Caring for Angels

I bought a little statue of a sitting angel that I’m going to glue to a rock and put at my wife’s grave. While I have the landscape cement out, I’m going to fix some of the other garden statues. One of those was a sitting angel that she liked, which is why I bought the new one. Most of them have lost their heads. They’re all standing or sitting on my kitchen counter waiting to be repaired. Nothing will bring them back to their original shape, but they’ll look a little better.

I can’t tell if all this fixing stuff is me coming out of the fog of caregiving for the last several years and starting to get my house back in order, or just me attempting to fix things after failing to fix the big thing, my wife’s broken brain. Probably a bit of both. Plus, my wife always kept a tidy house and after fifty years I assumed the habit. I can’t leave the bedroom in the morning without making the bed, because it was always the first thing she asked me to help her with when we got up in the morning. We’d stand on opposite sides of the bed, pull up the cover, replace the pillows, and make it all tidy.

As for the statues, I’d planned on putting them back outside after the glue dries, but the care instructions I received with the new angel suggest I keep them inside for the winter. Cold and freezing weather, apparently, are bad for them, which makes sense, and I wonder why I never thought of it before? I guess we were just in that consumable lifestyle of if it breaks buy a new one. I think I’ll try this approach. It can be part of the getting ready for winter and getting ready for spring routines. Besides, bringing the angels in and out will be a nice way to keep the memories fresh.