A Time Of Grieving

It was time to take another trip back home to Texas this last month and for some reason this one seemed harder than usual from the start.  As I drove from Nashville to To Oklahoma City, I felt a feeling of Defeat like I've never felt before.  The feeling just kept digging to the very depths of my soul and pulling me down to a place that felt so hurt, so abandoned, so defeated.....So Defeated.

The next day of driving from Oklahoma City to Perryton the feeling began to change and become clearer and more defined.  It finally hit me that the Grieving Process had begun.  This was the first trip I've made where the concern and worry and list of things to do weren't there.  This was just a time to go through belongings, box them up and decide what to do with what.  As I continued my drive home I played the music I had put on my IPod for my Mom's service and as I listened, the feelings of Grief were finally starting to express themselves. I learned shortly that this was only the prelude to an emotional week ahead.

The time came to start taking clothes to the crisis center.....My Mom and Dads Clothes.  The hardest time for my sister and I were when we had to sort through the clothes from the Nursing Home, the clothes she had just worn weeks before.  The tears came and the emotions and memories filled the house.  The decisions on what to save, what to keep, what to throw away became harder and harder and our spirits and bodies wore out with all the emotion.  Finding books scatter all through the house we realized just how much Mama liked to read.  Pictures and keepsakes boxed up from years ago, army uniforms, wedding dresses, grade school pictures and so much more hidden in boxes, in closets just waiting for the day their memories would come alive again.  Then some of the furniture was taken and sold, the bed they slept in, the desk they worked behind for years......now gone.

My Sister left a day early which gave me a chance to stay in the house one more night alone before I headed back to Nashville.  The memories began to wash over me like giant waves in the ocean, suffocating me with their emotion.  So many years spent in that house....that house that was a home....that became a house...and became a home once again........The people that lived, laughed, loved, argued, grew up and grew old all in that one house....now left to the memories we shared there. 

I know the there are still trips needed to be taken there and much more work to be done but I know the hardest part will be when all the work is done and the House....that was Home...will no longer be ours.  We'll have to rely on our Memories, Precious Items, and the Love In Our Hearts from the Lifetime we shared there.  I know the Grieving process has just begun in some ways and will show itself in the days and weeks ahead but someday that grief will be turned into Special Memories of Love and Laughter that turned that House into Our Home.

And the Journey Continues..........