Lines To Be Crossed

Thee are a lot of things about dealing with the death of a spouse that are hard. Learning how to cook for one, or one less. And that's assuming that one's not having to learn how to cook! Figuring out how to keep on top of all the things in the home: cleaning, laundry, bills, etc. Learning how to not be part of a couple again, especially in social situations. The list is sadly horrifically long.

One that is bound to push buttons is going through and clearing out their things. For some people, it's too hard to face, and things end up getting packed into a spare room or a storage unit on an indefinite basis. Even for those who can do it, it often gets put off for a long time. One of the reasons for that is all the reminders that come up with looking at what had been theirs. They were things they used. They were things they bought. They were gifts we gave them. They were things they liked and picked up. Sometimes they used or wore them, and sometimes they were things they ended up not liking as much once they had them. Some of them are things that we think we might use at some point. Others are things that we want to keep for the memories they can bring up. And some of them aren't worth keeping, because we wouldn't use them or it would be too hard to keep getting reminded when we see them.

I went through a lot of her things pretty quickly. One of the biggest reasons for that was I wasn't sure I'd be able to stay in our house for very long at all. I wasn't sure if I'd have to get an apartment or if maybe I'd be moving out of state, and the less I'd have to pack and figure out where to put, the easier that process would be. If it hadn't been for that, it would've taken a lot longer to do. I also didn't get through all of it. The first several times going through her things, I was able to stand doing so for only about an hour. After that, I would be numb and unable to think straight and lethargic. It's amazing how challenging keeping track of computer solitaire can be at that point.

More recently, I had some more things to go through again. It'd started feeling like it was time to get it taken care of. I was surprised at how hard some of those things were to look at and to let go. In getting that finished up, I got to talk to another fairly recent widow who I've gotten to know. She shared an idea that seems to make a lot more sense of it all. One of the things she pointed out was that in general there are things that belonged to our spouses that we didn't mess with. My wife had her office and her room, and I wouldn't have dreamed of going in and looking at, much less moving or using. Those were hers. I didn't have any need to mess with them, and I certainly didn't want to violate her privacy. I'd had too much respect for her to do that, and she'd always shown me the same kind of respect and courtesy.

Only now, she's not here and I'm having to clean up the mess that was left behind by her taking her life. It doesn't change the habit, though. We were married for over a decade, and had lived together for awhile before that. It was a long time to get those habits in place, and even more time to get them well-seated. Part of being able to do that is requiring me to violate those habits. I have to go through things I would never have gotten into before. I have to clear out things that belonged to her that just don't have any real meaning or value to me now, even though they did to her. So it make it even harder when I'm having to go against years of patterns and habits to get through this kind of catastrophe and clean up the mess again.

It's disturbing how death gets rid of a degree of privacy that we'd had in life. We'd shared a home. We'd shared a bed. We'd seen each other naked. We'd told each other a lot. I know I'd told her as much as my closest friends and family, and sometimes more. She'd told me that she had told me things she had never told anyone else. Even with that level of openness and knowing each other, though, there was a degree of privacy and a sense of individual space that had been present. Now, in dealing with her death, even that has had to go away.

It's just another unexpected element of a painful, confusing, and long process.