Saying Goodbye

I am not a motivated person. I am quite sedate, and would happily spend my entire day on the computer, with a book in front of me learning about photography, Photoshop, HTML coding, anything that has to do with computers in general and a host of other interests I have.

Not very functional, I know. Useful? No. But it works, and for the most part I stay healthy and out of bed if I don't do too much - so I buy books and buy books ...

As of late, though, I feel my house is getting ... crowded, overflowing and I have a severe need to simplify. So about every day (that I am out of bed) I have taken a drawer, a cupboard and cleaned it out. In my closet and bathroom - that has, amazingly been taking the drawer the night before garbage day and dumping the entire contents in the garbage can. If I have not opened the drawer in a year - I am not using the stuff - so out it goes. Expensive, nice, wonderful things - but opened and stuff that I don't think that the Womens Shelter would take, since it is used ... never really asked ...

Anything that the Womens Shelter will take, I itemize and put in a bag for my next donation drop off. I am not a complete moron - I wouldn't throw stuff away that I know someone else could benefit from.

And then the pliers mysteriously went missing. And I searched high and low. Opening cupboards over and over, thinking - this time, just maybe they will have materialized and will be sitting right there ... right there where I have looked ten times before.

One of the places I looked often was Jessie's 'play' cupboard in the kitchen with her coloring, puzzles, toys, etc that was stuffed with so much Disney Princess Crap I could barely shut the doors. So - I pared it down and a nagging, worrying, upsetting, unsettling feeling crept in and won't go away.



This:

This is Jessie's old bedroom. She sleeps here when she stays over night which so far has been at Christmas and I think graduation / birthday. Does she play with any of this? No. It just sits here. It has become a shrine to a daughter that no longer exists.

And something inside me tells me it needs to go.

All of it.

Even the spare clothes in the closet, because, lets face it - the girl has lost at least 70 pounds - they don't even fit!

But how do you say goodbye to a lifetime of your daughter in one fell swoop? I know in the logical place in my brain that I need to do it this Saturday because, well, first because I ran out of drawers and cupboards in my bedroom and closet, and second: Ryan will be home from spring break and my excuse up until now was how tiring it would be to load the grundles of bags into the car to get it to the Womens Shelter. So my big, brawny, hunky boy is going to be home and is wonderful when I ask him to help - I know he would do it for me.

So ... Saturday - I should take down my "Jessie Shrine" and give it all to kids that would love to have a barely touched toy.

But


....




but


how do I say goodbye to the dog that we bought Jessie when I was still pregnant with her:

I remember being in Sears buying a crib with Gary and seeing the dog with the big floppy ears - I decided that my baby, my precious, miraculous baby had to have it to keep her company in her crib. We were so excited that I was FINALLY pregnant. So excited to start this new adventure of being parents. Still blissfully unaware that the shit was going to hit the proverbial fan on the 4th of July - with her due date being way off in August ...

And that duckie puffalump? Remember puffalumps? They are so huggibly soft and squooshy! And Grover. I CAN'T SAY GOODBYE TO GROVER!


What about the bears from Norway ... complete with Norwegian, hand knitted sweaters, or the moose from Sweden - in his own hand knitted sweater?

Or the beautiful doll - complete with changes of hand made clothing that Jessie's late grandmother gave her?

Or the cutest doll in the world, or the talking bear from Sweden?

In the real world, a normal world, that world free of mental retardation - these things .... these precious, priceless, memory laden things would go in a trunk - stored carefully, lovingly for the day that my daughter was grown and had children of her own. To be cherished by her daughter ... my granddaughter - and made all the more special because they were Jessies before they were 'hers'.






Yeah - sometimes being the mother of a 'forever child' is really, really, REALLY shitty ...