grief and bereavement

Sold


Sold it

Image by Mundoo via Flickr

Oprah hosted an episode recently that dealt with bereaved who weren’t able to get rid of their loved one’s things. The point that the experts made was that eventually closets need to be cleaned out and possessions are just “stuff” that needs to be given away or disposed of so one can “move on”. Someone on the YWBB posted about how they made it sound so very easy.

 

Of course it sounded easier on Oprah because, I would guess, not one of the people dispensing the advice had ever lost a spouse (or child). Anything is easy in theory.

 

I sold my house yesterday. It is the house Will and I bought together just weeks before he started to get very sick and less than two months before the doctors told us it was terminal. He only lived here a year and a half and suffered from dementia the entire time, so there really are no happy memories, but it is still a little sad. This is the house where Will and I had planned to raise Dee and a sibling. It represents all the dreams we had for the future. Our future. But that was not what was meant for him, or me, and all I can do now is hope that whatever it was he was supposed to do wherever he is, that he has as much love and happiness now as I do, and that someday our futures may cross again for a moment.

 

None of this is easy. And they are wrong when they call it “moving on”. You don’t do that really. You move forward because it is the only direction that time travels, and eventually you come to find that you are looking forward more than back and that there are things, people and places waiting for you up ahead. They won’t replace what you have lost, but they become new and special in their own right.

 

So, I have sold the house to a very nice young couple who were so excited at the mere thought of living here that they were nearly jumping up and down according to their realtor. That makes me happy.

 

I will see my new home in less than two weeks. I am not jumping up and down, mainly because I am too tired, but I am excited. Rob showed me the neighborhood on Google Earth the last time he was here. It already has a familiar feel to it. Enough that I already refer to it as home which has caused a bit of confusion.

 

Today Dee and I are going out to the cemetery to clean off Will’s headstone and place some flowers for Memorial Day. I am not sure when or if I will ever go back there. But like the house, it represents a path I am no longer on.

The Accident


Overlea High School

Image via Wikipedia

A child was hit by a car this afternoon by the teachers’ parking lot at the high school where I still teach. I actually didn’t see her at first. I was sneaking out a bit early, and my mind was already on ahead of me, thinking about a possible mini-stop at Starbucks for an iced green tea, and how to maneuver the logjam in the parking lot at my daughter’s preschool. As I pulled up behind the two cars waiting to exit on to the street, I realized that the red car I assumed was parked was really sitting in the middle of the street and a young girl was lying on her side in front of it. I couldn’t tell how badly she was injured because she was facing away from me, but she wasn’t moving. A yellow-blond woman, whose age it was impossible to tell, knelt beside her. She was softly stroking the teen’s head, and it was obvious she was talking to her.

 

I saw all manner of kids running around. Most of them had cells phones they were frantically speaking to, and many were girls who gestured emphatically at their unseen listeners. A boy, possibly from the middle school next door, was standing at the parking lot’s exit and directing out-coming cars to the right and away from the accident. I didn’t see a single adult other than the woman, who I was beginning to realize was probably the driver of the red car, and a quick glance back at the school confirmed my suspicion that no one inside was aware of what had occurred.

 

I grabbed my cell out of my bag on the passenger seat and dialed the school’s office. P., our secretary, answered before I even heard it ring.

 

“H. High School.”

 

“P., this is Ann M.. Does C. know there is a student hit out in the street by the parking lot?”

 

“No. Where?”

 

I repeated to her what I was seeing and that I had overheard one of the girls on the cell phones say that 911 had already been called. She told me she would take care of contacting the administrators. By this time I was being waved to the right by the boy. I contemplated stopping, but the street is a very narrow one. Parking is prohibited though parents do all the time when dropping off or picking up kids, a factor that I have no doubt led to the accident that was now in my rearview mirror. I could hear the EMT siren and decided that parking would cause more of a problem than any help I could give, which frankly would be little. My hands were shaking, and I could feel tears welling in my eyes and tightening my throat. I can’t even watch these kinds of scenes on television or in movies. I am useless in real time.

 

I spent the drive to pick up my daughter choking back tears and calming myself. I was so distracted that I drove right past the street for her school and had to double back two blocks.

 

The image still sticks in my mind. The girl curled on her side. The woman huddled over her, stroking her head. It took me back to the moment when Will died, and I haven’t been there in while.

 

 

Good Enough


kitchen

Image by palindrome6996 via Flickr

Rain, rain go away. Come again some other day. Sheets of water that pool on the lawn and overwhelm sump pumps remind me of the June and July of 1993 when it rained all but six days. Torrents that forced you to pull over to the side of the road because you literally couldn’t see past the hood of your own car. Water that ran like rapids along the curbs, spilling onto the easements like swollen rivers jumping their banks. Whenever it rains too much or too often or too hard, I become a little anxious like my old junior high school friend Lisa J. who for months after seeing Hitchcock’s The Birds for the first time would go running for the nearest shelter whenever she saw crows lined up on the telephone wires. The rain of late has vexed me with water in the basement. Not opportune as I am trying to sell my house, but fortunately so universally common in this part of the state that most people accept it as a matter of course. Which leads me to the conclusion that most of us operate under the motto of “good enough”.

 

I will admit to a latent perfectionist streak that never seems to manifest itself unless the attainment of perfection is nearly impossible, and the pursuit will tax me beyond measure. I don’t just want things to work out. I want them to work out in best case scenario mode. And that simply isn’t possible. It just isn’t.

 

The house is in need of update. Flooring. Walls. Fixtures. It will take money but more, it will take time. Many people today are conditioned to expect perfect but not work for it. When perfect is only possible through their own efforts, then good enough is okay.

 

And there are the details of the move that include mail forwarding and canceling utilities that if I had my way would be done already. There are plastic totes that need to be emptied of contents that should go to the Goodwill and then refilled with clothes that need to come with us to our new home. There is the letter to my in-laws that begs to be written and the little voice inside my head that reminds me to mail it once we are across the border if I want to avoid tears and tantrums and unwarranted questioning of my judgement. There is a job that irritates me beyond measure most days though I still feel compelled to do the best that I possibly can and leave it in better working order than when I took it over.

 

And I need to just make a cup of tea and tell myself that it’s really good enough. My efforts so far. The completion of things yet to do. Good enough. No one is actually grading me on any of this. It’s not a matter of collecting red, blue and gold stars on a chart. My “good enough” is the best I can do given the circumstances and frankly is probably better than most others.