I know exactly which drawer.
There is something almost embarrassing about knowing that.
A man can forget where he put his glasses and remember a joke printed on a card twelve years ago.
Memory is strange that way.
My wife, Marianne, used to laugh whenever I said it.
She would look at me across the table and say, “You know, Dunstan, normal people don’t spend their evenings wondering which account nobody has opened.”
And I would say, “That’s why normal people hire me.”
She would shake her head.
That was our marriage.
Small jokes.
Tea in the evening.
Her feet tucked underneath her when she sat on the sofa.
My newspaper folded into quarters because I disliked having the pages spread across the table.
We were married for forty-four years.
I still don’t know how forty-four years can disappear so quickly.
Ten years ago, Marianne died.
She had been ill for a long time.
The last eleven months were particularly bad.
People sometimes say that long illnesses give you time to prepare.
They don’t.
They give you more time to become tired.
More time to become frightened.
More time to learn how many different ways a person can say, “I’m all right,” when they are very obviously not.
