Remembering My Husband

I’m getting to a really good, comforting state of acceptance after my husband’s death.

The biggest part of my healing is that I’ve learned to see what I wish I had done differently. I can point to various actions that either or both of us took that were ultimately detrimental to our lives. But through it all, he was still my greatest source of comfort — especially in the last six years of his life.

I have two shirts that he often wore, and they both smell like him, even almost two years later. The scent is fading, but if I inhale deeply, I can still smell him on them.

The most significant item in my possession that still smells like him is a charcoal grey cardigan sweater he often wore, especially in his final months. Chemo seemed to always make him feel a little chilly, even at times when I was uncomfortably warm.

My senses are getting sharper and more powerful, seemingly with every passing month. Photographs, videos, and voicemail messages each evoke strong memories in themselves. But scent is also a surprisingly evocative sense for recalling memories as well.

I found a stick of my husband’s regular antiperspirant in a drawer in the kitchen; it was Old Spice fresh, the same scent he’d used for so many years that I can’t even remember a time when he didn’t. When I found it, I deeply inhaled the scent and recalled nestling my head on his chest after a shower.

But the charcoal cardigan sweater is probably the most uniquely concentrated version of what he smelled like: clean, not too heavily perfumed, a bit dusty, with the faint whiff of the offices where he spent a lot of his time.

When I hold it up to my nose and take in the scent, inhaling it deep into my lungs, I feel again like I did with my head resting on his chest. That was my safe place, the spot where I felt most at peace in the entire world.

The amount of the time I spent in his presence when I felt that sense of overwhelming safety increased as the years went on. In the last six years of his life, he was truly devoted to protecting me and caring for me. It was beautiful and selfless.

It was also very inspiring. He taught me how to show love to others by sacrificing for them. I’m now doing that for my two young adult kids at home. I’m also doing it for my cats, which is improving the indoor air quality of my home almost as much as it’s positively impacting their behavior.

I still greatly miss that sense of safety I once had when I was resting my head on his chest. I’m not despairing because I consider myself incredibly lucky to have had it for as long as I did. But it’s definitely not the same now that he’s gone. I miss it a lot.