Broken, rotting

A few days ago I broke of of Anita’s favorite bowls. We now have seven, formerly eight, white egg shaped bowls. They are functional and cute, and they came from the Nigella Lawson collection.

I remember the day we bought them. It was the fall of 2005 and we were in Decatur, Georgia, for the first annual Decatur Book Festival. While we didn’t walk away with many books, we did run across this little gourmet cooking shop. Lo and behold, they carried the entire Nigella Lawson series of cookware and accessories. (Nigella was Anita’s favorite TV cook and author - she used to spend hours just pouring over Nigella’s cookbooks, thought not to cook out of them, just for reading pleasure.)

We walked out of the store with eight eggs shaped soup bowls, a set of robin’s egg blue measuring cups, a matching mini-whisk (for my eggs) and a pineapple cutter (which Anita had not belived existed, though I always tried to tell her).

If Anita was still alive, I would have been bummed about the bowl breaking, but shrugged my shoulders and forgot about it. But she isn’t here, and every broken bowl is like another piece of her disappearing.

I was grilling out yesterday and walked by our wind chime. It is made of six metal chimes with wood top, middle and bottom. I bought it for Anita as a gift on one of my few business trips to Boston in 1999. I noticed that the wood has become really weathered and is cracking. I am not sure how long it will hold together.

I am not sad all of the time any more. But these small moments are reminders of my loss and their importance is magnified. Just a reminder that all around me are Anita’s things, and one day they will be gone too.