It’s possible it’s a good gauge of the state of one’s mind, the condition of the interior of your refrigerator.
What items are in there? How many? When are they from? Can you remember the circumstances surrounding the acquisition of the items you find? Did you really want to remember them?
What circumstances have altered, if any, in the interim? How does the status quo overall compare, then and now? Are there new people in your life since you acquired the food in the refrigerator? Have any left?
It took me a little over three-quarters of an hour, the time it took to play a new album I purchased, to clean out my refrigerator of all perishables that had long since perished, all spoiled foods, all foods past their sell date, past their pull date. The album is “Good Things” and the lead talent, a singer, is Aloe Blacc. It was wonderful music to accompany what I was doing.
There were by my rough count, approximately 25 different containers of food. Reusable storage, take out containers, glass bowls, a ceramic bowl, and a fair number of containers for prepared food (dining in, as opposed to taking out) were among the assemblage. All washed in soap and hot water and disposed of, or put in the dishwasher, or dried and put away for future storage use.
I had no idea mold grew in so many colors, and with such different textures. In a refrigerator!
The refrigerator is now virtually empty, which is as it started as my return from France at the end of July. Jody moved out during the first three days in September. Hence all the food is from the last month she lived here, her home for almost 11 months. It has remained here ever since.
She lived another two months and four days. She has now been dead for two weeks.
Until I cleaned out the refrigerator, I would have told you that what has been happening over the past 12 weeks has been happening to someone else. Well, perhaps. But he seems to have left and given back my life to me to do something with.
I don’t remember where all the food I threw out came from, why it was here, who brought it, and why that particular choice was made. It may easily, except for some Indian food, have been that I was responsible, for choosing it and serving it, and keeping what was left. No idea.
What I remember is how it was each day, when food was something to be attended to, and Jody had to have choices, and every opportunity to eat as much as she wanted, which was never very much, not during that last month here. It would fluctuate after that. And for the last week and-a-half or slightly more, she ate nothing at all.
When she was well, eating and good food were one of the three rings in our daily circus. It was an immediate and continual chance to celebrate being alive.
That’s what I remember, and am unlikely to forget. Unless that other guy comes back to take over again. It seems unlikely when I’m making progress like this.