Boxes of Truth

Hi, Mom.

It's been just over one month since we laid you to rest. For some unknown reason I feel like I always need to tell you how much time has passed. It doesn't make sense, I know, but it makes me feel less crazy without you.

When we were getting ready for your memorial service almost all of the things we needed were delivered here. It was a furious flurry - some parts of me are still left behind in that time and space - and all the things in boxes that filled our tiny apartment acted as visual reminders that I had work to do. They provided me with an absurd kind of purpose and direction.

Ugh - it is so strange to try and assemble items and photos and books and food and plates and decorations just so we could try and express the impact of over 7 decades of your life with us, for a 3 hour service and luncheon.

And so, those boxes of partially used place settings of gold and white, leftover journals we had printed, hundreds of photos, unused decorations, picture frames and tablecloths... they've all just been sitting in our front room. Weighing me down with grief but powerless to remove them.

Well, I moved them today.

I kind of moved them today.

The photos are all in one box now. All of the fabric safely tucked in a brand new tote - waiting for me to do something with it so I can send Sui something that is of you. All of my good intentions, tidied up and sorted.

But still sitting in the front room.

Still taking up space.

I can feel the weight of them from my bedroom, as I sit here typing this.

I'm trying to accept that this is how it's going to be for a while - grief that moves only inches at a time. Letting go feels so unnatural, but I know that it is the natural order. Ian says, "Sometimes the hard thing and the good thing are the same thing." I hate it when he's right. You loved that about him. xo

So much feels horribly unraveled. I wander about and lose track of my thoughts. It feels like I haven't exhaled since May. I keep going back to a conversation Nina and I were having, just about 30 hours before you passed. She asked me if I had said everything I needed to say to you. It was a kind of awful question, because - again, how does someone wrap up a lifetime in mere hours? But as swiftly as I thought that, right behind it I knew exactly what I wanted to say. I told her I would say "Thank you" and "I love You", because at the end of it all that is the real and undeniable truth, so those would be the only things worth saying. Two little sentences tell our entire story, and how lucky are we to have that Truth between us.

I'll learn to be okay with the fact that those boxes might be in the living room for another month and that my thoughts and emotions will remain erratic at best, but, more than anything else:

Thank You, Mom.

I Love You.