Where Do I Go From Here?

Honestly, I don't know where to go from here.

There are the clichés:  Get back in the saddle.  Move forward with your life.

In the saddle??  Hell, I don't even know where to find a horse.   Move forward?  We're in shutdown.  I can't move anywhere.

Monday I will have been home four weeks.  The days are long, the nights are longer--but it seems like no time at all has elapsed since I said goodbye.

The first week was a fog.  I was emotionally and physically exhausted.   I was used to being on edge.  And there were things to do.  For one--when the Rob and Jeff brought me home, the AC was dead.  Men came out the next day to look and Wednesday I had a new unit put in.  Reddbugg got a UTI and I had to go get antibiotics for him.   There was a lot of banging in the water pipes so I had to remember how to bleed the excess air from the water tank.  It occurred to me to check the tire pressure on the Honda that hadn't been driven for months.  A couple of tires were low; I went to the gas station but they don't have an air pump anymore, so I scrounged in the barn and found the portable one.

Yes, I can take care of things by myself.  Just wish I didn't have to.

And I kept thinking that I needed to Move Forward.  I had Things To Do.  The cats are due for their shots (uh, not now.  Pandemic).  I had that tooth pulled before we went to Gainesville--now I can finally schedule the replacement (nope, pandemic).  I can visit my friends that I have missed so much (nope).  Getting harder to read street signs when I drive--should schedule that eye appointment (nope, not that either).  Maybe I could take an exercise class, or an art class (nope nope nope)

See where I'm going with this?  Nowhere.

There were people to call.  Forms to fill.  And I bit the bullet and went through Bob's clothes.  God knows how much I loved him, but he was a hoarder when it came to his clothes.  Hundreds of pairs of socks, hundreds of T shirts.  Over the next three weekends I took some 30 trash bags of stuff too old/grungy to donate to the dump.  Which killed my little environmentalist heart.  I would have liked to find a place that recycled textiles -- Goodwill does, but not In These Times.  I still have six overflowing laundry baskets of stuff good enough to donate when we're allowed to donate again (some of it never worn), and it all needs to be washed (some of it's been hanging in the closet for 20 years.)  These are shoes and boots he hadn't worn for years because they didn't fit him:

And now I look at the empty shelves and the empty closet and it just tears my heart out.  Was it too soon?  Don't know, and it's too late now.  I've talked to people who have waited a year or more to clean out--and apparently it just hurts all over again.  I did save a couple of T shirts to cuddle and a few jackets to see if our great nephew Dane wants them.

I made marmalade and started some limoncello.  Sort of a random thing to do.  But there were still some lemons on the tree.  Bob would have hated to see them wasted.

But forward?  Even baby steps?  I don't want to.  Every baby step, every day, is a bit farther away from my life with Bob.  And I really don't want to leave that behind.  Especially now, when there seems to be nothing in front of me.

Amanda sent me a journal:

Like the rest of my journal collection, I might never write in it.  While I write here, in the blog, it's not the same as committing to paper.  But I like having it around.

And I found a postcard stuck on the wall in Bob's room:

That's a keeper.

Bob's room.  Who knows when I'll be able to tackle that?  People have asked me if its hard to go in there.  Oddly, no.  I've always liked being in his room (he enjoyed visiting my cottage).  His ashes are on his workbench.  I'll have to give them up in a couple of weeks for the reef, but I'll miss them (I might keep just a little, as a keepsake.  I also plan to spread some around here.)  But when I open that door I know that it will be Essence of Bob in there.   It's the unexpected that gets me.  I was rummaging in my knitting bag this morning and found his cell phone.  That took me to my knees for a moment.

I cleaned a lot of pictures off my phone today.  Pictures that were going to be part of the "Bob survived cancer" story.  They're not gone; the story is still there, so I have archived them.  But I don't need the sadness of carrying them around with me.

But I did keep one of him in the hospital.  Still had his hair (although I had cut off his braid before we left so he wouldn't get bed head).  It's the day he got his first transplant; hence, the Mardi Gras beads and gift bag.

Zoom in.  Look at those eyes.  That was always how he looked at me.  So gentle.  So. Much. Love.  A bit of humor, like we had a secret joke between us.

How can I take even baby steps away from that?