When you’re stuck in the middle of grief, you never know when you’ll find yourself pulled back. You’ll have days where you’re mostly okay…missing your person but still okay…as I’ve said in past blogs. And you’ll have other days where you’re pulled back and you know exactly why. But then there are other days. Days where you are pulled back but you have no fucking clue why.
I partly mentioned it in my last post but this past week was back to the “Grief is a bitch” days but yet I have no idea why. The entire week was hard. I can’t think of anything in particular that triggered me. Of course, I missed my Bryce as much as any other day. More than I can even articulate. But this past week wasn’t any different than any other. Work, school, nothing exciting. But yet I was still highly anxious all week. Highly overstimulated all week. Feeling like my skin was crawling all week.
I had planned on trying to accomplish some packing this weekend. Yesterday, I started early in the garage before it got warm outside. I am a pretty fast packer so I am not too concerned about most of the house.
But the garage…the things out there are mostly his. And his room…
Even though these things are being packed to move to the new house, it is still the fact that I have to go through them that is hard. I knew it was going to be hard. I have been expecting it. I have been mentally preparing. It was so odd to see the things that set me off vs the things that didn’t. I was okay moving things out of the way to start going through them, okay texting his best friend to ask if he wanted Bryce’s motorcycle stands from when he’d work on his bike, okay texting his dad to ask if he wanted Bryce’s concrete tools from work and his old paintball gear, okay texting Rory to tell her when I found a couple of her things and ask if the Christmas stocking I found was the one that she gave him.
But yet it was the crumbled Taco Bell receipt wedged in the seat of his garage creeper seat that made me cry. A receipt dated 13 fucking days before he was taken from me. THIRTEEN DAYS.
It was the container on the shelf for paintballs that he had covered with stickers because the stickers were such a hilarious fit to his personality so it made me laugh while crying. There was no way I would get rid of that so I hung it with his longboard on the wall of my garage. When I move, I will hang the board in the 3rd bedroom where his bed is going so the stickers aren’t ruined in the heat and I will put the container there as well.
It was finding the contract for his maintenance plan for his bike and the manual for his riding vest.
And it was going through the plastic 3 drawers that he’d left in the garage since the day we moved into this house last summer. Most of the stuff in there was stuff he’d outgrown mixed with a few of Rory’s things. I assume that he’d planned on eventually bringing it inside the house and unpacking the items in there but just never had a chance. Same as how he never finished straightening his room how he wanted it. Between time with friends, work, and his silly ADHD ass, it just didn’t get done. But yesterday…going through the drawers, I could tell that the stuff had been there since he was in his long hair phase because I kept finding his hair on everything. The clothes were clean and some of the hair was Rory’s because they were long and blonde. But I kept finding shorter, brown hairs. They’d been in those drawers mixed into folded clothes for probably a year. But yet they’re still soft. He always had the softest hair. Beautiful hair. He wasn’t the type of 19-year-old who’d use some shitty 2 in 1 shampoo. This boy had to have good shampoo and good conditioner. And when he had his longer hair, it was even more important to him. Always so soft. The hair I found was still soft. I couldn’t just throw them away. Toss them on the ground like I would my own shedded hair. I can’t do that to a physical part of my boy that I just happened to find. It didn’t feel right. At first I just sat there holding a couple of them, thinking about him. But then I just started collecting them as I found them while going through the drawers. I don’t care if anyone thinks I need a straight jacket for doing so but I now have some of my son’s hair in a ziplock baggie and it will be going in with the other keepsakes I have of him.
I didn’t even finish the garage. I cleared actual garbage, set aside piles for his dad and his best friend, and I have a pile for actual packing. That was all I could handle. After an entire week of feeling extra anxious and overstimulated and then topping it off with the emotional overload yesterday, I have spent today almost feeling “hungover”. I am fucking exhausted. I have laundry going because I need clean work clothes so I have no choice on that one. But I haven’t had the energy to do anything else I have needed to do. I really needed to do schoolwork. I needed to do some packing. I need to clean my house.
I need…I need…I need…
No. What I really need is my son back.
Grief is a B!tch 