moving forward

We moved into a new house last Saturday. It's around the corner from our old house, and promised peaceful mornings with its second full bathroom and spacious dining room to accommodate friends waiting to ride to school. It has an open living room that, while still full of boxes, has already facilitated more time together. The neighbors on this block are tight, and have welcomed us kindly. I hear buses rumble by on the street below my bedroom window in the early morning and find it a comforting sound. On this street we are more pulled into and embraced in the flow of life. 

Yet what big change agrees to leave one's tender hurting places alone? Our first morning in this house fell on the five year anniversary of our lives without Mike. I decided to welcome that synchrony; while it is a terrible day, even more than that it's a day about honoring and remembering my children's papa. 

Since I last wrote here in mid January, I became the Head of Counseling Services and thus took on a lot of new responsibilities at work. I bought this house on January 31st (renting to the sellers until March), packed up my house (including many unexamined boxes and objects brought in from our life before cancer), celebrated Beatrice's tenth birthday, helped Frances through college and financial aid applications (still waiting on most of those decisions), prepared my old house for sale, marveled at the sheer quantity of objects we possess, and moved into this new house. All of these things were accomplished with the loving support of an army of friends, it's true. But seriously. A week into my new role at work, it hit me: now I'm the mom at work and at home. Shit. All the things eventually fall into my lap. 

I may need a bigger lap. 

(Possibly already in the works, given the copious amount of ice cream, chocolate and wine this season has led me to consume). (Though the anxiety, plus carrying countless boxes up and down stairs, may be effectively counterbalancing those influences).

I'm telling you all this just so you know. Just so someone knows that all this has been really, really hard. I've worried about so many things. My adulting capacities have been pushed to the brink. My brain is operating at a pretty sad pace, and I forget every 12th word I intend to utter. And when I can't think of the 12th word, I say fuck. Like, when I can't think of the word radiator or router I say instead the fucking thing. As in: you guys, we're going to have to learn how to bleed the...the...the fucking things.  

And my kids look at me blankly. Okay, Mama. On our way out to dinner on Sunday night in honor of Mike, after the taxing moving weekend, after picking up the cats at a friend's house and stopping by the cemetery with them and Lulu peeing all over her carrier in a total fit of feline freak out and all of us screaming in the car and frantically rolling down windows because of the astonishingly awful smell, after all of that, I called my car a fuckhead when it wouldn't shift into reverse immediately. The kids started laughing.

Mama, the common usage is fuckface.

And also, you've said the f word 800 times since yesterday morning. It's really not like you. 

Yeah, well, I'm not really like me right now. 

But I took this week off of work. And I have had days to unpack, to organize and figure things out, and even more wonderfully, to be alone in this space, and I am beginning to be me again.

As I unpack boxes, I've been touching so many objects that were once essential, and now no longer are. Yesterday I found a bulging binder given to us by the hospital, with neatly labeled dividers in Mike's handwriting, full of insurance documents and experimental treatment options. A notepad tucked into the righthand side whose first sentence at the top was How chemo works. Mike's notes from our first meeting locally, before treatment began. A clattering collection of PET scans tucked into a pocket. 

I had to touch all those pieces of paper and shiny CDs that once held the possibility of Mike's survival, read all those reports and look at all the words he dutifully wrote. Then I threw it all away, feeling weightless and strange inside.

This week I've found cards made by much smaller hands for me and for Mike, photographs, abandoned craft projects, journals. I've found lumpy ceramics, colorful paintings, and so many picture books that no one is young enough to want to read anymore (with the exception of George and Martha, which I think we will always want to read). I read those books aloud hundreds of times, snuggled next to one or two or three rapt, quiet, freshly bathed children. I love those books. They hold our history.

But we have too many, so I filled a box yesterday with beautiful, beloved picture books and put it outside our house with a 'free' sign. And the flow of life plucked them up and took them along with it, and within an hour it was empty. So I filled the free book box again.

I'm saving the most special ones. But you can't save them all, can you?

All these objects are comforting, tender reminders that it was real. We were a young family with regular young family cares and pleasures, then we were a suffering family struggling to live with cancer, then we were a grieving family struggling to live without Mike. It all really happened. Here, all around me, in half empty boxes, is the proof. Letting go of the evidence isn't easy.

One of the perks of this week off work has been picking up Beatrice after school and hanging on the playground with other parents while the kids play. The other day, Joshua and I were talking about how hard it is to be consistent when it comes to discipline, structure and routines. The authoritative aspect of parenting was never my strong suit.  

But, said Joshua, I try to remember that the most important part of all of this is joy. That's what I want to prioritize with them. 

I nearly cried. 

Me too, I said. 

I want to always make space for ... for the fucking thing. The joy. That's what moving to this house was about, and why all the angst is worth it. Keeping the doors and windows open, having plenty of places to pee, extra space for guests, places to curl up with a book or watch a movie or eat a meal. A home where we can be alone and be together. Where we can know where we've been, accept who we are now, and not be afraid of the changes and growth to come.