Grief Hurdles

 

Today I decided to tackle a project that I have put off, over and over again in the last fifteen months.  I have been thinking about it off and on for about a month.   The bins were at the old house until a few months ago when I needed to move them so the old house could be rented.  I had my dad put them in the middle of the garage, thinking that this would push me to go through them in order to be able to put my car in the garage at night.  Needless to say, this wasn’t successful.  I realized that I wasn’t ready to go through the bins and rearranged the garage to accommodate the bins and my car.  Every time I would look at the bins, I would feel overwhelmed and mentally push the project aside for another time.

I’m not sure what pushed me to finally tackle the project today.  Quite honestly I surprised myself that I was ready to face it, as I have been struggling lately – just feeling down.  I started with three different piles – save for t-shirt quilt, pass on, and throw away.  As any of you who are familiar with how Scott dressed on a daily basis and how little he liked to shop for clothes, you can easily understand the two large garbage bags of worn out, holey, or stained clothing.   I also ended up with a large bin of t-shirts to save for a t-shirt quilt as well as a rather large amount of clothing and shoes to pass on.   

Thankfully there was no familiar Scott smell left on any of the clothes – not sure I could have handled that.  Favorite t-shirts hit hard – seemed so surreal that I was sorting his clothing to give away.  Particularly difficult were work shirts that I had bought him just a week before his death, with the tags still attached.  

Sorting through his clothes, throwing away clothes, and gathering clothes to give away just makes it so much more real.  I think that is a large part of why I kept pushing off the task, not to mention that it felt like an emotional mountain to climb.  Quite honestly, it is probably something that I should have done before this, but when prepping the house last fall to be exterminated for fleas I needed to get as much put away and up off the floor as possible.  Scott’s clothing was quickly packed up to be sorted through later.  Then, once it was out of sight in the garage and with moving, it was pushed even further back.   Maybe taking the time and space was good as it was easier to evaluate things based on sentiment, etc. 

Early on in this journey, it was hard to throw away anything of Scotts.  It felt like throwing him away.  With time and space it is easier to separate my memories of Scott from things, into memories alone.