I Hate Waking Up in an Empty Bed
On Missing Dean in a New Year
All my pictures are old ones. Nothing from the last two years, 8 months, and 25 days without him. All I have are memories…
…and memories will never be enough. They will never take the place of a morning touch, a good-night kiss, a random hand-holding, or the verbal admiration of his bodaciously cute derriere.
I scroll through the photo feed. Nothing. Just yellowed photos of artwork, yellow because his vision was failing and he couldn’t adjust for true color. His world was yellowed all the time — nothing was true any longer.
Dean did all the photography, all the shipping, all the invoices, all the notes to customers, and all of the marbling. He was happiest in his art when creating. He realized life was coming to an end when he found he couldn’t marble fabric anymore. He came out of the studio in February 2021, after starting a marbling session, saying he was done, nothing was working. He tried again two weeks later and said the same thing. I thought he was having trouble getting some of the formulas correct in preparing the alum and carrageen.
