DAY 21:

When I woke up this morning, for a second I forgot where I was. I burrowed my cheek deeper against the warm flannel pillowcase and pulled the blankets up tighter around my neck. During those seconds that my brain crossed the threshold between dreamland and consciousness, I was back at home. Janie's hair tickled my nose. Clara's cartoons floated under the crack of the closed door. "Did we set up the coffeepot?" I mumbled in some half-dream state. And, of course, that instantly broke the spell.

I clenched my eyelids, trying to cling to those gossamer threads connecting me to my past life, but it was no use. Janie's ghost was gone from the bed and the silence from the living room slammed into my ears.

For the first time in months, I felt hollow. Empty.

There is food in my stomach. Walls keep my body safe. Water pours freely from a tap. I am physically safer than I've been in two years. Yet my mind hasn't felt this fragile since I lost them.

I rolled over in bed and it took all my energy just to breathe. Slow inhale, feeling my ribs expand as my lungs take in air. Slow exhale, clenching my abdomen to push all the air out. In this world, living is a choice. Forget that and something will kill you.

But even knowing that, right at this moment, I can't move. I'm still laying in bed as I write this. Trying to remember the smell of Janie's shampoo. That clean soap scent with a hint of lavender.

Should I have stopped for that mother? Offered to share my bounty with that stranger and her children? Did I make an error in judgment?

No. Even as my pen writes these words, I know I didn't make a mistake. She was a trap. Bait. A trick. There isn't any other explanation. A single mother and two young children don't survive alone in this world without protection. Strong protection.

Stronger protection than I could offer.

I failed my own wife. My own child. All that is left of my family is me. I am the holder of their memory. My thoughts keep them alive. There is no monument to their existence. No gravestone. Not even photographs. If I die, then they are truly lost to this world. And I am not ready to let that happen.

I will survive. Whatever it takes.

Although, that means I should probably get out of this bed and do something to aid in my survival. Secure the perimeter. Figure out sustainable food options. Make a maintenance checklist for the house.

But I am sure it can wait until tomorrow.

Just thinking about it all makes me want to sink into this bed. I know my drive to live is in utter contrast to the weight of grief that clenches at my heart. Two opposite things can be true at once. Can't they? I deserve a day to wallow. Tomorrow. There's always tomorrow.

DAY 22:

I've always done my best thinking in the shower. This morning I spent a good half hour just letting rivulets of water roll over my head and down my shoulders. The hot water washed away some of my lethargy from yesterday. I just wish I had soap so I could wash away my grime, too.

I chaperoned a field trip for Clara's class to a history museum once. They were studying colonial life and at the museum we did several hands-on activities. At the time, I remember thinking about how grateful I was to live in the modern world. If I had known how fragile our society was, maybe I would have paid more attention to how people survived once upon a time.

One thing that I remember is that in colonial times, people made soap by mixing lye and animal fat. That stood out in my head because I always loved the movie Fight Club and soap-making was an important plot point in that movie. What I learned from the colonial museum people is that you can get lye from pouring water through cold ashes from a fireplace. The museum guide compared it to making a pot of drip coffee. She also called it a dangerous process.

Anyway, that's what I was thinking about in the shower this morning. About how I wish I had been a better student of history and wondering if one field trip, plus that monologue presented by Brad Pitt, would be enough knowledge to help me make homemade soap.

Jack and Jill had quite the DVD collection. But they didn't own Fight Club. I went through them yesterday. That was the one project I did accomplish on what I'm calling my Sunday off. (Not that I know what day of the week it is. But we all deserve a day of rest, don't we? I was never a religious person, but that is one concept from the Bible that I am happy to follow.)

Anyway, I watched a DVD of the Secret Life of Pets and then felt utterly depressed because I saw that movie in the theaters. It was Clara's first movie theater experience. She thought it was too loud, asked to go to the bathroom three times, and found a piece of gum under a seat and thought it was "thinking putting". I thought watching it would flood me with good memories, but it just made me feel worse. I should have watched something I had never seen before, something with less sentiment. Even Sophie's Choice would have been a better choice for me.

Maybe I'll watch a different movie later. But not today. Today, I am going to be productive.

I won't attempt soap-making today. There are cold ashes in the wood-burning stove, but I don't have a store of animal fat. Need to kill an animal for that.

Also, there are probably more pressing things to do on my list of projects.

DAY 23

I've been here for over two weeks now. In that time I have fixed the electricity, thus providing running water. I killed the two rotters who had been living here and disposed of their bodies. Although I haven't gone through every drawer in the house, I've found clean clothes to wear, movies to watch, and books to read, including a survivalist guide with some good tips and an atlas.

I have also eaten two boxes of granola, five cans of sardines, three pouches of tuna, fifteen cans of vegetables, a pack of protein bars, a jar of nuts, and a sleeve of cookies. The only reason I know the exact amounts of everything is because I have thrown none of the empty containers away. It's not like I'm dragging the trash cans to the curb on Monday morning so they can be emptied into a garbage truck!

God, I used to throw so much stuff away. Broken toys, used tinfoil, spoiled food. Even unspoiled food. That half a pound of pasta that was left over in the pot? Trash. The leftover crackers, cheese, and cereal bar in Clara's lunchbox? Trash. Everything was disposable after enough time. Old iPods and cracked cups, stained shirts and ripped socks. Ninety-six gallons of waste a week. Plus a container of recycling.

But now nothing gets thrown away, and nothing is easily replaced.

I look again in the pantry. The empty spaces that are on the shelves now that weren't there two weeks ago. There is still lots of food left, but it's not unlimited. And not easily replaced.

