I don’t know how to start this blog post. I guess I should just start by telling the truth.
I am so happy.
For months I wondered what this would feel like to a new home (yes, I finally sold my house!) My stuff is in a new place. My kids are still trying to figure out where everything is. My cat looks at me, completely bewildered, wondering where in the hell she is.
She’s home.
I’ve gone back and forth on the whole moving thing for a long time. Let’s see…my husband Brad died almost exactly eight years ago…so seven and a half years ago I thought about moving. And I didn’t and I was right.
Until I did. And I was right then, too.
This is just like everything else we’ve been through on this road; what’s hard for you is a speed bump to someone else and a small twist in the road to someone else might derail you.
It’s personal.
In this new house, I don’t see the spot where my husband said goodbye for the last time. I don’t see where the Christmas tree has been for the last twelve years, eight of them without him. I don’t see the work bench he built. I don’t walk the lawn wondering if he likes the way I’m mowing it.
It wasn’t easy. These last few weeks have been like, yet again, ripping off a band-aid. As I cleaned the kids’ rooms, I shared a silent memory in each one and shut the door quietly as if kissing each one goodbye: the border Brad pasted to Haley’s room when she was five; the border I painted in Michael’s when he was a baby; Sarah…she came home from the hospital to that house.
I looked around my room and remembered for the last time that morning my husband said goodbye.
I loved that house for being a home…and I hated it for trapping me.
It was simultaneously a source of comfort and pain.
~
And now?
Here I am. I’m typing this in a new room. Kids are laughing outside. I’m surrounded by boxes. I have a glass of red wine next to me. I don’t like the color of this room, but I can change it because it’s mine.
It’s mine.
Catherine Tidd is a widow, mother, and the author of the upcoming book “Confessions of a Mediocre Widow” (January 2014). She is the founder of www.theWiddahood.com, a free peer support website dedicated to anyone who has lost a significant other and has a Facebook peer support page under the name Widow Chick. She has been published in several books about grief and renewal and also writes a blog on anything that pops into her nutty brain called Bud Light Wishes and Cheeto Dreams.
Author: Catherine
Amber Johnson
So beautiful. My thoughts are with you and your wonderful kids in your new home.
Rebecca
“And now?
Here I am. I’m typing this in a new room. Kids are laughing outside. I’m surrounded by boxes. I have a glass of red wine next to me. I don’t like the color of this room, but I can change it because it’s mine.
It’s mine.”
Congratulations!
Marsha Bolen
Absolutely moving, Catherine. I’m so happy for you and your family. Good luck in your new home!