It’s been over two years since my mother died and my siblings and our husbands are finally going through her stuff. We had a big day of it Saturday. We had fun traveling down memory lane and finding treasures like handmade quilts and old photos … one old photo of our great aunt as a young woman looks uncannily like one of my nieces.
Yesterday after a good Sunday nap, Dave and I had a talk about things and I told him I felt like it was all a lot for me to process. I didn’t feel sad or upset, but I knew there was something emotional to let out. He prompted me to talk about it. A few minutes in, I had a realization. Up until now my dad’s house has remained with Mama’s stuff in the places she left them. I can go there and feel as if she’s in the next room. I feel like I could turn a corner and she’d be there.
Going through her things isn’t the hard part for me. What’s hard is knowing that this earthly shrine to her existence is fading. Once we’ve dispersed, given away, or thrown away all of it… another big physical piece of her is gone. And when my dad is gone, the house is gone and then …
As I verbalized this to David yesterday I started sobbing. I had that same feeling I had the day of the funeral “What in the world am I going to do without my mother for the rest of my life???!”
I know she’s still with me. I feel her near at times and I’m sure she was with us Saturday. She’s not in that house. She’s not in the cemetery. She’s with us, with God, with her mother and father and her ancestors. But that real world tangible part of her… that’s not here anymore. But her house, her things… they give me the illusion that she’s still here.
I probably could count on two hands the number of times I’ve sobbed like that in my life. I’ve never been a big crier. As I let it out, Dave held me and comforted me and I thought, “How wonderful is this to have a man who I can cry with and talk things out with and not feel like he’s judging me or rushing me or wanting me to stop or get over it.” I’m not saying other people have. I just felt like other people did. And since I stink at mind-reading, I was probably wrong. Nevertheless, it’s wonderful to feel that close to someone that you let him see all of you… that most vulnerable part of you that isn’t all tidy and packaged up logically but is messy and figuring things out and broken!
This sweet compassionate man of mine would have let me sob a lot longer than I did. In fact, he told me to cry some more. But I can’t breathe when I sob so I wrapped that up fairly quickly.
And honestly, it was enough… for now.
