In the back of Janet’s closet I found The Thing I hoped had been lost forever. It’s still here.
On our honeymoon forty-five years ago in the Smoky Mountains, we had a pastel (that’s colored chalk, I think) portrait done of ourselves. The artist was a college student working for the summer and was quite chatty. He had us pose separately. I knew something was wrong when he turned to Janet and asked, “Does he ever smile?”
Yes I did smile and I thought that was what I was doing, smiling, not grinning. Smiling is turning your lips up at the corners. Grinning is showing off your teeth. Off to the side of the artist’s space was a portrait of a young woman grinning. The artist had carefully outlined every tooth. Poor woman ended up looking like Minnie Pearl.
It didn’t make too much difference how I looked in the drawing. Janet looked nice, and it was going to be a Christmas gift to her parents. We showed it to some friends and one of them said we looked like Ichabod Crane and a very tired Liz Taylor. I couldn’t help looking like Ichabod Crane. The artist gave me only half a neck. I did like the idea I was married to Liz Taylor even if she did look very tired.
After Christmas my mother-in-law hanged the drawing in a spare bedroom and gratefully I didn’t have to look at it too often. Like any young man I foolishly did not think to the future. After my mother-in-law died, of course, The Thing came back to us. Janet knew I didn’t like it so she hid it in a closet where it remained hidden until recently.
I would trash it but I’d hate to get rid of the reminder that I married a woman who looked like Liz Taylor. This is among the quandaries we face when going through a loved one’s things after cancer has taken them away. I suppose I will turn to my favorite option—put it back where I found it and let my children decide what to do with it when the time comes.
I still can’t get over that someone thought I looked like Ichabod Crane. Why on earth would Liz Taylor—even when she was very tired—want to marry Ichabod Crane? Although I’m glad she did.

I recently decided I wasn’t smart enough to own a smart phone. I would be much happier with a dumb one.
Many years ago, Janet decided I needed a cell phone. I had just had a heart attack and had a stent inserted. She didn’t want me to have another heart attack all alone with no one to take me to the emergency room. I could call her. I tell stories at a lot of different places so if I had any palpitations I could call 9-1-1.
This phone had everything on it. Facebook. Video games. Map directions. Anything I wanted on the internet was on that cell phone. The only problem was that I used up all my minutes halfway through the month so I had to put that stupid smart phone in a drawer for two weeks until the next billing period began. It would be dumb to pay for extra minutes.
This also illustrates the irony of our lives. If one of us was going to die early we both figured it would be me with the bum heart. Who knew Janet would develop breast cancer?
It’s been over a year since she died, and I figured I need to go back to the simple reason Janet had for buying the phone in the first place, so I’d be able to call for help if I had another heart attack. She didn’t buy it so I could play games. I cancelled the contract with the old company and found a new phone that made calls and sent texts. That’s all I needed.
Then I got a bill from the old cell phone company for $350. It seems Janet had been paying off her phone and mine a little bit a month and we still owed $350.
Once again I found myself taking my lumps and paying for two cell phones I wasn’t using. Then it struck me that they were still in good condition and maybe I could sell them. I have a friend who knows all that computer stuff and he said they were worth some money. The only problem was he had to know the password and code word to make them operable for a new owner. First I had to come up the answer to the personal questions: what was the name of your first pet and what was the make and model of your first car?
Remembering it was Janet who set the phones up, I had to remember her first dog and her first car, things she had before she even met me. No problem. I knew every detail of her life. Easy answers. The next part was a little harder. I had to come up with her password. Luckily I still have her little blue book of codes and passwords. I found it—matthew2526.
The phones have been sold. Out of curiosity I looked up Matthew 25:26:
His master replied, “You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed?
Isn’t it wonderful? I may know the name of her first pet, but I will never comprehend the furthest reaches of her complicated intelligent mind. That’s what made living with her for forty-four years so exciting.

The other night I caught King Kong on television—not the 1930s classic, not the 1970s mistake, but the one made by Peter Jackson of Lord of the Rings fame.
Janet and I went to see it on the big screen when it first came out and really enjoyed it. Of course, nothing could match the original but this one came close.
When Jackson’s Kong came out on DVD I asked Janet if she wanted to buy it. She said she didn’t remember seeing it. This was just before she was diagnosed with breast cancer. I believe cancer begins and grows for many years before it can be diagnosed, but it still can make its presence known.
I suggested we should go ahead and buy the movie because I knew she already liked it even though she didn’t remember it. Janet firmly said she didn’t want to see the movie. That was the end of the discussion. I believed Janet was bothered by the fact she could not remember something like a movie. I’m sure she was wondering what would she forget next. Things like cancer and forgetfulness never are part of a person’s plans after retirement. I never mentioned the movie again.
On the night I watched King Kong on television I smiled because it was as good as I remembered. But I didn’t watch the final scene.
I already knew how everything was going to end.

