I can’t believe 8 months has passed since my son’s accident. I wasn’t watching the calendar, but should have realized as the physical pain and emotions began to build yesterday. One thing that is different though – the memories of the accident day haven’t gone away but they do have blurry edges……..
Last week, a friend offered to help me look through the last box of my son’s belongings. I had been saving that last box; probably the same impulse that makes me delay reading the last chapter of a really good book – because I don’t want it to end. But it was time.
What an odd experience – I was in the moment and I was also watching myself
……..holding his Boy Scout shirt; reading little notes that he wrote; getting teary looking at the old photos; smiling at finger-paintings from 1982; and laughing out loud at his 8-year-old Christmas list (He cut pictures from every catalog he could find, stuffed them inside a manila envelope and wrote on the front: all i want is in here)
a wonderful flood of bittersweet memories
And I kept thinking, “Why didn’t I save more of his things?”
Maybe we need to live each day in a way that celebrates the present. Is that the lesson I need to understand??