The clean-up

Tomorrow I go back to work.  This is something I have been looking forward to for a several days.  It feels empowering to go back to work, to take a little of my normal routine back, and I love routine.  It has also made me take a good hard look around the house.  It is time to clean-up.

When I say clean-up I don't mean throw out, but get my environment to a state that will help and not hinder my recovery from Avi's disease and death.  I would love to call it down-sizing, but really it is going to be a big taking out the trash kind of process.  Avi kept everything...G-d love him, I do mean everything.  There will be a great shredder event that will have to happen, because we're talking about documents that are at least a decade old and no longer relevant.  I will have to completely reorganize his paperwork and update "his" filing system in our office, so that I can actually find things.  The chaos that has become our house is going to be controlled.  I'm going to create a peaceful environment where I can actually get some healing done.  I really don't want to spend the next few months cursing his name because I can't find something.  I love him too much for that.

I also realize that the great clean-up will also involve some baggage.  My weight is a great example of the baggage left behind after cancer.  I ate every sad, scared, angry feeling I had.  I literally feel like I am having cancer's baby, I have gained that much weight.  It sucks.  I'll never be able to heal until I start shedding some of the baggage off my body.  **Bonus, I get to be healthy!**

There is also the emotional clean-up post Avi's death.  Relationships will change.  There was some damage done...still being done.  His death feels like a hurricane hit my heart.  I have to believe that Avi died when he did for a reason.  Like he was trying to figure out who would honor their promise to be there for me.  A test to see who could last out the year.  I must say, he chose very well.  Never have I been more proud of six people, Avi's "family of choice".  Each of them made him a promise and they  have exceeded his expectations already.  I was really afraid that when Avi died.  Afraid that I would never feel emotionally safe again.  I have felt nothing but safe, allowed to grieve as I need without feeling like people are babysitting me.  As one friend stated, "I wish I had thought to ask for a 'How to take care of Shawna' manual."  Can you imagine the money we could make off of writing manuals for the hard stuff?  I get that it would make things easier for people to have a guide, but these people are kicking ass anyway.  With their strength and support, those other relationships that I once thought vital, can fade into history.  The emptiness will feel less devastating as we share past stories and create new ones.  We will have new traditions because...well, he left me the Zuppe di Pecce recipe, and that should be shared.

 Avi,

I keep hoping to have a dream about you.  It hasn't happened yet and it makes me sad.  Even when you were in the hospital I would dream about you, hear your voice in my dreams, feel your skin through some memory while I slept.  I miss it.  I miss you.  Memory isn't as good as the real thing.  Dreams are closer.

You promised to haunt me...make it happen!  I didn't watch Ghost Whisperer all those times for nothing, you were supposed to be learning something.


I love you,
Shawna