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the canoe

 Today, as I was having dinner or lunch at the CNE with my husband, I saw a text.  To be fair, I was in no mood for said text - it was hot and crowded and I had a puppy with me, and I would have rathered gone back to Durham and spent the 45 dollars there on something better than a messy sandwich.  But it's a tradition to go to the CNE, no matter how painful and boring and crowded it is.  Sometimes, and this is horrible, I keep a list of things I won't have to do once Bob is gone.  The CNE is on the list.

The text - "can I pick up the canoe today?".

Um..  our canoe?

The canoe of my children's childhood - the one lugged around on the roof of a neon, a saturn, and a carvan?  The green loveliness that is captured in pictures and memories, that was stable and smooth?  The one that has been laying in the back behind the shed since Jordie and Ben dropped it from their car onto a busy road, unsure if it still floats?  Yes.

"you're getting rid of it?"  I ask, stunned.. imagining that we'd have this in common- our love of a canoe that went on trips with us and the kids.  He explains that it's been just "sitting there" for years, and his friend noticed, and wondered if it floated and they got talking..  I spaced out.

When I came to, he was asking, "do you want it?  i thought it could be a planter but we know how well we do gardens."

And that was it for me.  I said his friend could have it.  But if it didn't float to give it back.  Why fucking bother with this, I reasoned.  I put up with his depression - for years - even his psychotic breaks and yelling and name calling and everything else.  But I'm depressed or grieving or out of it this year and he makes a quip about how I won't get around to gardening and gives away our canoe.

It's so weird when someone you thought understood you suddenly stops understanding you.

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