The Middle Distance

She’s always in my mind, bouncing back and forth, an unregulated tide on my emotion.

At the front of my mind are the things that need to be accomplished right now – my work, the state of the house, the rooms that need to be cleaned, dog hair on my clothes, am I turning right or left, what am I going to eat, where are my keys.

When I’m immediately occupied, she sits just into the middle distance. She’s there, the perpetual thought that hums just behind whatever activity I’m engaged in.

It’s been just over three weeks since I last talked to her. During the in-between times, her voice crashes into the foreground of my occupation and I fall into the emotion delicately perched at the top of my throat. My nose warms.

Sitting on my desk, I have the phone number for my contact in the housing department at Wayne State. He has made it his personal mission to cut the red tape of dis-enrollment for me. I have the phone number of Express Scripts. I need to cancel her prescriptions. Three sympathy cards that were mailed to work.

They trigger her movement from the middle to the front of my mind. My nose warms again.

After 7 years, my late husband went solidly into the middle distance. He’d sway into my brain only most days – and always sweetly. Something he’d love, listening to my current partner (rock?) talk to his brother on the phone. His memory came with a comforting glow.

She has brought him back into sharp focus. Her passing complicated the distance from his. I hold them together in my heart. My nose warms.