Spirits

35 weeks left
18 weeks completed
9 weeks left until mid-tour leave
5 pounds lost (over the last two weeks)
25 pounds total
14th months until the wedding

When J left for Over There, there were several things we had on a checklist of things that needed done while he was gone. Make sure the bills are covered. Make sure his car goes to his dad so it can be cared for and driven, etc. And one of these “to-do’s” on my end was my promise to travel the 5 ½ hours to his apartment over the course of this summer to make sure that it was still standing—that none of his 27 televisions* had been stolen, and that no crazy pipes had burst, or animals had burrowed their way in and had babies in his bed, etc., etc., etc.

*Only slight exaggeration. He himself owns three, and then he has roommates, and other deployed members of his unit who needed a place to store stuff. Honestly, I think there are 5 or 6 tvs hanging out in his 700 square foot apartment right now. You basically trip over them when you enter.

Because he had the internet and cable turned off in his place (and I thought also the electricity) I knew that going up for the apartment check was gonna be a lame trip for me- one that might need to include an actual hotel stay. (I realize this is totally ridiculous, opting for a hotel room over a free stay in J’s apartment where I have stayed a million times before. But a big ol’ lonely completely haunted apartment without lights, food, internet or television really just didn’t sound appealing to me. I’ll own the fact that I am a “modern conveniences snob” in this instance.)

I knew I needed to make this trip, but I hadn’t decided the when and how. So I was very excited when some of J’s closest pals who live near him (and have been keeping an eye on the place off and on as well) invited me up for the weekend to do a little mini-vacay/ winery hopping. They are hoping to move from here soon, and so it seemed the perfect match of opportunity to see them one more time (with a place to stay, no less!) and to check on J’s apartment.

As I pulled out of my apartment yesterday for the drive up, my heart started to pound a little. This familiar trip has always ended in our reuniting…has always started the beginning of a wonderful week/ weekend/ month of our time together. My heart is conditioned to beat just a little faster as I get into the car, pop in the Gabe Dixon Band CD as my theme music (“Five more hours of highway, ‘til I’m in the place I love…”) and make the easy drive.

Wanna know what I found out? When J’s not at the other end, it’s really only a 5 ½ hour drive.

As I drove up to the apartment, my heart began pounding in my chest. I’m not sure why… it wasn’t like J was on the other side of the door. But excitement and anticipation of the familiar greeted me as I walked up the back steps onto the porch, turned the key in the back door lock and pushed hard to open the door.

What I saw as I opened the door made me laugh and cry at the same time.

His apartment was almost like a ghost town. Sure, there were no people there, but the place was left just as it had been when he was there. The apartment lay completely untouched since the last time I had visited. Everything was just as we had left it—Panini maker open on the counter; half a box of lasagna noodles left sitting there from when we made lasagna rolls; a bottle of Korean wine balancing precariously close to the edge of the bar. I swear, had the refrigerator doors not been propped open to expose the gutted insides, I would have truly believed there was still food in there. I’m amazed he remembered to take the trash out.

I walked into the bathroom—soap still in the shower, trash still in the basket, towels hung up like that I could grab a shower if I wanted. As I wandered from room to room, I was actually amazed to see the bed completely made up in J’s room- I honestly expected it to be half slept in, with the blankets turned down on one side, like that he had just rolled out of bed and gotten up and left, just like he was leaving on any old average morning for work. But the slippers askew by the bedroom door suggested a somewhat more hurried exit after making the bed, which seemed much more typical of him.

It was his favorite, disgustingly dirty and worn out sweatshirt tossed carelessly upon the bed that was my undoing. I could almost see the thought process: should he take it with? Was he wearing it up to the very minute he left and then took it off and threw it on the end of the bed so that it would be there waiting when he got back? My guess is that it had been hanging on the back of the couch in the living room and that he grabbed it at the last minute in an effort to “tidy up” the living room and just gave it a toss into the bedroom, and here it had landed.

I sat down on the end of the bed, grabbed his crappy old sweatshirt, and for the first time in quite a while had a very good long cry. I don’t know what I expected when I got to his place. Somewhere in my head, I thought he had “closed up shop” for his deployment. Would I have left the house super clean? Put all the laundry away? Closed all the closets and tossed all the soaps? I don’t guess I know. But I do know that I definitely did not expect this to be the scene. So ordinary and normal that I half expected him to come walking in the bedroom, like that he had just run out to the IGA for some bacon before breakfast.

I thought a lot about what happens when families loan out a member for a year to deployment and how hard it must be to stumble over the old sweatshirts every day. Such an unbelievably conspicuous hole it must leave in everything that you do. Somehow, with J living so far away from me most of the time, I had put the daily specifics of J’s life out of my mind. It’s been kinda abstract in that respect for me until now. This trip and that bloody sweatshirt made it really real.

J lives in apartments that are hundreds of years old and which were once upon a time barracks for soldiers. When he first moved in, I teased him constantly about his place being haunted (it totally is, by the way. I was teasing, yes…but I completely believe it to be true.) After having lived there for a little bit of time, he actually started jokingly referring to “the Private” who lived in his place. I liked this idea. Even if it meant he was living with a ghost (which freaks me out a little), I liked that he had a companion, someone he said “watched over the place for him” while he was gone. I of course have run with the joke…when we lose things, it’s the Private’s fault; when I burn breakfast, the Private was distracting me.

But I gotta say, sitting in the apartment yesterday, hugging that damned sweatshirt, there was no Private. The only energy, the only spirit in the ghost town apartment, belonged to J. And even though I had a good cry, the place was so unbelievably him-- so unbelievably, typically, every-day him, that it was the most comforting feeling in the entire world. He’s coming right back, just gone for a few minutes. See?

By the time I pulled shut the back door behind me, my tears were gone. They were replaced by a satisfied smile followed by a deep sigh of contentment. My spirits had been lifted by the mere essence of J and his obvious plan for his own imminent return. I could truly report back that all was as it should be with his apartment.