Pinball Wizard

This is really funny. I am trying to pack. This is freaking hilarious. I am trying to get my house ready for other people to want it. I mean this is really the funniest thing I have said all month. If I didn’t think this was so funny, I would be crying too hard to type.

I drove to work this morning in the pouring rain and blasted “Black Dog” as loud as I could take it – hoping you could hear it in heaven. I was playing you a song to drown out the sobs and curses that were spewing from me the entire trip.

Please G-d - please don’t let this be real. I just don’t know how much I can take. This has been the most overwhelming few months and I can’t breath. The anxiety might actually have gotten the better of me. I am back to being a shell again. I am going to work and taking care of my children, but I am so numb and so stunned that I just don’t know. I just want this struggle to be over, but really I just want you to come home and tell me to stop packing.

Yesterday I tried to start. I felt like a pinball moving around to different points in the house for brief moments. I would get overwhelmed looking at something and move to a new spot, get upset again and move to a different spot. This went on for hours – I packed nothing. Sorry T.

I started with the books. I thought this will be easy I can get rid of his books. But then I thought, what if my children would someday want their father’s books, I can’t get rid of these. They are so personal and tell so much about his likes. So I moved on to the movies. I thought this will be easier. But I can’t give away his movies. In ten years when the children will be age appropriate to watch them, they will want to know their father’s favorite movies. I can’t get rid of them because what if in ten years I can’t remember what is favorite movies were and they will be so angry I don’t know these things. I left the movies alone. I went looking for his cd’s and remembered blissfully that I already gave everything to his eldest son. I found four cassette tapes. I threw out two.

I felt so much better after I threw out the two tapes I moved on to the filing cabinet. I found all my honeymoon photos and maps and receipts waiting to go into a scrapbook that is half done. I pondered what to even do with this stuff. I put everything back into the filing cabinet.

I read every single Birthday, Anniversary and Mother’s Day card my husband has ever given me. I saved them all over the years. They all have poems in them – most of the go like this:

Roses are red
Violet are blue
I love you
Even though you are covered in vomit and poo

I didn’t just cry when I read them – I wept for hours and hours. I put everything back in the filing cabinet exactly where I found them.

So I pretty much spent all day wandering around the house and threw out two cassette tapes.

Not a bad start.

All week I can feel the start of something. I can sense the Fab Five are going to soon take over. I can hear them somewhere out there arming themselves for battle. They will come quick and sure and get my butt in gear. I feel bad for them – I plan on putting up quite a fight.

Word of advice to my Fab Five – good luck and bring tissues. Oh and beer.