Bits and pieces of a life. That is all I physically have left of Mr. Virgo. His clothes are mostly gone…just bits and pieces left: his leather bomber jacket, a belt, his cowboy boots, the sweater I loved him in. His toiletries are mostly gone…except for bits and pieces: a bottle of his cologne, his favorite soap, his electric razor. I have his golf clubs and his war medals and the picture of us dancing at our wedding. Just bits and pieces of a life well lived yet too soon over.

As I sort and purge and cast off the encumbrances of my life, I shed more and more of my reminders of him. His humidor was emptied…dry, papery cigars tossed with yesterday’s junk mail…addressed to a man who no longer lives here. The humidor itself sent home with my daughter as a remembrance of her other dad. I feel as though I lose him over and over again. I feel as though he may just have been a figment of my imagination…a wisp of smoke and leather and spice that I held close for a moment before the wind whipped it from me. I feel like my heart just might explode with the joy of having had him and the pain of letting him go. Bits and pieces, bits and pieces.

These things will fall away, move on, become meaningless items on a shelf downtown…waiting for someone else to love them. As he loved them. He loved these golf clubs. He nurtured them. He cleaned and polished them after every outing. He inspected them carefully and mourned over every nick and scar. Then he carefully covered each one in their little black sweaters and put them back in the bag I gave him as a wedding present. These clubs are as much a part of him as his Stetson or his Waterman pen or his DuPont lighter. Eventually, they will find their way into someone else’s garage. But for now, they are reminders of laughter, cigar smoke, stubby yellow pencils, Mulligans, blue eyes and sunshine. And, most of all….love.