Him

I waited too long to write about this. My thoughts are all jumbled.

One of the first things that tormented me was how he wouldn’t get to enjoy things anymore. We never had much in the way of luxuries – we were always paycheck to paycheck at best with little money left over for nice things. Or even things, nice or not. And Kelsey liked things very much.

The summer before he passed, he had found these shirts he liked. Performance material, sleeveless hoodies (weird, right?) but he loved them. Being autistic, he had a lot of trouble with textures and these were silky and stretchy. He asked to buy two, and we could afford it. He wore them as often as they were clean, and I tried to keep them clean as much as possible, the laundry having fallen to me to do as his health worsened. It was a little thing, but it made him happy. He always looked to see if he could find more of them, knowing we may not be able to afford them even if he could.

Well. Soon after his birthday in July, we found the motherlode. Dozens of the shirts, on CLEARANCE! OMG what a happy Kelsey. He picked out one in every color, and two in his favorites. He had enough for a week. And then, in true Kelsey fashion, he said “now I need to find the matching pants!” He was never satisfied.

Coming home from the hospital alone was Hell. I cried when I pulled into the driveway and saw his Surburban. I sobbed when I looked inside it and saw his cane. I crumpled when I opened the door and saw his keys. And then I went into the spare bedroom and saw a basket of clean laundry with one of his prized shirts on top.

The fundamental unfairness of it struck me hard. He’s gone. He had such a short time to enjoy the simple pleasure of a comfortable shirt. He finally had enough of something he wanted – a rare happening- and he only had a few weeks in which to enjoy it.

This will never be okay.