i went to our house today

I went to our house today for the first time in nearly 3 months. I’ve been dreading it for weeks, but the list of things I found myself needing kept growing longer and longer and I couldn’t keep wasting my money on duplicates. So Darri volunteered to drive me and we made a day trip out of it. 

We cried a bit on the drive down, but walking into the house didn’t have the impact I thought it would. I thought I’d cry through the whole thing. But the house felt so… empty. I took most of the sentimental things when I first left, so it already felt sort of stark. Unlived in. It was all my stuff but it didn’t feel like home anymore, in a way that felt more like an exhale than a heartbreak. 

I went from room to room, packing up things I wanted here with me. Practical things, like toilet paper and paper towels and swiffer replacements. Pantry staples. Some of Axl’s favorite snacks. The high chair and next size up of baby clothes for Ford. Toys for the kids. It felt so good to be surrounded by our things. Especially by your things. I felt you with me in spirit, like you were reminding me what to pack and things I would need. It felt like you reminded me to grab the battery charger if I was going to take the electric drill. To get the frequently-used small screwdriver out of the junk drawer because it wouldn’t be with the rest of your tools, which I knew you also wanted me to grab. I knew you’d be ok with letting Darri have the pillow she liked so much those weeks she was staying with me after you died. 

You’ve been gone just over 3 months, and you’re still providing for us. Being at our house reminded me how well you took care of us. I thought it would make me sad but it made me proud. It made me feel good. Packing up all the extra stuff you always made sure we had stockpiled, knowing I was about to fill my pantry and cupboards with food you had bought, filling my freezer with meat you’d prepped and portioned for us, meals you and I had made and frozen. This is never in a million years how I imagined using all the food you’d been prepping and collecting in our chest freezer, but here you are helping us out and you’re not even here. I can’t wait to be able to get the rest of our stash, to use zucchini and edamame from your garden, to maybe try and save the strawberry plants or the lime tree. I can’t wait to have a home for the boys and I where I can bring all these pieces of you home. I have so many pieces of you here in Vermont, I even literally have YOU and your ashes. I am surrounded by bits of you. But it wasn’t the same as being back in the home we shared, surrounded by the things you have touched and built and chosen. I have all the best things, organized in all the best ways, and it’s all because of what you did for our family while you were here. I’m so happy I can see the beauty in that right now, that I can feel this deep gratitude for everything you have provided for us. Maybe it’s the antidepressants talking, but I don’t care. 

I feel peace today for the first time in quite a while. I miss you but I am so f*cking grateful for the ways you are still here. I’ve been looking in the wrong places, constantly searching for evidence you’re here, but if I look for you in the ways you taught me to care for myself and for my environment and our kids, I find you. If I look for you in the way our sons act just like you, how Axl loves being outside and Ford looks like your twin. If I focus on the way I feel when I think of you in my heart, the white hot heat of love that burns in my chest, there are days where the stars align just perfectly and I am able to see that that doesn’t have to be wasted. That I don’t have to give that up. You’re gone but the love doesn’t have to be. I can still pour it out to you, I can still pour it out to the boys, to the people around me. The ache is from feeling it has nowhere to go, but there are always places for love to flow. 

I am forming amazing relationships with my mother and my aunt and my grandparents and cousins. With your sister and your parents and your family. I lost you, but I have already gained so much. I’d trade it all back in a heartbeat to have you, but if I can’t have you, I am so happy to have other people to love. Other relationships to foster and water and watch bloom. The fact I have your family feels like yet another gift from you. And the way I serendipitously was able to bond with my mother after the baby was born and with my family after you died feels like some sort of gift too. If I was religious, I’d say you were sending me angels and miracles and gifts from heaven. I’d say that things were meant to be this way, that all the coincidences are not that at all. But I’m not religious, so I just focus on the good and practice having gratitude for the tiny bits of gems and sunshine I sometimes am able to spot amidst the wreckage. Some days it’s all I’ve got.