How Do You Feel About Making Space After Loss?
Both literally and emotionally.
**This topic came up in the comments of a past post and I think it’s a good one to explore.**
If my son had lived at home and had his own bedroom here, I’m the type of mom who would have left it exactly as it was the day he died.
We’ve all seen a movie or two with a brooding mother like that. Seventeen years later and her child’s bedroom is still intact. She probably even sleeps in his bed sometimes.
Yup, that would be me.
Since he didn’t live here I had to bring all his belongings home to my tiny one-bedroom condo. It doesn’t offer much in the way of storage except for a dimly lit den that’s already half full with my own things.
About a year after Curtis passed I used the floor in that little room to spread out all the paperwork of his life.
I found hundreds of hand-written letters, important documents, papers pertaining to university, etc.
Very quickly, I had neatly sorted piles lying all over the floor in the catch-all room where I keep dog food, the vacuum cleaner, the toolbox.
You know…that room.
There came a point when my dog, who rolls her treat ball around every square inch of my condo, was traipsing all over the piles of paper.
That’s not at all how I wanted his belongings to end up.
I knew I had to give myself some space.
There comes a time when we eventually have to take a small step and feel okay-ish about putting things away. Slowly. In order to make space, both literally and emotionally.
A day came when I felt okay with shredding the trivial papers and neatly stacking the meaningful ones into a Rubbermaid box.
When I did it I said out loud to him, “This doesn’t mean I’m putting YOU away, bud. I’m just trying to make some space.”
I felt I had to clarify to him that I’m not letting go, I just need space.
Each time I tuck something of his away I feel pangs of guilt even though I know I can reopen the boxes anytime I feel like revisiting his past.
Putting away belongings of a lost loved one can feel like the worst form of betrayal.
That’s what we’re supposed to do with the cute jeans we wore fifteen years ago and can’t fit into anymore, but hang onto in hopes of losing weight.
It doesn’t feel right with items that were once someone’s entire life.
Offering ourselves a gentle reminder that material possessions are just things helps in creating the space we require for forward motion.
Moving forward isn’t the same as moving on and never looking back. It’s an act of self-care.
We still have a life to live and we owe it to them to live it well.
How did you feel about the act of “putting away” and making space after your loss?
It's a very different category of loss, I have no doubt, to mourn a child rather than a spouse — when my first husband died, I lived in a house he'd built, filled largely with furniture he'd built or acquired and sculptures he'd made, had to take over the small business he'd created, and had to maintain his small collection of vintage British sports cars. For a time it was comforting, and then, to be brutally honest, it was suffocating. I realized I faced a choice of either creating space for a life of my own — which entailed a years-long, complicated process of divesting — or subsuming my identity into a sort of living museum for my dead husband. As guilty as I felt for not choosing the living museum option, it felt like another death to me: my own. Like I said, losing a husband in midlife is very different from losing a young-adult child.