Had an epiphany today. Brian stayed home with me and we began what I have decided to call the Get Our Sloppy House in Order Project. We began in the garage where we have a huge accumulation of junk mixed in with a few important things. I realized while going through a section of stuff that I havent let the accumulation build just because of my laziness and my INFP personality (though those are both parts of it and are key to my ability to ignore things for so long). While looking through a stack of cards and letters, I realized that I have been delaying examining the feelings that I associate with so many of these items. It does not surprise me that a New Years card from my mom and dad from one of Moms last years of life and a birthday card to Brian from Mom and Dad (signed Dorris and Art and followed by the parenthetical Mom and Dad) made me cry. What does surprise me is that delaying looking through these things not only allowed me to avoid examining my negative emotions connected to losing Mom and the drastic shift in the narrative I had imagined my life following, but I also denied myself the positive emotions I could have been cherishing. The card with the double signatures reminds me of my parents as a unit, something I cherish. It reminds me of how strange (and thus funny) a thing it was to figure out what to call ones in-laws. Mom and Dad always wanted Brian to be comfortable with them and call them what he wanted to, but it was weird to decide how to refer to the parents of your spouse. It and the New Years card remind me of how wonderful my mother was about sending cards and staying connected to people, something I have not carried on and wish that I had. Seeing Moms handwriting...well, thats just fraught with emotions. So, we cleaned a good section of the garage, took two car loads of actual junk to the dump, and I set aside a stack of cards and letters to look at. I am going to look at them often. I also kept a bag full of Moms school and Relay for Life t-shirts, and I am going to find a way to have a quilt made using some of the material from those. I let myself cry and laugh and miss the way life was before Mom died, and I made some plans for the future. Then I went into the back yard where we left the dogs during this cleaning project to find that Abby had dug a hole in the dirt around our big cedar tree, so I will be bathing dogs this evening. This seems kind of appropriate, though, based on the picture on the front of the card Mom and Dad sent to Brian.
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 22:23:45 +0000