Can't just run down to the grocery store or order refills on Amazon. I'll probably never eat a banana ever again in my life because the closest banana tree is at least 2,000 miles away. I'll probably never even eat bread again because even if I found a wheat field, I'd have no clue how to transform that golden stalk into something edible. Shit, let's get real. Even if I had all the ingredients laid out in front of me, I wouldn't have the first clue how to make honest to goodness bread.

All I know how to do is consume. I've never been a producer. My career was in sales and marketing. I talked to people. Crunched numbers. Thought about profit margins. I never made anything. I bought food; I watched tv; I read books. Never cooked, filmed, or wrote, nevermind build, harvest, or hunt.

Not sure why I'm going on this spiral of defeatism. Maybe it helps to get it off my chest. You are the only person I have to talk to, and you aren't even a person, except in some metaphorical mind's eye sort of way.

But having a void to scream all my fatalistic thoughts into isn't really all that helpful. What I need is for someone to tell me to cut the shit. Tell me to get up and get going. To say, "You've survived this long, George! You must be doing something right!"

As I write this, I'm also staring out the window. A rabbit is sitting on my lawn–lawn! Like I mow it and yell for the paper boy to stay off of it! A better word is meadow–and is nibbling on the grass. I used to love catching glimpses of nature outside my window. I'd call Clara over and we'd stare at squirrels and chipmunks, smile at the cardinals, yell at the bluejays, and point in awe at circling hawks. But this rabbit, it's making me wonder.

There might not be grocery stores anymore, but there is food all around. Right outside my window is nature's grocery store, and it looks like there is rabbit in-stock. I just need to figure out how to get it into my grocery cart so I can get it in my cooking pot.

DAY 24

I've made a decision. A big one. From now on, the pantry is my savings account. It's there for rainy days. Emergencies only. I'm officially enrolling myself in survivalist school.

Lesson 1: How to Catch a Rabbit.

According to the book I found, it's easy enough to build a rabbit trap. There are a bunch of basic designs, but the one that looks easiest is basically just a box propped up with a stick. There is also a pretty simple snare design I might also try out. Either way, the two big keys are that: one, you need bait, and two, you need to figure out a suitable location. Based on my observations, I have a pretty good idea of where Mr. Bugs Bunny likes to hop around, so I know where I am going to set my traps. What I'm a bit clueless about is what I will use as bait. The book says that fresh fruit or vegetables work best, but those are two things that I'm low on at the moment.

This might require a bit of testing.

Today I am going to get out some crackers to see if that does the trick.

DAY 25

The crackers didn't work. I saw some birds hop around pecking at the crumbs, but they didn't spring the trap, and even if they did, how much meat could even be on a sparrow? I'm not that desperate yet.

So, I explored the area a bit more. I donned the bike helmet and deer skin coat, slipped the knife in my boot, and took a walk.

There was one rotter that I saw in the woods, but it was old. Looked almost like an animated skeleton, so much of its flesh was missing from its face. With muscles decayed that bad, it barely limped along and its growl wasn't more than a hiss. It was so slow and easy to avoid that I didn't even bother to put it down.

What was more exciting was that I found an apple tree! They aren't quite ripe yet, but the small green fruits were definitely apples. In a month or so, I'm going to have a full-time job of harvesting and preserving them! Apple jam, apple chips, apple vinegar... Plus, I bet fresh apples will work great in my newly fashioned rabbit traps.

Things are coming together. They really are.

I just wish that Janie and Clara were here.

DAY 26

I keep fiddling with my wedding ring.

Janie used to take her rings off: when she showered, when she cooked, sometimes when she slept. She'd clean them and then leave them rolled up to dry in paper towels on the counter. The number of times they got thrown away, and I had to go digging through the trash was ridiculous. I can laugh about it now, but I wasn't laughing back then.

But I never took off my wedding ring. It's just a simple band of white gold. No inlaid diamonds or fancy carvings. Not even an inscription. And it hasn't left my finger in over fifteen years. Even if I slipped it above my knuckle, my flesh still bears the mark of my wedding ring. There is a fat callous where my palm meets my left ring finger. The skin of my finger has a permanent indent and tan line. It's as much a part of my body as the hairs that grow on my arm or the nails that grow from my fingertips.

It's also a reminder that I used to never be alone. I had my person. My witness to life. Someone to share the burden of adulthood with. It was okay that I didn't know how to cook because she did. And it was okay that she didn't know how to change the oil in the car because I knew a mechanic who did.

My ring is all I have left.

I know I shouldn't, but I keep thinking about how I wish I could see her face. And see Clara's face.

I've done two stupid things that I've kept from you. Not that I've lied. Just omitted. The first is pretty small: I found a phone charger that would have fit my phone and I have kept it plugged into the socket next to the bed. The second is that in a fit of rage, I tore down the photos of Jack and Jill that were on the wall.

Staring at their photos, I could feel my mind fracturing. I'd stare at them and almost wonder if they were pictures of my own memories. Like, they had this picture of the Grand Canyon. I went on a road trip with my parents the summer I turned thirteen, and we passed through Arizona and stopped for a few hours at Grand Canyon National Park. I recall thinking about how a picture of the Grand Canyon was just as good as the real thing, because it was too big to take in all at once. So, I stared at the picture of Jack and Jill standing in front of the Grand Canyon and I could imagine it was me instead. Why not? I'd been there once too. But it wasn't me. I knew it wasn't my picture. My stomach felt sour looking at their smiling faces. Their stupid smiling faces. Their memories, not mine. I don't know if it was jealousy or just that all this isolation is making me go crazy, but in a fit, I took every single one of their pictures off the wall and tossed the frames out the back door like frisbees flying towards the treeline.

It's not fair. And now that I know a harvest of apples is coming and I'm feeling optimistic about my rabbit traps, I think it's time to do something about it. If I don't, all I'll feel is regret.