Friday 15 January 2016

Throwing Away

When my husband passed away we had only just moved into our first rented house, before this we had been living in apartments and we were excited to finally have a bigger place and a garden.  22 days later he was gone and I was left to make big decisions.
My biggest decision was to move countries to go and live with family members, it seemed like the best solution at the time because I could not imagine living in the same house where I had witnessed such a heartbreaking event, it made me physically sick.

Our boxes of possessions still sat in the garage for us to unpack, I had only managed to really unpack the things for the kitchen and our bedroom.  We had only moved countries 4 months previously and had sold all our old furniture to keep shipping costs at a minimum.

There I sat with this decision to move countries and with it came the sorting of what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to sell or donate.  How could I have made rational decisions in such a state?!  However I plough through our possessions, a lot of baby things I had kept for when we had our second child, I put all that aside because that dream was now shattered.  I donated most of my husbands clothes, all his work shirts, t-shirts, trousers, shoes, etc, now I wish I had kept these because later on I found that some people had made beautiful blankets or pillow cases from these items.
I slowly got through each room in the house and each box in the garage.  The emotions that I went through were excruciating, I remember sorting through the boxes and silently crying, tears were literally pouring out my eyes but I kept going, I kept sorting and I kept throwing away our past and our future.

Today I sit with only a few possessions that were my husbands and I keep them in a keepsake box, this box will eventually become my daughters when she is older.  The biggest thing I have of ours is our photos and videos, I am so afraid of losing these files and have backed them up about 3 times on different devices.  I read somewhere some years later which made me feel better about only having a few items left that were my husbands, it said it's not about how many possessions you have, it's about the memories and they are more important than any possessions,  this is so very true and this has comforted me somewhat.   Keep your memories close, they are more valuable that you realize.


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