If he could wear anything for the rest of his life, Chris would have worn a [blue] cashmere sweater, the palest khaki cargo shorts, and Reef flip-flops. Whether it was thirty degrees or ninety, he’d wear that outfit day after day, except when he had to wear something different for something silly like work. We used to say that if he ever started a blog he should name it Cashmere and Cargo Shorts, not only to pay homage to his favorite clothing, but because it reflected a certain combination of “high” and “low” that appealed to both of our sensibilities.

In April, after an eight-month battle with cancer, Chris was buried in his favorite pale blue cashmere sweater, cargo shorts, and a pair of fuzzy socks (introduced to him in the last few months of his illness, he quipped that they changed his life). One of the hardest parts of losing a partner is not having that person there to talk to, to bounce things off of, to discuss new pop culture and frustrating news stories with. He was constantly telling me that I needed to find other people to talk at, or, better yet, write things down. Now that he’s not here, I have found some other people, but they can never completely fill the void. I’ve always been wary of keeping a blog, but I promised him before he died that I would set up Cashmere and Cargo Shorts, to give me an outlet with which to share my thoughts.

A few weeks after he died, I thought I would try going to see the movie Zootopia and writing a post about it. He and I had planned on seeing it, but by the time it was out in theaters he was too sick to go to the movies. A good plan in theory, I just couldn’t bring myself to communicate with my usual enthusiasm about such a lighthearted movie, although I might have been able to write a decent post about my new, completely expected love of recliner theaters.

Now that over six months have passed, I’m in a slightly better headspace to start the blog. The first couple of posts I have planned, however, weren’t where I initially planned to start. They’re not going to be comfortable, fluffy posts about bunny movies. I haven’t written them yet, so I may change my mind, but if this is a blog in which I write about the things I’d be talking through with my late husband, it’ll have a mixture of things – high and low, fun and serious, and comfortable and potentially discomfiting. Welcome… to a little part of Cory’s brain.