With Father’s Day coming up Sunday, I’ve braced myself for the usual picture-perfect ads featuring the man of the house.  Firing up the grill with lots of new equipment.  Sporting a new golf shirt.  Brandishing a new power saw.

  With our man of the house gone just over a month, I expected to wince at the commercial reminders of what I’d be missing. But I haven’t.  I miss him, all right.  But what I miss has nothing to do with grilling, golfing or grout.   

  Instead, it’s the mundane, running banter.  It’s “Don’t forget to take out the recycling.”   And “Can you believe a doctor’s office would actually send a bill for 37 cents?”  It’s “Do you think you could possibly remember to turn off your alarm clock?”  And “Guess how much they’re charging for regular down at the BP?”

  Oh, there were a few riveting conversations about the Middle East, an occasional gift that hit a homerun, and I miss those. But someone used to know just how I like my toast.  I miss that more.

There’s no question about it. Bob was not planning to die. From the unopened packages of shirts, socks and underwear, he was planning on another, oh, 50 years. He didn’t like to run out, and he was always prepared.

Once, I told him a girlfriend’s husband carried his glasses prescription with him when he traveled just in case his got broken. “That’s nothing,” Bob told me. “I take an extra pair.” And with that, he produced them in a brown leather case, together with a travel-size bottle of spray-on cleaner.

Cut down fully supplied, he left behind little piles of white plastic handle bags full of drugstore goodies and in the closet, nine unopened bottles of mouthwash. Vanilla Mint.

I never thought mouthwash would make me cry.

Whatever happened to the advertised Sunday afternoon blog? The dog ate it, in the form of a sad and sudden intrusion. My husband Bob died unexpectedly May 9 – so unexpectedly that I feel compelled to retell the story to all who will listen. My way of making the surreal seem more real.

Sudden deaths, I now know, blare in on ordinariness. They occur when we’re not looking, while we’re taking out to the trash or throwing the last load in the dryer. Bob’s was no different. He announced he was going out to run an errand. I offered to go instead. Off I went, while he apparently took up residency on the couch to watch golf on TV. There I found him, lifeless when I returned. The victim, his doctor concluded, of a heart arrhythmia.

Life feels out of balance here, in need of the healing that comes over time through grief. If ever there was a time NOT to overbook, it’s now. So in the spirit of the Dog Journal, I’ll be sharing what works for me – and doesn’t – in getting through this time. If my missteps along the way bring a smile, I’ll be sure share that too, because laughter, the first-cousin of tears, is bound to muscle in a time or two.

After lunching the other day with a lawyer friend on a really tight schedule,  I remembered a crazy-busy time in my own life when the best lunch break involved throwing a camera in my bag and sneaking out of the office to shoot pictures.  Trees were a favorite, and flowers.  Anything natural and interesting and right-brain happy.  Anything but writing another legal analysis.

I’m sure I’m not alone here.  Anyone else have a favorite stress-relief break from the office?  Or a mini-break you wouldn’t try again?  Do tell.