Realizations...

I retired in June after a full year of thinking about it.  And I finally did it.  There.  Done.  It actually has been a gradual sort of disconnecting from my work...the people, the daily routine. 

I am a teacher and for the last 25 years I have been a school counselor.  It's been a pretty demanding role and the kind of person I am is one that does not sit idly in the office chair waiting for problems to come my way.  I tend to dig pretty deeply into the learning community.  For all of my career I was engaged to say the least and so in the last year I determined to act as though it was my first year all over again.  I did new things, experienced a new way of instructing students, involved them in ways that I hadn't before in projects and plans, and just did the very best job I ever have.  So my exit, while it was quite a surprise to most (I waited until May to announce my intentions) was really exactly the way I wanted it.  In my last year,  I burned fiercely for the students;  I worked my tail off - as I did each and every year - but this one, well, this one year was really the flame snuffer.  My bucket was empty.  I had completely poured myself out for the children.  It was very satisfying.

And so I am now home - a lot.  And I sit - a lot.  But these past two weeks have found me cleaning.  Oh, yes, cleaning - years of clutter out of my house.  I have been washing down walls and windows and cupboards, shredding unwanted and unneeded paper, donating "items" whose usefulness has long been spent, and through it all, I have been taking a very long trip down memory lane.  Old yearbooks, wedding gowns (mine and my mother's), old letters, documents, pictures, albums, speeches, childhood artifacts and the like.  I have touched them all again.  And I have wondered, "Why do I still have all this 'stuff?'" 

Yesterday while ridding a cupboard of a half dozen pillows (yes, pillows) that we do not use, I found this garbage bag in the back of the closet.  It was tightly tied but had only one item inside.  I thought, this is really odd.  Why would I have only one item inside this bag?  I soon understood why. 

Inside the bag was a sweater of my mother's.  This is not just any sweater.  It was the one sweater she wore all the time in the last two years of her life.  It seemed she never took it off.  For some reason I kept this sweater.  The minute I took it from the bag, I remembered why I had it so tightly tied inside the plastic. 

It was my desperate attempt to keep her scent forever in the folds of that sweater.  I put that sweater to my nose and I would swear that even after 16 years, I could still smell her perfume.  Call it crazy, but I felt certain that I could.  In fact I was sure of it.

When my mom died, it was horrid.  Not just the fact that she died, but the circumstances surrounding her death were like a bad dream.  Even today, I still do not know how we managed to get through the grief of that experience.

My mom was a very sick woman for a very long time.  She had a number of maladies - too many to elaborate upon here - but just suffice it to say that no human being should ever have to suffer as much as my mom did in the last 12 years of her life.

It just wasn't fair.

It wasn't fair that she died just two days after I married Joe.
It wasn't fair that she was only 67 and that she died two days shy of her 68th birthday.
It wasn't fair that her last minutes of life were dedicated to dialysis and that she died right after her treatment.
It wasn't fair that she spent that last 12 years of her life just living to be unwell...and that every day was a struggle just to get along.

Finding that sweater brought it all back into focus.

I think it's amazing that our senses transport us exactly to that moment in time, or to that place, or with that person.

Just like the sweater.

But in the last two weeks, it wasn't just the sweater...it's been a whole lot of things that remind me that life is so fragile and that we should never take for granted one single moment of time.  But I was also reminded that the value that all of us bring to the world continues even after we are gone.  Even though my mom is no longer where I can see her, she is still here, a part of me.  I think of her every single day of my life.  It's true that once your mom is gone, your life is forever changed.  But, you move on and you carry her with you everywhere you go.

She was with me this last year - and every year that I taught - because so much of what I learned from her I incorporated into the way I live my life, the way I think, the way I solve problems, the way I treat others, and even the way I laugh.

Now that my life has changed pretty dramatically, it's time to look forward, yes, forward.  I have taken that trip through the memories of my life in these past two weeks and now it is time to move on.  There is much to be discovered and awakened.  There is yet much to learn, puzzles to solve, quilts to make, and places to see, plans to make with my husband, and joys to experience with him and Laura. 

So, it seems fitting that while I am cleaning out the house that I cleanse the dust of past sadness from my life so that I can create new joys. Joy requires so much more room than sadness - and I plan to have much.  

I can begin with washing the sweater. 

After all, I could certainly use a lovely sweater like this one.  I think it will fit me quite nicely.

Mom would agree.