One Really Empty Closet

It’s done. It’s been a long time in coming but all her clothes are gone. There’s now a large gaping hole in our closet where just days ago a whole bunch of happy cotton and polyester reminders used to hang. The sight of the half empty space is jarring but I feel rather numb about it all.

This was my last big rip of the band-aid, the last big step that needed to be taken, my last mountain to climb. The thought of starting that task still somehow strikes me cold, a mental game I’ve practiced so many times in the last four years. But then I remember the task is done and suddenly I panic with questions:

· Did I forget to save that special whatever?
· What if I forget about that time she wore whatever?
· Blah blah blah whatever?

The questions are rapid fire and they all lead me in one direction – the past. Since I can’t go back in time (And, oh trust me! If there was a way to mentally force time to go backwards, I’d have figured it out by now by sheer willpower and mental force!) by standing looking backward I’m still moving forward, just not the direction I choose. I’m in the passenger seat letting life drive me around while I sit and wish for what can’t be had.

It’s time I got in the drivers seat again. It’s been a long time.

Aaaaaand… Full Stop

I’ve been pushing with all my might since October 5th and I can claim many little victories: The kitchen is now mine.  The living room is now mine.  The closets – all except for the big scary one - are all mine.  But the house is a wreck with piles of stuff.  I have one pile of stuff that’s the Keep This Forever stack (that pile is filled with emotional land mines and prickly pear.)   Another pile is the eBay pile.  Another pile is the Give To Others pile. (The process of distributing those gifts will be all kinds of fun.)(By the way, that was extreme sarcasm, just in case it wasn’t clear.)  Despite the enormous emotional effort, I feel like all I’ve managed to do is shuffle stuff around while making a complete mess of my house.

And everything has come to a complete stop.

My faithful helper texted me Monday to ask if I wanted to make another big push forward this weekend.  My heart went cold.  I didn’t even respond at first.  I feel like I’ve hit a wall.  Go figure.  The last big push I made three weeks ago left me a slobbering mess of a man.  It was the hardest of all by far, except, possibly for that first big step.  Now I fear I lack the resolve to push through to the finish, the last big push: to clear out our closet.

I dismissed my helper’s request with an honest self-assessment of my timidity: I’m seriously rattled from our last bit of work and need some recovery time.  But yet I feel I must continue.  This process is just simply unforgiving.  I get weaker with each step I take yet I know that that despite the pain, this is the right path.

For now, like a climber’s respite at the butt of the final summit, I’ve paused, out of breath, out of energy, and out of motivation.  But where my wind, muscles and drive fail me, my devotion will not.  I am devoted to the pursuit of a life that would make Maggie proud.  She’s worth that.  And so am I.  While I may rest for just a bit, I will not stop my progress.

(Damn this is hard.)

Pushing Toward Happiness

(Yes, this is totally a picture of me, in case your curious....)

I’m not angry.  I’m not specifically unhappy, really.  But I’m very, very dissatisfied with my life, and that dissatisfaction is driving change.  So I’m pushing with all my might against that smothering bubble that is grief.  This time, rather than being focused on what’s in my head or what’s in my heart, I’m focused squarely on what’s in my home.  Excuse my directness, but I’m living in a home that’s not really mine and I’m done.  It’s time for change.  It’s past time for change.

For years (Years!?  Really!?!? How can it be years?), I’ve opened up kitchen drawers with the best intentions, looked at the contents, sighed, and closed those drawers, not to be touched again for weeks - sometimes even years.

I’ve walked around Maggie’s clothes that haven’t moved since I last cried into them.   I’ve kept my clothes on a spare bed because my chest of drawers is full of designer jeans that I don’t know what to do with. They looked great on her. But they are in the way of my future.

I’ve lived around pantry and cabinets full of dishes, kitchen tools, and mementos that represent a life I’m not allowed to live any more.

I’ve kept expensive dishes (our incomplete wedding china set) up on the top shelf, collecting dust because just what the heck do you do with wedding china when by death we did part?  (Dear Abby, got an answer for that one?)

I’ve kept piles of various gifts given to Maggie because what the hell was I supposed to do with them?

I’ve avoided touching the nicely stacked piles of flyers given out at Maggie’s memorial.  I’ve buried stacks of condolence cards way, way, way deep in the back of the Bookshelf of Painful Memories.  Hidden throughout the house are stacks of photos from our wedding given to me from friends after she died, photos assembled specifically for the memorial service, photos assembled especially for our wedding video, and photos I’ve taken down in a fit of “Damn it!  I’ve got to make some sort of progress!  I’ll just take this down and hide it!”  (I call those little glorious, proud moments “progress seizures” which may, or may not, be followed immediately with a shot of tequila, a large beer or other assorted bad choices.)

