Sounds of missing - and loving

So many things make a house a home.
The sights, the smells - and the sounds.
I think I miss the sounds the most. One of the first things I noticed after John died was that our home felt empty. I was the only one making the sounds. The silence echoed, it was so loud.
I missed so many sounds that I had taken for granted but, in their wholeness, had made up the quilt of our life.
John's laughter
The sound of the garage door going up when he came home
The distinctive noise his key made in the lock on the door
The water in his shower in the morning
Even his familiar cough
Now it was just me and the furbabies and it wasn't anywhere near what it used to be.
Our home was far too silent.
There were two sounds that especially made me think of John - the way the door to the laundry room rattled when John entered from the garage and the distinctive way the handles on his dresser drawers rattled when he closed them.
Sometimes the cats will go tearing through the kitty door in  the laundry room door and it will make that old familiar sound and for a fraction of a second my heart will skip and imagine...
It used to make me very sad but now it brings back a happy memory and it no longer hurts like it used to.
But the dresser, that was another thing.
John kept all his foldable clothes in that dresser - underwear, shorts, loads of T shirts.
For years, it remained as he left it. I just couldn't bear to do anything with it. Taking his clothes out of the dresser felt like I was erasing him. I needed his things to stay exactly as they were.
And so the dresser stood there.
Unused.
Silent.
But this year I have felt a movement in my grief. I still miss John as much as ever but I can detach my sorrow from his things - at least more than I used to. It was finally time to take his clothes out of his dresser and move my clothes into it.
And a happy thing happened when I did that.
Now, when I go in the drawers to get my clothes and I push the drawer closed, it makes that distinctive noise again. The handles flap against the wood and rattle in their hinges as they used to when John got dressed for work in the morning and my heart is happy to hear that sound again.
I didn't expect this to happen.
But I'm glad it did.
Our home still misses all the John sounds but it's nice to have this particular one of them back.
I can shut the drawer and listen and remember and smile.