Processing

Eight months and six days ago, we moved into this house.  It's the house we had been talking about buying for the past few years, and the house we fought to keep when Judy passed away.  It was a long, hard battle that I was sure would bury us, but somehow we made it out alive.  

Eight months and six days, but I haven't hung a single photo except the one in our baby daughter's room.  With the exception of rearranging and cleaning kitchen cabinets and drawers, I haven't made my mark on this house at all.  I have made the excuse that it's because I'm tired or because I'm busy.  Granted, both are true, but that's not the real reason.  I don't think I fully realized what the reason was until just now.  Then, like a light bulb...FLASH. Truth.  Clarity.  Epiphany.

This isn't my house: it's a mausoleum.  It is a museum.  It is the story of someone else and I'm merely existing in it's presence.  The ghost of a woman none of us are ready to let go.  An accumulation of items I have no right to sort through.  Collected memories I can't touch.  

For eight months and six days, this house has become the metaphor for our life...or vice versa.  Instead of processing and sorting, we've merely found whatever empty space is available and tried to settle there.  We aren't working through each room, keeping what's most important and then purging the unnecessary.  We're letting it pile up around us.  Drowning in it like quicksand.  

This is not what I want for my family.  This is not what Judy wanted for her family.  I'm going to lose my mind if I can't clear it out somehow.  But they're not my memories to toss.  So I look around and try not to see the tidal wave of emotions bearing down on me.