Grant’s Grapefruit

Two full months after Grant died, I finally threw away his grapefruit. I knew myself better than to throw it away in the kitchen. I tossed it in the big trash can outside, the one that goes out on the street tonight. I purposely put it there. I knew that once the garbage truck comes, there would be no opportunity to dive into that garbage can and pick it back out… Just to hold it one more time.

I’d already been holding onto it for 2 months. A grapefruit! I packed it from the house we lived in when he died to the house we lived in when he was alive, a 4 hour trip with children. I moved back just 2 weeks after he passed, because I couldn’t stay in the house where I was told my husband was dead.

So I had this grapefruit. I didn’t eat it or juice it, I just kept it. Why? Grant bought it. Though he’d been dead for 2 months, somehow if I kept it, I kept a live piece of Grant in my life. Just knowing he’d picked it out from the store when he was alive, when he was full of life, planning to eat it, with no plans to die.

He’d touched it as a living person, so I held onto it with a plan to cut it up and savor every bite as if I could somehow make his life a part of my body by eating the last grapefruit he bought.

Grant had been self-conscious about his belly. I told him grapefruit juice was healthy and good for helping to get rid of belly fat, so he’d make juice out of it. He wanted to look fit and trim so he made it a routine: juice in the morning, smoothie, and grapefruit juice snack and so on throughout the day. And he did look great. In fact, he had the best body I’d seen him in since I met him. Me too for that matter.

This was Grant’s grapefruit. The last one of his routine. Here it was in my hand. He’d never peel and blend this one. Never drink it, look at his belly and say, “I think I’m getting trimmer! What do you think babe?” Nope, never again. That’s why I was going to eat it. 

Two months had passed and I just stared at it. I thought every time I passed by it, “Grant bought that and he’s dead.”  Now it was old as fruit goes and I didn’t want to eat it anymore, so I took it to the trash. I said, “Good-bye Grant.” and tossed it into the trash can. It was now gone.

I felt I’d made progress by letting go of this grapefruit, that now I could move on, that now I’d get through this with the last grapefruit gone. I look back on that moment. I was still moving in slow motion.

I thought I’d healed by throwing away the grapefruit. I didn’t even cry when I did. It’s just a rotten piece of fruit now, then contemplated about what that meant. A piece of fruit past its prime, now buried and rotting. Then I cried.