Mark's Ghost

 

Mark's Beloved Kitchen

Week number two of living without Mark. Sure, Mark traveled at times without me and he spent quite a bit of time in the hospital, but this time I know he's not coming back home. And in that spirit I have begun shedding the excesses that he seemed to thrive on. Three things were always kind of a peeve of mine. Too many kitchen things and gadgets. Too many cook books, over four hundred and at one time nearly one thousand. Finally, too many clothes. Unlike me, Mark needed a different pair of pants for every day of the month. He had hundreds of tee shirts, and as many dress shirts. Then there are the shoes. There are about fifty pair of shoes in the closet. I guess they're called gym shoes, or sport shoes. It's simply crazy to have that many shoes. I don't need things as much as Mark did. I have three flannel shirts I rotate during the winter, five tee shirts that are more than enough between loads of laundry, three pair of shorts and three pair of long pants. As for shoes, I have my indoor slip-ons, a pair of expensive 'stability' shoes for walking, and one pair of dress shoes.

Yesterday morning I saw this on the neighborhood web site. "I sell gently used clothing, shoes and purses on an app called Poshmark. Sales are down because of COVID and I’m having a difficult time putting money back into my tiny store to purchase more 2nd hand or new clothing to resell. We are a low income family of 5. If anyone has donations that they haven’t been able to get around to dropping off at the homeless shelter or goodwill I’d be REALLY grateful if you would allow me to come pick them up."  So I sent the young lady a message offering her Mark's old clothes. She and I will get together sometime later this week and one task will be finished. Task number two, the cook books. If anybody wants to take a couple of free cook books, drop on by. I plan to sell the whole bunch except for Joy of Cooking and America's Test Kitchen. Finally there is all that stuff in the kitchen. All the extra dishes, gadgets, pots and pans. I have moved all that to the basement and plan to have a big garage sale next spring. One interesting result of my stripping the kitchen of all the things that I will never use, there is now an echo. I was calling the dogs into the kitchen to go out last night, and I heard an echo. Probably, if I listen hard enough, I'll hear Mark cursing me for getting rid of all his prized possessions.