...... to keep track of all of the lists around here.
Not my lists.
Jim's.
The man was a notorious list-maker.
He made a list for every occasion, every trip, every goal.
I would often tease him about his lists.
He probably kept a list of every time I did that.
Yesterday I spent most of the day looking through the house for a notebook I needed (I found it today in the most obvious place I could've placed it. What IS with that?!).
While I was searching the study, I came across a bundle of papers that I had placed/hidden in the bottom of a file drawer.
It was a bundle of lists.
Jim's lists.
His personal lists.
I hadn't read through them at the time I put them away.
I just knew that these were papers I did not want to throw away, purposefully or by mistake.
And so I kind of ...... hid them from myself.
To be found ...... and dealt with at some other time.
I guess that time was today.
(Yes, I found them yesterday, but I knew then that I couldn't deal with them at the time. I had a meeting to attend and a notebook to find. I knew that dealing with that bundle would not only set me off course, but it would most likely bring on a gravity-sucking wave that I wasn't prepared to deal with. So I set them on my desk, in plain sight, to be dealt with sooner, rather than later.)
When I got home this afternoon and finished doing all of the tasks that I had in my head to keep me from doing the one task I loathed/longed to do, I went into the study. I looked at the stack of papers on my desk, sitting where I had left it. I wanted to turn around and shut the door behind me, without touching the stack.
I wanted to pick up the stack and hungrily devour every word that Jim had written.
I hadn't even read anything and I already had a love/hate relationship with those papers.
That seems to be par for the course, at least for me.
I have a love/hate relationship with so many things that have to do with Jim now.
Important days ...... well, important to me. His birthday. Our anniversary. The kids' birthdays.
His clothes that we've kept. Some pictures of us.
His orange extension cord.
(That was just to see if you're paying attention. :)
His lists.
This stack was made up of his prayer list, his professional goals list, his marriage goals list, his parenting goal list, his physical goal list, and a few others.
(I wasn't kidding when I said he was notorious for these.)
I managed to get through most of the lists without having an emotional meltdown. I surprised myself.
In fact, I was able to smile at more than one item.
But then ...... then came the item that transported me instantly back into my ocean of grief.
This item caused me to feel like the sand under my feet was being sucked back into the ocean, and the shallow water I was standing in was being pulled back along with it.
If you've stood in the shore of an ocean, you know that physical feeling.
You know that the sand and the water gets sucked back from the beach right before a wave comes charging in.
If you're reading this blog, you probably know that emotional feeling as well.
You know that the air and calm get sucked out of your body right before that wave of grief slams into it.
This wave came over the top of me and pulled hard at me, after I read this:
"3. Write the kids a letter about what is really important"
That was it.
That's all it took.
And that wave has left smaller waves in its path all evening, which have had the ability to leave tears in their wake.
He didn't have that item checked off of his list.
He never wrote those letters.
And my heart broke all over again for all that my children lost that day that changed our lives forever.
And for what they continue to miss.
Children shouldn't lose their father before they're even out on their own.
Daughters shouldn't lose their father before they've started seriously dating someone.
Sons should not lose their fathers before they start/finish high school.
But they do.
And most probably do without receiving letters telling them what their father thought was really important.
Yes, I experienced a wave today.
And while it was a large wave, it didn't knock me down.
It shook me and rattled me, but I kept my balance.
I didn't fall beneath the weight of that wave because I also know what's really important and it's this:
My children will always know what was important to their father. Always.
Even if they didn't have their own memories, they'd have mine. And they'd have the memories of our families and our friends.
Yes, a letter would've been something special for each of them. But the memories that they have, that we all have, are priceless.
If they need something more tangible than that ...... they can always read the lists.
:)