The old adage “have someone eating out of the palm of your hand” doesn’t mean what most people think it means.
I know it’s supposed to mean that you have someone believing your lies, but that’s not true.
Since Janet died last year I’ve been feeding our little Chihuahua who is 12 years old. Her boyfriend, a fifteen-year-old chiweenie, died about six months ago. Since then she won’t eat unless I scoop the dog food into my palm and let her munch from my hand. She eats about two hands full then turns away. Her boyfriend would keep gobbling away as long as there was food in front of him, but she knows when to stop. That’s good because her little legs couldn’t support more than her five-pound weight.
I’ve never liked to have a dog licking me too much nor have I liked to hear a dog slurping or crunching. Since this has become our nightly routine, I don’t mind so much. In fact, it’s rather soothing. She has not bought into a bunch of lies I have told her. She trusts me completely to have good food in my palm ready for her to eat. It’s reassuring to know this little creature relies on me. It’s a responsibility. It’s my goal never to let her down.
It’s like the forty-four years I had with Janet. Sometimes I ate out of her hand. (Not literally, figuratively. Think about feeding the soul.) Sometimes she ate out of my hand. We knew we were safe in each other’s palms. Mostly we fed each other, not self-consciously but knowing this was the way it was supposed to be.
So when I sit there at night with the tiny dog eating out of and then licking my palm, I know Janet is still feeding my soul from her hand.

I’m still going through stuff, deciding what to sell, give away or throw out. I’ve a couple of items I tried to sell but no one was interested. Now I’m trying to decide what to do with two statues of a naked man and woman locked in an embrace.
The first one was a wedding present from a woman who worked at the same newspaper I did when Janet and I married. It was a plaster reproduction of a Rodin sculpture. He did many variations on The Kiss. The woman had stained it a dark brown which made it look like it had been carved out of wood. For forty-four years the figurine sat in our bedroom and gave Janet and me plenty of giggles.
When our daughter married her first husband, the wedding was in the Bahamas. While we wandered through an open-air market Janet and I found an actual wood-carved figurine of a naked man and woman. This was not a Rodin look-alike but a Bahamian interpretation of a couple in love. The man was noticeably too skinny while the woman had an ample bosom and behind. We thought since our wedding present had brought us so much luck and pleasure we decided to buy this one for our daughter and her new husband.
Our daughter unwrapped it and said, “Oh great. My parents just gave us a pornographic statue.”
Perhaps providentially, that marriage ended in divorce. However, she and her new husband discreetly returned the figurine to us shortly after their wedding. Honestly, Janet and I were stumped over why they didn’t like the statue. I mean, it was made of real wood, like teak or something. Since then, the Bahamian couple joined the Rodin knockoff in our bedroom where we had twice the giggles and twice the fun.
Even though our house is overrun with stuff that needs to go, the two statues are staying. I think that’s what Janet would have wanted. I need the memories more than the couple of bucks I might get for them.
After I’ve passed on, my daughter can decide what to do with them.

I found another picture I took of my wife Janet the first year we were married 44 years ago. She was in the kitchen. I think this one was posed instead of me catching her in the act of cooking. She usually didn’t dress up to make dinner.
Everything she cooked was delicious; however, it usually was a full afternoon operation. She concentrated on one dish at a time. When she had one done, she moved on to the next. Janet preferred casseroles where everything went into the same pot at the same time. She appreciated when I helped out on my days’ off. My mother had died of pancreatic cancer when I was 14 so I had to learn to cook early. Sometimes I even sent her in the other room and told her to read or watch television while I surprised her with something special.
She had her degree in journalism like I did but half a century ago newspapers didn’t like to hire couples unless they were willing to buy the business. Besides that, the only job a woman could get was on the women’s page writing about weddings. Janet hated that; she wanted to be on the police beat. A few years later she found out about probation officers, got her master’s degree in criminal justice and was happily employed for the 30 years or so.
When she retired she went back to cooking and was good at it again. This time she liked to wrap rice topped by chicken or fish, then green pepper, tomato and onion in aluminum foil. She slid it into the oven at a low temperature, sat down and read a book. She also had a way with Alfredo sauce over just about anything. These dishes created smaller individual portions and healthier meals.
I learned her recipes and I now cook them for my son and me. He’s a corrections officer, following in his mother’s footsteps. If I could get him to cook like his mother I’d have it made.
But instead I think about how cancer can affect every aspect of your life if you let it. Pancreatic cancer took my mother and I had to learn to cook. Breast cancer took my wife and I returned to the kitchen. I would gladly have cooked all the time if I could have Janet back, but that’s not possible. At least I can cook for our son who looks so much like his mother.