I’ve pushed hard before and made some minor progress.  But this house is big and over the 10 years she and I were together, we accumulated a lot of stuff and, frankly, I’m flat out overwhelmed.  (At the rate I’m going, I’ll totally have my life together around 2035, just in time for time travel to be in vogue. Now, don’t get me started about the very first trip I’ll be taking in that time machine.  It will not be a trip to tell the 1994 me to buy Dell stock.)

Pushing hard sucks. But this time I’m doing things differently – I’ve called in reinforcements.  I’ve hired a friend to help.  She’s a good friend of mine, is friends with many of Maggie’s friends, and knows (and is deeply touched by) our story.  She’s also a tender, thoughtful, sincere, genuinely sweet person who truly understands both how difficult this is for me, what role she plays and what the big goal is (and recognizes when those three ideals collide.)  Fortunately, she’s also a manic, Type A, anti-hording, neat freak that knows how to problem solve and get things done.  Together, we make a great cleaning-out, re-organizing, crying machine.

For our first big push, she suggested a genius plan. For everything, choose one: A) Throw it away, B) Give it a new life somewhere else, or C) Keep it in a special box.   It’s amazing how much progress we’ve made just placing things into those three categories. Notably, it’s also amazing how few things went into the special box.  Most of the stuff has fit perfectly into the New Life category.  And, because she is wonderful and sensitive, she reminded me each timed I stumbled emotionally, that wonderful things deserve wonderful lives, even after they’ve had wonderful lives with Maggie and me.

I like to think that those re-lifed items are blessed, even though the unknowing recipients have no hint at how much love surrounded that shiny new object they’ve welcomed into their lives. In some ways, Maggie and I are sharing the aura of our love with them, whether they know it or not.  Now, that’s pretty cool.  We had a lot of love, she and me - more than most, I’ve learned.  Maggie was a person who truly wanted to make the world a better place. So, by letting the things she loved find new, happy homes, she lives on.  In pushing through this difficult time to my new life, I honor her legacy.

Most of all, I honor her legacy by refusing to live any life other than that which is wonderful to me.  I have a lot of work to go.  I will not quit.  Wonderful is around the bend.

Immovable Objects vs The Business of Change

The Business of Change that I started back in mid-September continues on. There’s just so much stuff to go through and just so little willpower on my part. Despite all the difficult work packing her 118 pair of shoes into boxes, only one box has made it to a new home. (I remind myself that one is better than none – and even one is still a change.) That one box full of Adventures Not Taken was dropped off yesterday. I’m sure the nice lady at Safe Place found it odd that “Do you need a receipt?” was a reason to burst into tears. But I took the receipt, tried to drive straight and by the time I was half-way home I had stopped crying. That’s a real improvement.

Two weekends ago, I attacked a different part of the house, the back closet, where I uncovered landmines I didn’t expect. You’d think that things that have gone untouched (even unseen!) since Maggie and I moved into this big house would be way easier to sort through than, say, shoes. This was the closet where Maggie and I stuffed things we carried with us when we moved in but didn’t want to throw away. We’ve all got such a place filled with random stuff. Yes, you know the place.

Eventually it looked as though the closet had thrown up on the living room floor. I unpacked Halloween costumes from all the years we were together. I found her memory boxes full of newspaper articles she had saved, letters from old boyfriends, report cards, school reports, and even a picture portfolio from high school when she was trying to make it as a model. I even found the piece of paper on which I wrote her phone number for our first phone call and, just to the side of that, her address so I could pick her up for our first date. And this is just the stuff I saw. I didn’t dig but there a number of boxes I haven’t even opened yet.

Two things kicked me in the heart more than everything else that day. The first was an unusually large, unmarked white box that stuck out because of its size and the way it was carefully taped shut. Curious, I cut it open. Inside was a sealed plastic bag. Inside the sealed bag was a wedding dress. And in an instant, like a flash of insight, I also realized that the big bundle of frilly stuff I kept moving around the living room was her wedding headdress, complete with hair clip that I hadn’t even noticed until that very moment. Instant, painful clarity.

The second kick in the heart was in discovering the contents of a simple duffle bag. It definitely wasn’t something of mine. It was old but in very nice condition; it had obviously been well cared for. I pondered not opening it but I had to know what such a bag could possibly hold. After unzipping the zipper, I noticed two pink ribbons tied neatly in bows. The ribbons were carefully wrapped around a very soft, worn pink blanket that was rolled up perfectly into a neat roll. I couldn’t imagine what it could be. It was old but soft, fluffy and pink, kind of like the one someone would use as a …. A baby blanket, a very old baby blanket, I’d guess right around 36 years old.

…..

As of today, the Halloween costumes are gone; I took them to Goodwill this morning. This past weekend, I threw away a full trashcan of nonsense stuff that, as I did, I wondered what the heck we were saving this crap for anyway. But still sitting in my living room are several boxes of papers, folder, trinkets and knick-knacks, most of which the significance is only known to Maggie. Most notably there sits one large, nondescript white box that’s been recently re-taped. Beside that sits an old, simple, well-kept duffle bag.

The Business of Change meets the immovable objects.