Missing Him

Has it been too long since Tom died for me to write a post about how I’m missing him?  After all it’s been over a year and I should be moving on, right?  It’s not that I cry myself to sleep (because I don’t) or that I don’t find my life (overall) pretty happy (because I do).  It’s just there are so many things that I miss about the life we shared.

I grilled steak tonight – Tom had very carefully wrapped up these beautiful fillets and I have been terrified to do anything with them.  But they have been in the freezer for over a year and really, any longer and they would be ruined without me doing anything.   So I dared to do it.  And they turned out beautifully (thank you internet).  And they made me miss Tom all the more because he loved to grill and I learned to like steak because he bought it for me and cooked it for me.

I’ve been listening to “Roll the Bones” by Rush the last week or so.  There’s a music group I had neither heard of nor would probably ever have listened to on my own before I met Tom.  But he was a super fan and one of the first things he did after we started dating was lend me a couple of albums he thought I might like.  Who knew that I would enjoy hard rock?  Well, to be honest I don’t know if I really like the genre, but I really do like Rush.  There’s nothing better than turning an album up loud and attacking housecleaning – and their music has provided the soundtrack to lots of road adventures over the years of our marriage.  Pretty much all the bands I listen to are suggestions that Tom made – and while I don’t like everything he liked, I always enjoyed the fun of joining in when he tried something new.

I didn’t know I would like musical theater until I met Tom and realized how much of a passion he had for it.  This is a man that traveled to New York City at least twice after his mission to take in Broadway musicals.  Our first real date was to see “Big River” at Sundance theater.  I read Les Miserables because it was one of his favorite shows and he was so excited about taking me to see it the first year we were married.  I loved seeing his enthusiasm when we introduced our kids to the musical a few years ago.

Tom even influenced my reading (which is pretty difficult to do, given the breadth and depth of my reading).  Dick Francis and Patrick O’Brian were both authors that he heard about and decided to read and then insisted I had to try.  I didn’t often get to share my reading with Tom, because who can keep up with me? and most of what I read held no interest for him.  But it was so fun to share our thoughts about Jack and Stephen and where we thought the story would go next and what we liked best.

Tom took me 4 wheel drive exploring – we rode and camped the White Rim Road at Canyonlands when I was four months pregnant.  I would never have imagined that kind of adventure before we met.  But we traveled all over the state of Utah during our first four years of marriage, exploring dirt roads and driving over summits of mountains and finding ghost towns and seeing the marvels of the state.  After we had kids, and moved to Kansas, our exploring days dropped off – our kids really dislike road trips and we got out of the habit in a state where there wasn’t as much to see.  Tom had promised that we would take up the hobby again in our “empty nester” years.  I feel robbed!

I don’t know if he would say the same about me … did I change his life like he changed mine?  But for sure my life has been richer for all the things Tom brought to our relationship.  I miss that.  I miss him.  I miss us together.  And I feel lucky, too, that I have such memories and such a husband to miss.