Receipts
by Anne Keefe

I was looking for the hand massager for Steve, the one his father had given him long before the stroke. He enjoyed the massage I had given him, but my hands aren't strong and they tire easily.  I had just about turned the whole house upside down looking for that massager. When I came across an old cigar box of his. I opened it expecting to find it empty now that Steve no longer smokes.  Oh, how he loved those cigars. Instead, crumpled up on top of some computer disks were old receipts from bank deposits, grocery and liquor stores, the cable company and even a sports store.  Intrigued, I smoothed them out one by one and noticed they were all dated a month or so before the stroke. Some of the print was so faded they were hard to read. 

I thought about my dear husband's last moments as a free man " able to walk, talk and work " just going about the ordinary pleasures of daily life not knowing what was about to hit him, enjoying buying a bottle of wine, picking up some last minute groceries, paying a cable bill. Then the last one I turned over just about broke my heart.  It was the purchase of a new bathing suit and goggles for the swimming he enjoyed so much over the last year. An immense sadness washed over me. How the discovery of some old crumpled up store receipts could evoke such nostalgia and pain. 

My first inclination was to throw all these receipts out " of what use are they to me or us now except as bitter reminders of another place and time when all was so different. Yet, something urged me to hold onto them, so I carefully folded and stacked them, put them back in the box, and closed the lid.

Written as a journal entry, 12/27/04