...as I said, things were going along. There was only one problem. Arthut wasn't my husband Mike. I found myself constantly comparing and contrasting. Two years had passed since his death, but I found myself missing Mike. I was always thinking to myself, "Mike wouldn't say that," or "Mike wouldn't do that."

 

It made me sad.

 

And all the attention from Arthur began to be a bit stifling. I felt like I needed some room to breathe, I needed to come up for air. Many times I thought to myself, "this is just a dream and I'll wake up and Mike will come home from work and everything will be normal again."

 

But that didn't happen. Mike didn't come home from work. Mike wasn't coming home from work anymore. His memory was too strong for me to let it go. It wrapped around my psychic self like a warm mitten on a cold day.

 

Christmas came and with it all the memories of 22 years with Mike and the traditions we had together. I resolved everything by getting a serious case of bronchitis that kept me in bed for a week. I didn't want to think about anything, not the past, not the future, not anything. I telecommuted to work and slept whenever I could. The season thankfully came and went and I took the tree down, as usual on New Year's Day. No matter what, I always put up a Christmas tree with all the lights and trimmings. Somehow it held everything together. I could look at the tree and know that there were things that would stay the same, traditions that would go on.

 

Although it was nice to have someone in my life again for companionship, as things continued to progress, I had more and more questions. Spring and summer bloomed and I planted some new plants in my garden, which I have worked on over 20 years time. I welcomed the dirt under my fingernails.

 

Another fall season approached, and Arthur and I started some plans to go to the East Coast where I could meet more of his family. Hmmm, I started to realize that I wasn't ready for that. And it was beginning to become clear to me that I probably never would be ready for that. True, he couldn't be Mike. No one could be Mike. But through the months that I talked to myself about that and rationalized and said to myself, "of course he can't be Mike, accept him for who he is." Still it just didn't feel right to me. There was something not right about moving any farther ahead with this particular relationship. I told myself it would be false pretenses to go to the East Coast.

 

Then I found out that Arthur had lost his job and his solution to that was to move out of his apartment and into my home with me. I said no. We fought. We fought some more. Things dragged on between us, and days and weeks passed. Finally we broke it off and Arthur moved out of my life as another Christmas season approached.