Cleaning out...

I have opened this blank page to write a post at least 15 times.  And I don't know what to say.  I'm tired of being the "depressed, my mom is dead so I'm crying in the bathroom" chick.  But I have nothing else to talk about.  It's my life right now.

My sister and I went to mom's this weekend to start the process of cleaning out here things.  It's been a month.  It wasn't easy.  On the way there, the fields on either side of the road were brown and wilted looking.  It made me think of when I brought her home from the hospital.  When she went to the hospital, it was still cold and everything was dead.  On the day she went home, it was warmer and the fields were bright green.  She kept talking about how bright and pretty everything was.  I cried until I got to her house.  Pulled myself together and went inside.

Thank God for my sister.  When we are together, we are able to find humor in tough situations.  Jokes and sarcasm pulled us through it.  That and a few awkward photos.  It felt wrong.  Wrong to be going through her things.  Wrong to be sorting through 49 years of memories and deciding what we should keep and what should go.  Wrong to read her cards and letters.  Wrong that all of her years of loving amounted to nothing more than a pile of papers in a Rubbermaid box.

I found the poem she wrote me when I was so angry at her for being upset when I wanted to move out.  It was about how hard it was for her to let me go, even though she knew it was time.  The words have a double meaning now.

I found that she kept every award I'd probably ever won.  All my report cards.  Hundreds of pictures.  All the poems I wrote when I dreamed of growing up and becoming a writer.  The "book" I wrote about a lost kitten.  The auto-biography I had to do in middle school (Ms. Walls' class... some of you probably remember).  So many things.

I found the mother's day ring she wore, the necklace I bought her with the boys' birthstones on it.  The red blouse she wore every Christmas.

So many things.  Things and memories are all I have left of the woman who made me who I am today.

And the memories are hard to get to.  I find I can only think about the last few months of her life.  I try to think of her and I see her in the chemo chair.  Losing her hair.  With the oxygen tubes in her nose.  Talking to people who aren't there.  Getting confused about her medicine.  Sleeping. Crying. Frustrated.    And her final, struggling breaths right before she died.  That is what haunts me.  That is what I see when I close my eyes at night, when I wake in the morning.  I am so, so thankful that I am the only one who saw it.  So glad that it happened too quickly to wake Laura up.  Because I can't get it out of my head, I can't find room for the good memories.  I can't see past it.