I woke up early this morning unable to sleep anymore. The
kids are at my brother’s house for one last night with cousins before we move
while I get the rest of the house ready to load onto the truck. I am finding
that sometimes noise is easier to sleep through than silence. I am glad my mom
was here the last few days to help me pack up, I think I underestimated what I
needed to do… either that or overestimated my ability to do it!
The house is almost empty. I am writing this on paper for
now because the computer is all packed up. I will go get the truck in a few
hours, but for now all is quiet in the house. I didn’t realize how this would affect
me. I find, however, that I will miss being where I can picture her in familiar
spots and specific events. Not even important events at the time, little ones
have come to mean a lot to me. The home is soaked with her and us. I can
picture her getting ready in our bathroom, the two of us in the kitchen where
we would spend time talking over ice cream after the kids were in bed. I can
hear her laughing on our street where the kids would be playing with their
friends and us talking with ours. The same street that Wendy recorded Dallin
riding his two wheeler for the first time. The little loft where we would have
family prayer. Our bedroom where we lived together… and where she died. The memory
of the room doesn’t haunt me in the way some may assume, rather my mind turns
to our last moments together and every one of them before. I know these are
just walls, but moving represents a new chapter for us, one that will be
started without her here and it is hard to imagine that. I have been able to
live in my little bubble for the past year. I have been blessed to stay home
and be together with my kids, to figure out how to be their one source they go
to, and to grieve and to grow. Now I go back to the real world where I go out
and work on our goals again, where I don’t have my bountiful way friends to
listen to my long windedness at times, my mom is six hours away instead of 5
minutes, where Wendy’s family isn’t so close (well, some of them I get to keep
in Henderson) Where I can’t detour past the cemetery where her body lies with
our daughter on my way to her parent’s house. There are so many things I will miss
that I have grown accustomed to this past year and before that will be
difficult to be without. I am excited for this new start, but nervous about the
unknowns. I will miss being reminded in every room of this house. I am happy
that the three friends I take with me will always have her in their voices and
faces and mannerisms. There is so much of her in them.
I finally cleaned out her bathroom drawer… nothing is how
she left it anymore.
