundry room floor and cried for the same man in two completely different ways. Evelyn cried for 47 years of coffee and arguments about the thermostat and dancing in the kitchen to a song on the radio that had too much static. Lily cried for fishing trips and bad jokes and a voice that called her his smart girl.

After a long time, the sobs turned into sniffles. Into quiet.

Lily wiped her nose with the sleeve — his sleeve — and said, "Do you think if we both miss him at the same time, he can hear us better?"

Evelyn kissed the top of her head. "I think he never stopped listening."

She didn't wash the blue shirt that day. She folded it, and put it in a cedar box with his glasses and his crossword. On the last clue, in shaky handwriting that wasn't his, she wrote: ETERNITY.

She still sets his coffee mug out every morning. One black, one the color of river water.

Only now, there's a third one.

Small, pink, with way too much sugar, for the little girl who comes over to help her miss him.