So, I am looking for the little Christmas trees. I look everywhere and realize that they are not in any closets – they are not in the garage. Time to look in the attic. I hate looking in the attic. It’s dusty. It makes my nose itch. There are rats in there. I really don’t want to do this, but then I don’t want to go buy trees if I can find them. I must complete the “exhaustive search.”
“Honey, do you remember seeing the little trees?”
“Nope. Did you look in the garage?”
“Ok, I will. I’ll keep looking until I find them”. The exhaustive search pledge.
It’s a cool day. I hope the rats are asleep. I unlock the door to the attic, flip on the light and there on the floor, right as I open the door, is a pile of my old purses and bags, that used to be in a big old suitcase — but now, they are in a pile, just there on the floor.
I poke around on the pile – just in case a rat is asleep in there. Nothing happens. Most of these old purses and back packs are from over ten years ago, but still are good and useable. I kept them in this old suitcase, because it was dust tight and would preserve them. But here they are on the floor. Exposed. I feel a bit angry, a bit sad, a bit not consulted, but they are important to me and no one else, and someone wanted to use the suitcase for something, I guess…
It gets really hot in the attic. Most stuff will deteriorate in that heat — rapidly. That makes me sad. My stuff just dumped here on the floor. I wonder how long it has been sitting there. Months maybe? Who knows.
As I look around, I see boxes empty that could have been used to place my stuff, but not, so I pull them around and use them to re-store my bags and purses. I will have to figure out something to keep them out of the heat. I have awhile to do this, though.
I come upon a white plastic bag. In it is one of my diaries that I forgot about from ten years ago this past summer. As I look at it, I realize that it is the diary that I kept while my son, Rob, was in the hospital just the time from the spring we learned he would have transplant through transplant, then through the hospitalization afterward until he died. And I wrote in this book when he did pass away – probably that very early morning – and I found those words.
I found other bits of paper stashed in between the pages. Things I wrote down that I needed to remember to do. I kept it all in that little book so that I would not lose track. I guess I abandoned it at some point. I am not sure how it got into that bag, in that big suitcase in that situation where it ended up, dumped on the floor.
I guess that something had me go into the attic today so that I could find it amongst the bags and purses, dumped in a pile on the floor. I guess it was important to empty the big suitcase in a hurry and leave my old bags and purses there exposed. I found the diary. I am glad that I did, in a way. It could have ended up being given away without anyone noticing that it was there.
Strange how grief is. It is a reminder of who we love, and how it happened that they left… and I am of great hope that I will find him again one day — like I found the diary in the pile of my dumped stuff.
