1431 days.
Tomorrow will be year 3 and 11 months. Talking to a friend the other day and she couldn't believe it had been that long. Me either.
Years, months, days, hours, minutes. How to measure, to mark, how long it has been since Jim died.
Still missed, every day. Every single day.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Tell me it's okay!
I really want to get rid of some of the big furniture I have in the house. Mostly the big dresser that we never could get upstairs and has been in my living room for 10 years. It is gorgeous heavy solid wood and not a cheap piece. It's family is upstairs - an amoire, a bed, and 2 night stands. I think I have holes in my wall on the stairs from the amoire going up there when we moved in.
More and more I want to clear the house of stuff. Old stuff. I don't want to get rid of everything Jim and I owned, but some of it just isn't right for the house anymore. This makes me confused and sad.
I was at a friends house this past weekend and was loving how things were just so nicely put together. I mean, the house wasn't pin perfect neat, and it had lots of stuff that had been collected over the years, but it all sort of worked together. We had that in our house up north and it was great. I miss that. Now I feel very squashed and mishmashed. It is a lot of the same stuff, it's just not fitting into this house very well.
My dream. I have said it over and over and just can't find a way out. I wish, my ultimate dream, would be to sell this and get a place with a yard and just one story. A trailer, a ranch house, a shack. Just something other than this place. I just can't make the numbers crunch enough to do it.
So until then, I will continue to reshape the house I am in. Sometimes, for just a moment it feels like it is almost, trying hard to be, home.
More and more I want to clear the house of stuff. Old stuff. I don't want to get rid of everything Jim and I owned, but some of it just isn't right for the house anymore. This makes me confused and sad.
I was at a friends house this past weekend and was loving how things were just so nicely put together. I mean, the house wasn't pin perfect neat, and it had lots of stuff that had been collected over the years, but it all sort of worked together. We had that in our house up north and it was great. I miss that. Now I feel very squashed and mishmashed. It is a lot of the same stuff, it's just not fitting into this house very well.
My dream. I have said it over and over and just can't find a way out. I wish, my ultimate dream, would be to sell this and get a place with a yard and just one story. A trailer, a ranch house, a shack. Just something other than this place. I just can't make the numbers crunch enough to do it.
So until then, I will continue to reshape the house I am in. Sometimes, for just a moment it feels like it is almost, trying hard to be, home.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Too long
My friend told me she couldn't believe it has been almost 4 years since Jim died. Four years. Well, 3 years and 10 months and 348 days actually. But who is counting. Oh, I guess I am.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Clutter busters!
Today was Clutterbusters day!
I had a coupon from Groupon where this organizational company sends someone out to the house and they help me with an area that needs decluttering and such.
It was fun. My friend Elaine (who is really good at this stuff anyway) came out to help. It got me motivated and seeing one area that was clean, clear and crisp has made me want more. I went thru the worst area - the office. I had years of old papers, bills, things saved because of one reason or another. I tossed lots and lots of stuff. Some went right into a bag for shredding. That bag became three bags.
I found a community run free shredding event and took the bags to them. And it felt good!
Next up is the clothing.
I had a coupon from Groupon where this organizational company sends someone out to the house and they help me with an area that needs decluttering and such.
It was fun. My friend Elaine (who is really good at this stuff anyway) came out to help. It got me motivated and seeing one area that was clean, clear and crisp has made me want more. I went thru the worst area - the office. I had years of old papers, bills, things saved because of one reason or another. I tossed lots and lots of stuff. Some went right into a bag for shredding. That bag became three bags.
I found a community run free shredding event and took the bags to them. And it felt good!
Next up is the clothing.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Names on an Index card
One of my jobs here at work is to assist when people come in to find family in the cemetery. See, our offices are in a building that is attached to an old church. Very old. Next to the church is a large cemetery. In my office has a large fireproof file cabinet that weighs 1/2 ton or so. In that are all the index cards of the people that are buried there. So people doing their genealogy research come to me first to find out where in the cemetery they need to go. I got this honor by being the one to take over this room in our office. The person that has this room after me will have that honor.
I enjoy helping people in their search and we have a large map of the cemetery with names in the spots so it is easy to find. At least in theory. I even used technology and google mapped it and got a satelitte view to show people.
Speaking of technology...index cards? I mean really, we are in the 21st century. So for the past year I have been slowly moving the information from index cards into an Excel program so it would be easy to find names and areas.
This has been interesting even though I am not related to anyone buried here. To see the dates going back to the mid 1800's. To see family history - one last name and the number of people buried here from that lineage. Sometimes as many as 6 in one grave area.
Today I was inputting and ran into a card that had 3 boys names. They were infants buried at the foot of their fathers grave. They died all the same day and he died almost 40 years later. I imagine they were stillborn or something like that. They were buried in a spot and Dad joined them. No mention of Mom being buried there so who knows?
Some of it has been multi-generational. You can follow the family and see the different generations of great grandparents down to most recent family members. I look at them and wonder about things like "did she like that her name was Myrtle?" or "this family had 5 deaths all in the month of July and all in different years. July was not a good month for the Georgia family."
It is interesting how sometimes a whole life can come down to an index card, or a line in a bible or just...well...just a memory.
I enjoy helping people in their search and we have a large map of the cemetery with names in the spots so it is easy to find. At least in theory. I even used technology and google mapped it and got a satelitte view to show people.
Speaking of technology...index cards? I mean really, we are in the 21st century. So for the past year I have been slowly moving the information from index cards into an Excel program so it would be easy to find names and areas.
This has been interesting even though I am not related to anyone buried here. To see the dates going back to the mid 1800's. To see family history - one last name and the number of people buried here from that lineage. Sometimes as many as 6 in one grave area.
Today I was inputting and ran into a card that had 3 boys names. They were infants buried at the foot of their fathers grave. They died all the same day and he died almost 40 years later. I imagine they were stillborn or something like that. They were buried in a spot and Dad joined them. No mention of Mom being buried there so who knows?
Some of it has been multi-generational. You can follow the family and see the different generations of great grandparents down to most recent family members. I look at them and wonder about things like "did she like that her name was Myrtle?" or "this family had 5 deaths all in the month of July and all in different years. July was not a good month for the Georgia family."
It is interesting how sometimes a whole life can come down to an index card, or a line in a bible or just...well...just a memory.
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