My bedroom today is a sad place, not a safe harbor. It used to be our bedroom and was filled with a king-sized bed that Adrian and I slept in together.
#
My bedroom today has a narrow twin bed—a simple frame and mattress—with one nightstand separating it from the wall. Next to the bed on that wall is a “desk” made of a plank resting on two old filing cabinets filled with nothing.
The filing cabinets used to be filled with Adrian’s papers, as this desk was originally in the room he used as an office. We moved this desk into the “master bedroom,” which became my bedroom, so that I would have a private space to get away from the chaos in a house filled 24 hours a day with Adrian, his dementia, and his aides.
The theory was that I could go in that room, lock the door, and sit at the desk and play solitaire, which helps me get to sleep at night. My mother and father always played solitaire to relax them, and I think some of my siblings still do, too.
#
My bedroom today has three small contemporary dressers purchased at Target, which Adrian and I assembled together seven years ago. Assembling them was a tortuous process because I like to work fast and do everything myself, whereas Adrian liked to work together, slowly and methodically.
We built four of these dressers, two for each of us. Now I have three of them all to myself, one still half-empty. The fourth dresser is in the guest room.
#
My bedroom today has a thick blue exercise mat on the floor next to the wall with two windows. I exercise for ten minutes on this mat every morning. I do the “cat stretch” exercises I learned a long time ago from a tape I bought from my chiropractor.
The blue mat used to be Adrian’s when this bedroom was ours. On the mat he kept his blue exercise ball and his smaller yellow exercise ball, both of which his son Owen took home after Adrian died. I still have the pump to blow them up, waiting on a shelf for Owen to come and get it. The pump is of no use without the balls.
#
My bedroom today has an uncomfortable chair in one corner, with the second matching nightstand next to it. When Adrian and I picked out this chair four or five years ago, we thought it would be comfortable when we tried it out at the store. We bought this chair for the living room.
The chair is in my bedroom today because I started taking piano lessons after Adrian died, and when it looked like I’d stick with it, I bought a digital piano for the living room. That left no room for this chair.
#
My bedroom today has a large walk-in closet that I used to share with Adrian. I had more hanging clothes, but he had more folding clothes, so we bought stacked shelving units—also assembled from Target kits—and put those in one section to give him extra space.
On the upper shelf of this closet, we kept our blankets, extra sheets and pillows, odds and ends—the things we accumulated that seemed to belong there, or didn’t belong anywhere else.
On the floor of this closet, along two walls, we put shoe racks—one for me and one for Adrian, though most of Adrian’s shoes ended up in the mudroom, near the door, ready to be used. I kept the current season’s shoes in the mudroom and my out-of-season shoes in the closet, but Adrian didn’t differentiate seasons in shoes or clothes.
Now I have all the hangers and shelves and shoe racks in this walk-in closet to myself. I can keep extra things in this closet that I would never have had room for before—like the new suitcase I bought when all of ours were ruined in the basement flooding that went on over the last year of Adrian’s life and got thrown out the summer after he died.
I am rich in closet space.
#
When I’m in my bedroom today, I don’t use the uncomfortable chair or the extra nightstand. I used to meditate mornings at the desk, but being in that quiet space now takes me to places that are too dark, so I don’t go there any more.
All I do now at that desk is take my blood pressure occasionally and write it down for my next doctor’s visit.
On the other side of the house, I have a whole studio with north light coming in from the windows--a real desk and lots of filing cabinets and shelves in addition to all my painting space and easels and tubes of paint, and that’s where I like to be.
#
The one comforting thing in my bedroom today has been there since the house was built: my art is on the walls.
But I rarely look up.
#
Now that I have described to you what my bedroom is like today, I think it will be time soon to give it a makeover.