Bins and boxes

[Guest TooSoon]

Last week I did my basement (it is far from finished) but today I did the upstairs (one story house ---- isn't that an irony, this is anything but a one story house).  But it is starting to sink in now.  Not just putting Scott in a box (he was such a pack-rack he requires more boxes of his own stuff than my entire life put together).  But today I put my life in two bins.  One is full of letters and my many volumes of journals and the other mainly photographs and post cards, sent and picked up along the way and unsent.  I also went through the books - mine and the children's books.  I was proud that I got the baby and little reader books down to one bin and other baby things into another, and I like the organized feeling but I am wrought somehow.  I'm not sad.  I've never cared about things, objects, in my life, not ever.  I had no fixed address until I was in my 30s so letting go of things is not new to me -  it was my way of life for a long, long time - and while I realize they are just things, I am a little sad.  I am caught betwixt and between who I once was and then who I became and who I am now and it is a little overwhelming. If I let all of those reminders go, will I remember it all?  I am elated adp and I have put our incongruous pieces together after so much time and patience, and I know our time is now and I would not have made other choices, but it is hard to look at those bins and boxes and realize that I am 44 years old and I've somehow managed to put the past 20 some years into a couple of bins and boxes.  To take in and absorb all that has happened over all of these years is a lot.  I just needed to say it out loud(ish) - if this counts as out loud.   

[Suki1]

Gosh, TooSoon, I wish I could fit all my stuff into two boxes. I can see how looking at two boxes and thinking "That's 20 years" is sobering. At the same time, to me it feels admirable. I've been following your progress in your basement, and admired you for being able to do it. I wish I could summon up the emotional fortitude to finish tackling my own basement.

 

Things evoke memories, for sure. But I wouldn't feel badly about having just two boxes. In the end, I guess it really is "just stuff." It can't define us or determine who or what we are.

 

[BrokenHeart2]

TS. Good for you to make that enourmous step!  More like humoungeous! 

[SoVerySad]

I can understand your feelings of sadness. Sorting through the remnants of our lives and our spouses belongings brings back many memories. Knowing you as I do, I'm not surprised you can condense your things into those bins and boxes. I think it is representative of the way you've lived your life - really living it by focusing on the experiences, valuing interactions and relationships, exploring, learning, and teaching more than collecting things. You know I am always in awe of your courage and determination to live fully and savor the experiences. It all has formed you into the amazing person you are - one who really knows what is most important in life is to make the most of experiences and opportunities presented to you.

 

Sending you love and hugs...

[mmg19]

Your post has brought about a deja vu moment for me.  I think you are amazing and have it together.  Wishing you many new memories and happiness as you move on with the next "story". 

[Wheelerswife]

I am also going through my basement.  Over the last week, I emptied John's shop, including tools and hardware, and a brand new storage cabinet and workbench that we bought and assembled together 6 months before he died.  I disassembled the workbench with a friend, carried everything out to his truck and then re-assembled it in the garage of his family farm.  At least I know that things are going to good places, but I still recoil after each phase of this process and I shed tears over what was supposed to be.  I resent that the new life we were building ended so soon and so abruptly and that I need to start all over again.

 

Next weekend, his brother arrives from Alaska.  He is going to take the things that John had saved from their childhood and other things that relate to their family and the years that were long before me.  I don't want or need those things, but they are still parts of him that I will let go of.

 

Next will be his books.  I have some connections to people at the university that will take his books for a book sale that will fund trips to conferences for English majors. 

 

All of this purging will bring me closer to the time when I will sell this house and move away from the place I came not even 6 years ago to begin a new chapter in my life.  I wish I had been able to write this book of my life with a different ending.  I didn't want this chapter to ever end.

 

Maureen

 

Edited to add...sorry for the hijack.

 

[Guest TooSoon]

Thanks all of you lovely people for letting me rant away and Maureen, you're doing it, too!  Vent, rant, whatever you need! 

 

I just crossed the metaphorical Rubicon with my father in law, who never ceases to amaze me with his kindness and understanding (he was never kind or understanding before I became widowed like him).  Finally, I brought up the subject of the sculptures.  I'm hoping to get one to his house today as I have a friend strong enough to lift one who is coming over to replace my kitchen faucet (and remove a dead bird from my porch --- serendipity?); it is the one Scott wanted his sister to have.  I am sure she thinks I've been withholding it from her but there just hasn't been a moment when I've been able to get it done since I cannot lift it and I am not letting my Dad or my FIL do it and adp doing it would just be too weird for everyone.  Anyway.....

 

So, I finally said to my FIL the unspoken:  It is time we talk about what is going to happen with all of the sculptures.  I said, "I am keeping what I want for M and me, but we must talk about where the others will go.  I want you and SIL to decide how you want me to proceed.  If you do not want them, I will try to find homes for them with people who loved him."  There.  I did it.

