Starting Over
I’m pretty sure no one really understands how good I feel right now. My house is a holy mess, my wife died a year ago, but here I stand in all the debris feeling just as I did eleven years ago when we first moved in. I’m unpacking, getting ready to make a house a home, organizing, putting things up. I think it was the cleaning out of her closet that did the trick. As I touched everything, and moved it around, things seemed to come back to life. The giant tumblers of the universe clicked into place. I’m feel as though I’m literally bathed in her spirit.
Of course, this morning my physical body is rebelling. My left side, from my hip to my toes, locked up from all the lifting and carrying I’ve been doing. That will happen when an old man thinks he can manhandle a king-sized mattress or any sized mattress for that matter. To paraphrase a line from a Little Feat song, it appears my mind was making promises my body couldn’t keep. Luckily, I have a therapeutic massage scheduled for tomorrow. So, relief may be in sight. Still, it will be limpy day for me, and I’ll miss my morning walk.
Of course, this could be the universe saying, slow down, cowboy. You’re moving too fast. After all, I have uprooted by son’s life. He occupies two rooms and a bath of this house. I reclaimed our queen bed yesterday that we had put in the old guest rooms he now occupies. I also took back all the old photos that adorned the walls. So, while my space is taking shape, his has come apart. But the idea was to repurpose the debris of our old life and give him room to breathe. Let him make the rooms his, rather than ours. Handing over control if you will. I think it will work out; you should see what he’s done to my work room. You can actually work in it. I’ll fry him some chicken tonight.
John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver’s Tale