BOXES

Dearest Trick~

Boxes…  I never thought about how often we are put in boxes. How others and at times even ourselves close four walls around who we are and what we are. We allow life to box us in, to be determined by others and simple. We are boxed into roles we play and labels we put on ourselves. But somehow those labels never seem to “ship” us anywhere; often they keep us collecting dust in the same spot in our lives. And now, I am surrounded by boxes! I am packing all of OUR belongings and heading to a new city, a new life, a new me and part of me wants to stay in this box…this box of pain that I have created for myself since you were taken from me.

I never thought it would be so hard to fold and pack the physical pieces of our lives. That the simple and yet overwhelmingly horrific act of putting the sweatshirt you wore to the hospital that day would bring me to my knees. It is not just filling these boxes with items but filling them with memories. And I know when they are delivered to the next place you will not be there to unpack them, to share in this new adventure, to put everything in its place. And so I am left facing cardboard, facing a new life, facing a new step to take and I am paralyzed with fear, with sadness and with a task that seems impossible ~ moving… moving on!

I can let this box I have placed myself in as a young widow be where I live. I can let the sadness crush the sides and tatter the tape closing me in. I can allow myself to be stacked on top of with piles of anger and pitty. But I know that staying in a box, living in four square walls conforming to a lable I placed on myself, on the outside of myself, is not authentic. It is time for me to seal these memories with love. It is time to place our history, our dreams and what I thought was our future in bubble wrap and carefully hand it over to the movers next month. It is time for me to pack.

The wall in the far end of the apartment is beginning to be lined with boxes. Each numbered and inventoried. Each box containing things YOU helped me pack weeks before your passing. My hands run along items knowing you had touched them, knowing my hands will be the only ones to touch them from now on. And through the tears and fear I pack on. The stack of boxes gets taller, I get stronger and this life I am left to live becomes clear. The boxes of life were never meant to hold us back, they were meant to hold our things so we can MOVE forward. I am moving love, I am moving forward and I hold YOU in the best container I have ~ my heart!

Around the world and back again~