 

[Trying]

Sounds like you are making great head way.  I can only imagine how difficult it must be to make decisions about his sculptures, you can't get much more personal than something a person creates. Hopefully your FIL and SIL will have some clear ideas of what they want to happen with the remaining ones.

[Guest TooSoon]

We got one sculpture to my FIL's. My friends who made it happen bought me drinks.  Lots of them.  I'm numb.  I know these things must happen and I am happy about the future but it's heavy.  I'm just going to listen to Astral Weeks and check out for the rest of the night and chalk it up to a win. 

 

[Wheelerswife]

I can imagine how heavy those sculptures are... and also how fragile they might be, too.  It sure does mess with the head, though, to be moving them from the places they have sat for the last few years.  Dismantling a life...so hard.

 

Hugs,

 

Maureen

[Guest TooSoon]

You are right, Maureen.  I didn't think it would bother me or be so heavy but now that one is gone, I'm caught between wanting it right back where it was and relief that I know I am ready to let them go.  Caught between wanting them all gone right.now. and knowing that I am going to miss the sight of them.  It is all just so weird but it is time.  They are just things - albeit big, heavy, emotionally laden things - but just things.  Why did I leave the sculptures for last?!  It is challenging my confidence and that is pissing me off.  And I don't like feeling this way.  I'm done with this narrative but this narrative doesn't seem to be done with me just yet.  Ugh.

[Wheelerswife]

Ah, TooSoon, I'm not surprised about the sculptures. They are very direct representations of much of who Scott was. I am having difficulty trying to sift through some of John's handwritten notes and journals because they also capture so much of his essence. I found one yesterday in which he ponders the suffering that he saw when we traveled to Peru. He was trying to figure out how he, as a geographer, could analyze satellite images such that he could identify patterns within the landscape and determine how things such as public policies contributed to creating conditions that promote suffering. Our travel to Peru caused him to change the trajectory of his secondary research.

 

Ah!  This man should never have died in the prime of his life!

 

Hang in there. One sculpture at at time. Let others have pieces of him, even though they are very personal on more levels than most can understand.

 

Hugs,

 

Maureen

[Guest TooSoon]

I find myself feeling a little angry at him and anger is not my thing.  The thousands of pictures and slides were one thing but the sculptures - really?  It isn't rational and I'm not *really* angry but it is a conflicting feeling just to want them gone.  Who is going to take them?  They are so big!  Why do they have to look so much like him?!  And I really do not want to relive this whole thing again right now but I know I have to.  Since the very beginning I took very seriously Scott's wish that we live again, that his death not destroy us.  It nearly did and I do not like this process of liquidation, though I know it has to be done.  I look around me and I know -- deep down -- that he isn't here anymore.  He's in me and in M and that is where he resides.  There are two photographs in my hall, taken by our very talented photographer friend - one of him and one of Marina - a diptych (I stupidly refused to participate, otherwise it would have been a triptych).  I see them every time I go into the hall but it isn't him.  It is just a picture.  A beautiful picture of a beautiful person but it is just an image printed on paper and framed and hung by me.  It is like every other painting and print hanging on the walls in my house. I'm realizing what a huge presence he was though and how much of myself got lost in that and in this life we started but never got to see fulfilled; and I'm coming to terms with my own self now - a quiet, private person really.  I think the caregiving hurt me more than I have ever been willing to acknowledge.  I think I am still suffering from the aftermath of what I had to do and what I saw; who I had to become to get him to his death.  When it was happening, I just did it - whatever it was and with brain cancer that was definitely a daily roulette wheel - because it was part of the deal we made but I realize now that I am deeply scarred by it.  I am fortunate to have a partner who has been through the same thing and who understands.  But my lord, it is still so confusing, confounding.  Isn't there a "stop" button on this record player?  If only. 

 

 

[Wheelerswife]

I relate to so much of your last post.  I don't often speak about it these days, but I also lost myself in caring for Barry, especially the last 16 months of his life, but also in small pieces for much of our marriage as he slowly and almost imperceptibly declined over the years.  My marriage to John gave me the room to begin finding myself again.  I had lost so much of myself with Barry that even 3-4 years later, I still hadn't come full circle in figuring out what was to come next for my own life outside of our relationship.  Caregiving is really hard, but also something that on some level was a privilege, at least for me.  I've never had a child to care for as you have, but I have some sense of the sacrifice that parents make in caring for someone who is vulnerable and dependent.

