Imprint of the Barrel

It’s getting better in some ways, and much worse in others.  I have weeks of light, of hope and happiness, and then a week of relentless frightening grief, so strong I’m sobbing every day, alone and for hours until I’m dehydrated and sick.  I live with his books on the shelf; his army jacket in the closet; the stacks of 1/72 scale Thunderbolts, Corsairs, Hellcats, and Spitfires that he never got a chance to put together and paint, in his exacting way.  I don’t even see those things anymore.  But occasionally I’ll stumble on something that pulls me down fast into the bog of grief.  Today it was his leather holster, the one he’d used for 20 years to keep his personal handgun on his belt.  He was never without that gun.  They came and took the gun away, the night he died (I’m not licensed and also they move lightning-fast so the widow won’t have an easy way to commit suicide, in her confusion and despair, is what I believe), but they left me with this.  The deep imprint of the barrel, the memory of a gun so clear it’s hardly a memory at all but a feeling as real and immediate as bullets.  I loved him so much, his guns and books and models and Marlboros and how he knew everything about me from the first night we spent together, almost like he was a supernatural creature, a witch, a demon, or a god.  I was so scared of him.