Since late October, I have spent most of my free
time cleaning out my house. I had always said that I would move to a smaller
house once all my children finished high school. When Isabel died, that plan
was delayed. Cleaning out a house full of memories as well as a lot of “stuff”
requires emotional energy that I just didn’t have.
Several months ago I decided to take it slowly,
realizing that I would sell the house when it was ready, as long as that may
take. And it was finally ready in late February and has already been sold to a
new family who will create their own memories here.
Cleaning out was hard and progress was often slow
because I would become absorbed with memories. Philip’s letter of apology when
he was sent to the principal’s office in first grade. Genevieve’s hilarious
little notes - to me, the tooth fairy, Santa, etc. Awesome photos of Annie with
the first fish she ever caught. We found a sketch pad full of Isabel’s cartoon
drawings. Little pieces of paper with Stay Strong written on them. Isabel’s
pledge to never ever ask for another pet if I would just let her get a beta
fish (after that fish came two hamsters and a rabbit). Close friends, family
and neighbors came over and helped me get through everything. I couldn’t have
done it without them.
You know what is especially hard? Moving to a new
house feels like moving on. And I’m not sure I want to move on since it feels
like leaving Isabel behind. We will be leaving the house where she grew up,
where we have our most vivid memories of her. I am still grappling with these
thoughts so will have to let you know later how I come to terms with this
dialectic – I am excited about what comes next AND reluctant to let go of a
physical space where I have memories of my beautiful daughter.
Last weekend, Genevieve and Annie were home and I
asked them to help me clean out a couple of things. One of the chores was to
empty out the kitchen freezer. Later, after they had already left to drive back
to school, I opened the freezer and saw a lone orange sitting on a shelf. That
orange was put in the freezer a few years ago by Isabel, and seeing it there
made me smile.
Why a frozen orange? This was a distress tolerance
skill that Isabel had learned while in one of her treatment programs, sort of an
extreme version of splashing cold water on your face. Learning distress
tolerance skills is part of DBT therapy, which Isabel wrote about frequently in
her blog and which I continue to think about all the time in my everyday life.
