Widow is left with haunting shadows on a trusty laptop
PORTLAND -- After his new wife, there was no companion more constant for Chris Gelineau than his laptop.
His silver Dell Inspiron went everywhere with him: to the University of Southern Maine, where Gelineau studied computer technology; to Cape Elizabeth, where Lavinia Gelineau soaked up sun while her husband tapped away on his keyboard under a tree; and to Iraq, where Gelineau, a member of the Maine Army National Guard, was sent in March.
''He and that laptop were inseparable," said Lavinia Gelineau.
In Iraq, he watched movies on it, played games, wrote in a journal, and instant-messaged his wife every morning at 7 a.m. her time.
On April 20, Lavinia Gelineau woke, went right to her computer, as always, and waited for her husband to appear online. Nothing. She said she had felt it coming, that she woke up twice during the night, panicked. Later that day, she received the confirmation she had dreaded. Gelineau had been killed while traveling in a convoy near Mosul. ''If I had been able to, I would have jumped out the window," she said. ''I just wanted to die."
His things began arriving from Iraq. Unopened care packages she had sent him in the weeks before he died, his name crossed out with thick black marker. The stuffed animal she had given him for Valentine's Day.
And the laptop. It sits in a spare bedroom in Lavinia Gelineau's apartment now, surrounded by other mementos: his uniform, photographs from their wedding, a poem she wrote for him.
On its hard drive, the world is frozen at a moment several hours before Chris Gelineau left on the convoy. Lavinia Gelineau can see their adoring e-mails back and forth, his journal entries, his programming work, and a slide show of snapshots she sent to him, set to the theme from ''Love Story."
There are short video clips of Gelineau in Kuwait and Iraq. One shows a grinning Chris Gelineau, looking younger than his 23 years, bowling in his fatigues in Kuwait. Another features him playing ping-pong with a fellow soldier, sunglasses perched atop his head.
His wife finds them hard to watch. ''Seeing him so full of life is like a slap in the face," she said.
In another clip, he is giving a tour of his quarters, turning a shaky camera on his tiny room, trying to find something interesting to show her, but coming up short. ''That's the window," goes his deep voice-over. He trains the camera on a makeshift curtain, ''so the light doesn't shine in my face when I wake up in the mornings. That's my bed. That's my little electric heater to stay warm in the nights. . . . Here's my locker. I'll try to get it from top to bottom. . . . There's that roomate of mine I told you about. . . . I don't know what else to show you.
''So, for now," he finishes, ''talk to you later, babe. Love ya. Bye." 