Walter's yahrzeit is coming up. December 16 2021 will be the third anniversary of his death. I remain weirdly disoriented by his not being here. Sometimes I feel as though he had never been here in my life, sometimes I feel that he died last week. Every time I deal with something but remain dissatisfied with the outcome, I feel that he would have handled it better. At the least, he would have been able to reconcile me to the imperfect situation.
The house is still full of stuff from our life together, even though I have divested myself of things that have nothing to do with my life alone. The practice cello, for instance. He hadn't played it in our 35 years together. Neither had his daughters. I offered it to them but they didn't want it, Turns out it was a good cello to begin with, a good tone, but it would need a lot of repair to be in good condition again. The bow was actually worth more than the cello. They're both gone now, as is the old-school metronome I gave him (wooden, spring-driven). I never found it helpful to play or sing with a metronome, and I'm unlikely to start now. It gave him joy to see them all in the house, though, even after he stopped being able to use them.
Walter did a lot of looking, and a lot of seeing. He noticed, he saw, he thought about what he saw, he made connections. I have long thought that curiosity is an under-appreciated trait, and Walter was certainly curious about the world around him, the people around him, the possibilities around him. You can see that, in his seeing, he was experiencing--something.
