Diary of a Widower

Deleting her out of our lives

THURSDAY, February 4 – I texted E. I’d given her Jennifer’s cell phone. There was no reason not to have done so. Her contract was ongoing and no one else had ever used the phone. Why buy a new phone? Well, for the simple reason that E’s name would have to be added to my contacts. To do that I would first have to remove Jennifer’s name. Goddamnit all to hell, if only I’d realized that before.

It’s another one of those moments when I seem to be erasing Jennifer from our lives for good.  While of course that’s not the case, it’s just one of those strange tricks that your brain plays on you when your heart is demanding precedence.

When E sent a text message in reply, I saw on my iPhone the whole series of messages that Jennifer and I had exchanged during the previous months, right up to October 22nd.  I read through them with a precious sense of nostalgia. If discovering Eamonn’s drawing last week quite unexpectedly had been a punch in the stomach, then these unexpected messages from the past produced a broad smile to my face that I wanted to hold onto as long as possible.