I’d practically forgotten we still had Colin’s breathing machine lying around our house until a week or so ago. It was in a box in our upstairs hallway that had become such a part of the landscape up there that, now that it’s gone, I’m remembering it more by its absence than I did for the last year with it present.
There was a time during the coronavirus’ first days when I was determined to hold on to that machine for dear life. Never mind that I didn’t really know how to use it. Never mind that it was designed for small children: I’m not even sure Noah could benefit properly from it any more. Having a breathing machine in the house in the middle of a pandemic seemed like a really good idea.
But then I forgot about it and the box became just one of those things you walk around when heading to the bathroom.
But it was there and it was ours – just one more of those medical devices that we’d oddly inherited from the insurance company at the time of Colin’s death. The plan was to get it to Münster, where a charity would pack it up and send it to a hospital in Ghana that really needs it. We have a ton of friends who live near Münster, so it seemed like it would be the easiest thing in the world to send it out there in the spring, when someone traveled home for Easter. But then the coronavirus came and no one went to Münster and the breathing machine sat there in the corner.
But now it’s Christmas and people are a little braver about travel, so some friends left for Münster this morning and took the device with them. They’ll get it to the charity’s treasurer, who lives nearby, and then it will go to the main office and then it will go to Ghana, and then someone will get some good out of it. Maybe we’ll also get a tax benefit for the charitable donation, which sounds mercenary but, after what we went through, I’ll take every stray dollar I can get if it can help make life more comfortable for Emma and Noah.
So, it should feel good. And, on many levels it does feel good to strike something off the list and maybe play a small, small role in saving an African child’s life someday. At the same time, it’s one more part of Colin’s life that’s no longer here in the house. So that’s bittersweet.
At the same time, there are levels where I realize he’ll never be gone. Like on Saturday, after everyone else went to bed, I sat up and watched an episode of Game of Thrones because I have been starving myself to get down to my pre-lockdown weight and my deal with myself was that I got to download a season once I got down to 98 kilograms. Which I did, so I watched Game of Thrones. And it wasn’t the best episode, so I started running my hands through the cracks of the sofa out of boredom and, strangely, found the plastic bit that went to the toy drill he got as a gift in Christmas 2016 when one American friend went absolutely nuts spoiling the kids with Christmas gifts after that horrible year. How it got separated from the rest of the toys and how long it’s been in the sofa and why on Earth it ended up there is beyond me. But it’s something of his, and knowing the way kids work, I don’t really believe it will be the last thing. So, a breathing machine goes, a part of a plastic toy comes. He keeps moving through our lives.