Purses

(This short entry originally was a post that I made on Facebook yesterday morning. I decided that I wanted it to be part of a more permanent record. Hence, this re-posting.)

If you knew my wife Marilyn, you know that one of her trademarks was the gigantic, heavy purses she would always lug around. Two of those purses have sat on the floor of our closet since her death in October, and last night I decided to empty them out so I could donate them to Goodwill. What I found inside was just so, so Her. Eighteen pens, three pair of earrings, an address book (filled with doctors’ phone numbers), a Tide Stick, five packets of artificial sweetener, a pill bottle filled with various aspirin, excedrin, Tylenol and such for “emergencies “, a clutch purse from Paris, a tiny Wonder Woman doll, a small pin of a sheep from Ireland, about thirty - I didn’t count them - pennies, and various other items such as band aids, wet wipes, hand sanitizers, and God knows what else. I went back and forth from smiling, laughing, and crying, mostly crying, all night long. I miss complaining to her about her “goddamned purses”, and I miss her.