Changing Seasons

A few months ago, I reached a new level in my journey: resignation.  It probably sounds strange, but it took me that long to really, viscerally become resigned to the fact that my life was no longer about being part of a marital team. For instance, I noticed that instead of saying we—like “we moved from Louisiana to Georgia”—my accounts were taking on a more single perspective—“I moved from Louisiana to Georgia.”  The first time I caught myself doing it, I felt a tad guilty for leaving Bunny out of the story, but I felt less so as time wore on.  

Maybe what I call resignation is really the acceptance level of grief, but I don’t think acceptance adequately describes what I feel.  Can a person ever truly accept the loss of a spouse, or of any loved one?   A person can, however, become resigned to the loss, realize that life goes on in spite of it, and move forward as best as she or he can.

My grandparents’ home was a small, wood-framed affair, with two bedrooms and one bath.  They lived there for about 40 years.  It lacked central air conditioning for the sweltering Louisiana summers and was so drafty that the space heaters provided little warmth during the freezing winters.   Even with its shortcomings--or perhaps because of them--twice every year, my grandmother redecorated her house.   These home improvements usually involved enlisting my sisters and me to move the furniture around.  I also recall painting the kitchen cabinets several times over the years.  Another way she changed the environment was by getting new bedspreads or making rugs. 

Regardless of how much I complained at the time, Grandma’s s redecorating habits took root in me.  Over the years, Bunny and I continuously made changes to our homes.   His specialties were furniture placement and floral arranging, while mine tended to fall on the more extreme side of environment-changing, like painting and tiling. 

Up until yesterday, the living room looked the way it did when Bunny was alive.  In other words, by Grandma’s standards (and mine), it was long overdue for a change.   In my fairly new resigned state, I decided that I would redo the room the way I wanted it, since I no longer had to make compromises.  I started with the pictures.  Bunny loved to have framed photographs on every surface, and it seemed a harmless décor choice.  I like a more minimalist approach; now, there are two clean-lined framed photos in my living room.  Just making that simple change opened up the room a lot more.  Plus, it’s now going to take about half the time to clean the room as it did before.

I also eyed a book shelf that was taking up a lot of space.  I didn’t need something so big, and I had a smaller one in the house that would be just perfect.  The problem was, the perfect book shelf was in Bunny’s office, which I still haven’t gotten around to cleaning out.   I’ve studied up on this particular problem, and it seems I’m not alone: people who don’t absolutely have to clean out a departed’s special rooms generally don’t do it for a very long time, if ever.  There’s absolutely no logic to it; you just feel like cleaning out the room is like erasing your loved one, piece by piece.

I have, however, made several attempts at cleaning it, or at least going in it. I’ve mentioned it before—Bunny was a hoarder, and I tried to keep the majority of his “collections” confined to his office.   The first time I went in it was last summer when my sister Julie was visiting.  I needed  a DVD player, went in to get it, and came out a sobbing mess.  The clutter alone sends my rabid claustrophobia into overdrive, but last summer my grief, itself, was still fresh.

Then, last fall, Trinity and I took a stab at cleaning it.  We got about three feet in and made great progress, but I was slowly becoming unglued.  I tried to hold them back, but fat, hot tears trailed down my cheeks.  Trinity has an amazing sense of empathy for anyone, much less an eleven year old, and she patted my arm gently.

“It’s okay,” she said.  “Poppi would want us to do this.”  How sweet she is!  I nodded but laughed to myself, because I knew how Bunny hated people touching his stuff.  The last thing he’d want us to do was clean out his office.   Even before cancer, it used to make him extremely anxious if I so much as moved something of his.

“I know where every single thing is,” he’d say, waving a hand over stacks of papers, magazines, and God-only-knows-what-else.  “If you move it, I’ll never be able to find it again.”

Since then, I’ve only done little bits at a time when I had a chance.  In other words, most of the room is still like he left it.  I know that he’s no longer here to be upset that something’s been moved, but in the office-cleaning-out game, emotions still beat logic every single time.

Now, though, with my hereditary redecorating traits beckoning me like a siren’s song, I am making more frequent forays into the dreaded office.  Yesterday’s mission included emptying the bookshelf I wanted and boxing its contents.  Emboldened by my dry-eyed success, I brought out a plastic tub of miscellany and sat on the floor to go through it. 

One of the quirky parts of Bunny’s collecting was that there was no reasonable order to any of it.  A Publix receipt from 2007 would sit on top of a paper with important information, like account numbers.  In other words, I can’t just dump boxes and drawers into garbage bags, because there’s no telling what important information I’m throwing away.

So as I was going through this hill of paper yesterday, I found a Post-It Note with a phone number and an e-mail address.  It was the contact information for Bill, a co-worker from Atlanta.  John and Bill had worked together for years in the IT Department at the same hospital where I worked.  Bill was a little older than we were, and had a humorous, gentle, sweet personality.   I used to love to go up and visit them on my breaks, because they always seemed to have so much fun.  They’d stayed in touch over the years, because Bunny would tell me when he’d spoken with Bill.

I’d last spoken to Bill in December of 2011, when Bunny began his series of steep health declines. In all the shuffle of the day, I later lost his number, but I thought about him often.  So yesterday, I had the missing information in my hands, and called Bill.

He asked how I was doing and how Joey and the kids were doing, and we made small talk.  Then he told me how much he’d enjoyed working John, and everything he’d learned from him.  His words were so reassuring and kind that they made me cry.  Fortunately, Bill is training to be a hospital chaplain, so he’s got a  good handle on dealing with grief. He assured me that John would want me to move on, even if that meant making a bonfire with his stuff. Talking to Bill helped me see that all these things can disappear and Bunny would not care. Bunny’s on to newer and better things, probably making new collections in the afterlife.     

Then he told me a story about how Bunny was doing his computer savant stuff, and Bill asked how he knew everything he did.  “He said, ‘I have a highly developed Pineal Gland.’”  I laughed so hard: it was a classic Bunny response.

I hadn’t planned to cry when I talked to Bill, but his admiration for John was so sincere, and Bill was from a time in our lives were we were young and relatively carefree and very, very happy.  So I cried like a big baby.  It was just so overwhelming to talk to someone we’d both known and loved, and hear that he’d felt the same way about us.  I told Bill that I thought Bunny had guided me to his number, and he agreed.

So now, with each new foray into THE ROOM, I should get stronger and stronger.  For right now, THE ROOM sits menacingly quiet, like a toddler who’s up to something.  I’ll plan clean-outs for a minimum of 30 minutes a night, and before I know it, I will have conquered it.  I’ll have a whole new room to decorate, and Grandma will excitedly smile down from Heaven