 

As for the sculptures, Scott chose a model that was very dear to his heart!  His work was as large as life.  I'm glad the photos capture him in something more two dimensional and easier to store and/or display.  But like you, I can't and don't want to keep everything.  I'm happy to have John's journaling, although it would have been nice if he could have actually finished one journal and not just written 10 pages in one before setting it aside, and then later starting a new one!  I also have our entire time together captured in photographs that are stored digitally.  I have let go of his tools and soon I will let go of 95% of his books.  I will leave this house and this town and this university behind and try to start a new life somewhere else.  Time will tell where that place might be.

 

I never wanted to have to do this.

 

Maureen

[canadiangirl]

TS, you know I get it re: the aftermath of caregiving.  So great you were able to get that sculpture to your FIL's.  My LH considered his tools an extension of himself, so trying to sell them is emotionally-laden and onerous, but they have enough value that I cannot afford to give them away. (Note to self: tools, like cars, do not retain their original value!)

 

It sounds like both you and Wheelerswife are making real progress on your bins and boxes.  My hat is off to you both. 

[MauiMermaid]

I am caught betwixt and between who I once was and then who I became and who I am now and it is a little overwhelming. If I let all of those reminders go, will I remember it all? ...It is hard to look at those bins and boxes and realize that I am 44 years old and I've somehow managed to put the past 20 some years into a couple of bins and boxes.  To take in and absorb all that has happened over all of these years is a lot.  I just needed to say it out loud(ish) - if this counts as out loud. 

 

Big hugs to you. I completely and totally understand every word. It's so surreal isn't it? I swear the longer time goes by the more my "old" life feels like a figment of my imagination. When I come across those tangible things, I think "really?!". So unsettling.

 

Wishing you strength and some semblance of peace - I know how hard this is. xoxoxo

[Wheelerswife]

Bins and boxes...it never ends, does it?

 

John's brother has come and gone (good riddance!) and I am back from my trip to the east coast.  I'm feeling the pressure to continue to sift through stuff, and this week I went through camping gear and pared that down some.  John's colleague Paul came by this morning and took some for use with Boy Scouts.  We had a nice chat...he lingered on long after he needed to and we talked about life and the university and his family and John.  I know he misses his best friend on campus and even stated that his professional trajectory would have been different if John hadn't died.  He and John partnered in many initiatives and without John, those no longer happen.  Instead, he has become an academic dean and I don't think he likes being an administrator.

 

Today I made myself tackle Christmas decorations.  I had already disposed of those that had been John and his late wife's.  Today I tackled those that were mine before I met John and those that we collected together.  We only spent 2 Christmases at home, and we decorated fairly simply, but we had collected ornaments in our travels.  I found myself swearing at the boxes of decorations.  I still have difficulty wrapping my head around the reality that he died.  But...I pushed through, and there are now several bags of decorations that will hit Goodwill tomorrow afternoon. 

 

I'm going to continue to go through stuff and pack what I keep for the eventual move.  I hate that my life was hijacked by death a second time.

 

Maureen

[twin_mom]

You are so inspirational Maureen. I know, that's the last thing we want to hear- we're inspirational because of xxx part of dealing with widowhood, but I feel like I need to say it anyways.  There's a storage unit that I have never been in that I have to start dealing with full of his father's stuff and his stuff from his first marriage... It's been almost 4 years, I can't keep avoiding it but God am I trying!!

[Wheelerswife]

I continue this process...going through bins and boxes.  I'm actually getting close to being done with the first pass through everything.  I set aside some things that required more thought, time and mental energy, and I do have to go back to that stuff, but I have made major headway.  Today, I went through most of the stuff that I still had left that I had carried with me when I moved to be with John.  Over time, even shortly after I moved here, I let go of more stuff.  Why did I need that set of china that was really DH1's with his ex-wife?  I have someone selling some old collectibles on eBay for me.  It is out of my house and I don't want them any more, but I also didn't want to see them in a landfill. 

 

Today, though, I came across my memories of my first husband.  I have not looked at them since I packed them up 6 years ago.  Some things I can let go of now.  But I came across a lot of photographs...and many of the events and trips and everyday ordinary things we did...I had forgotten.  That was a hard reality.  Fortunately, photos triggered the memories again.  I went through and decided to discard old sympathy cards.  I was surprised that the memory of some of those who sent cards feels very distant.  People in my daily life right now know nothing of my past marriage and there just never seems to be much of a reason to bring up my first husband.  I do keep in touch with his family, particularly his mother, but it was interesting to see photos of nieces and nephews at a much younger age.  We really did live through all of that. 

 

Those memories and photographs will be put back in boxes and bins, minus a few things.  I will hold onto them, although I'm not fully certain why I do this.  Life continues to move forward despite the fact that it has been so disrupted and the people I made the most precious memories with are no longer here. 

 

I'm still trying to figure out how this life is supposed to work when my heart has been so broken.

 

Maureen