Andrew

Andrew
Photo Courtesy of Scott Kirk Photography

Sunday, July 10, 2011

ALONE WITH MY MEMORIES

       I just put a load of laundry into the dryer and I noticed the four pencil stubs and the last coins I ever retrieved from Andrew's jeans. They adorn the top of our dryer and I keep them there because...I'm not sure why.  I guess that is where I put them originally and I guess that is where they will stay.
       Since Andrew was in the third grade, he had this habit of using his pencils down to a small, little stub.  This drove me nuts!  There are literally fifty or more pencils in our house, but he always seemed to have nothing in his backpack or in his pocket that resembled a full, complete writing utensil known as a pencil.  There is also one that I took out of his shorts after his last golf outting the day before he died.  Everytime I do laundry, these little momentos bring a smile to my heart or a tear to my eye...never know which emotion.
       In a way this summer is much more difficult than last summer.  I honestly think I must of been in shock all of last year.  This year is full of learning to deal with my reality of a very quiet house with the empty bedroom of my son.  My days are filled with little things--laundry, cleaning, reading, watching movies, fixing dinner for Bill, etc.  I like it this way.  This way I don't have to think much.  When Bill gets home we usually spend the evening together, that is unless he has a little project he is working on.  I am beginning to think he doesn't like sitting still, because he notices the quiet too.
       Please don't start planning things for me to do.  I can't do them. I won't do them. I don't seem to have the desire to be too social.  I don't have the need to travel or go shopping.  I do enough, just enough to keep most people from trying to find things for me to do.      
       July has always been my time of rejuvenation (translation...doing nothing to do with school).  It's just that I always had another person in the house during the day to keep me company.  When Andrew was little we did a lot of things together during the summer.  Where I went, he went.  Where he went, I usually took him.  We did Summer Rec. together.  When he learned to golf, I was his caddy.  We went to the movies.  I took him to camp and then picked him up.  Now, I spend my days alone.
       Again, I repeat, I am not looking for things to do.  However, seeing those stubby little pencils just brought me back to another time in my life--a time when I had more than enough to do.  One thing that I have been doing is reading and during that quiet time, I swear I hear someone at the back door.  Not actually at the door, but on the landing of the stairs to the basement.  When someone stands there, a distinctive noise is made.  I swear I hear it often during the day, yet when I check no one is there.  In my heart I want it to be Andrew...making the decision to go out the door and then return at the end of the school day or after practice or after anything.  I just want him to return.  However, in my brain I know he isn't coming home.
       So I am learning to live in my new reality with my memories. I am also working on making new memories. Hendrix comes Tuesday for a day with grandma.  We go to lunch.  We work on her school stuff. We go to the Children's Series movie at the Liberty Theater.  On other days I have coffee with friends.  Bill and I do things on the weekends.  We go to breakfast.  We take a drive. We work on yet another project.  We go to the cemetary and water flowers.  However, I am also learning to live in a quiet house, where I am blessed to have made many memories and where new ones are constantly being made and will continue to be made.

1 comment:

  1. New Normals...maybe they are never easy....but I think that you are "right" to just sit with them...it is as "right for you" as learning to breathe again, I am sure.... Your courage never fails to teach me. I can see that there is a beauty in the willingness to just sit with the memories and not try to always out run them.

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