It’s sunny today, and cold but cold is normal, it’s that time of year. Still, there are some of those thin, wispy clouds, along with some that may look serious.
We’ll see.
Yesterday was a long, complicated day, and as I promised yesterday, I’ll explain why, here, where we try to be honest with one another.
After weeks of clearing out closets and desks and bookcases and all manner of things, yesterday my dad and I had someone come and collect my mom’s stuff for donation. It had to be done; eventually it always has to be done.
Along with it went clutter, an extra desk and some heavy bookshelves, switched out for some that are more airy and required much assembly. We put one together, and in doing so I somehow lost the bit to the electric screwdriver, it was there one second, gone the next.
We still haven’t found it.
The men who came to take everything were so kind; as they shifted the furniture, one of them found a ring of my mom’s, not a fancy one, but still, and he handed it to me with a smile.
No doubt we were not the first people to have this task of removing those reminders that can become burdensome if they linger too long, and we will certainly not be the last. They made it as painless as possible, though these things are never without pain.
We started on a different bookshelf, found one of the structural pieces was cracked, dealt with that, and then built the one where the bit did a runner.
At one point, chatting with my dad’s neighbor, we stared into the abyss of the elevator, everything piled, not yet detached but going. The day pressed on, even after all the stuff had gone.
In the afternoon, I baked some cookies, just because.
It’s a weird jumble of emotions, really, as piled and random as the things they took. There’s a kind of finality to it, letting go of the evidence of a daily routine.
My mom would have hated things hanging around for that long, if I’m being honest. She wouldn’t want her memory infused into the collection of tweezers and nail clippers I finally tossed.
She would have wanted her clothes donated sooner, her shoes on feet that could use them.
But this time around, she was wasn’t the one who got to decide. Who had to decide.
When I dream about my mom, the interactions are so frustratingly normal. Sometimes I think, in the dreams, how she showed them and recovered well, look at how she’s doing.
I’m just the slightest bit afraid I will have a dream where I am admonished for getting rid of the wrong thing. But are there wrong things?
So that is the chapter I closed yesterday, an ending that already happened, but we kept staring at that wall. Until they carried those things through that door and into their next life.
Have a great Tuesday.
UPDATE: I just found the bit. On my own floor. Somehow, SOMEHOW it came home with me. I don’t know how, I can’t explain it.
A Bit to Read 
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