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| Robin Rocky Mountain Stroke Survivor |
This morning, after a good night’s sleep, I see the other side of fatigue... the reality of the life I lost and am trying desperately to regain.
I see my knitting bag still hanging at the end of the sofa; it holds a little wine-colored silk hat I was knitting for my baby. I don’t have the heart to put it away until I can rip it out and re-knit it to fit my toddler; at the same time, it is a small, painful reminder of my old life, when a day wasn’t complete without a few minutes of knitting.
I see our worn wood floors that we were about to refinish and our backyard in complete disarray. We bought our house, a cute little fixer-upper, with the knowledge that we would work together to manage all the necessary work. We’ve lived in a continual renovation project ever since. Now I not only can’t help with the projects, I can’t care for my kids alone for a day so my husband can do the work. So we carve out a brief hour here and there for him to make progress and otherwise wait until the kids are older.
I just recently went through a couple huge boxes of papers my officemate packed up for me after I resigned. I was tired of seeing them: big vague, messy reminders that I had left behind my previous life so suddenly that someone else had packed up all my stuff for me. So last week, I took armload after armload from the big boxes by the front door and shoved them out the kitchen window into the recycling bin. Thumps and flutters as the papers fell. I kept a small stack of what I still need from my old life to reassemble my new life.
A friend texted to say she is taking her son to A Day Out With Thomas at a train museum about 45 minutes away and would we like to coordinate to go on the same day? How many shreds and remnants of my previous life that touches! I struggled with how to respond. I’ve told all my closest friends exactly what’s going on, but I look so normal when I sit and chat that I think it’s hard for them to reconcile my words (“I can’t”) with how I look. A Day Out With Thomas is impossible on so many levels. The simplest is that we have just enough money leftover from paying the mortgage and utility bill to try to decide which of our other bills are most pressing. The most frustrating is that I simply can’t handle the drive to get to the Railroad Museum much less the crowds, motion, and train rides once we arrive. And because I look young and healthy, it is difficult to nab one of the few benches to rest on while exploring the train yard.
It’s Saturday morning. In my previous life, I worked weekends and would have been overwhelmed with tantalizing possibilities for a weekend off. I’m certainly overwhelmed today! But it’s by the basics I have to choose between. Should I spend my energy washing my hair? Or maybe go three blocks away to the school playground and watch my children play for a too-brief twenty minutes (which is all I can handle)? It would only take me a couple hours to do the basic “necessary” housework…but I’m not sure which is worse: picking up the floor or continuing to try to navigate the clutter. I think I’ll leave it and consider it part of my physical therapy. And limiting my work hours means I never have enough time for necessary administrative work so that is always looming.
Those postcards from the past are bittersweet reminders that my life was once full-to-bursting with activities, projects and playdates. Now I have to choose.
What remnants of your past do you see every day? Do you keep them out or hide them away? Are you sometimes surprised by something you notice that reminds you? Are the pieces of your past pleasant or unpleasant to you?
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