The Grief Box

There is a box on a high shelf in a mostly-unused closet in our apartment.

It's a pretty box--one of those decorative ones with the magnetic closure--and it contains the remnants of the worst days of my life.

In it are the papers from the funeral home. The sympathy cards. The sign in book from the funeral. The proof for the footstone that marks Paul's grave.

There is also a bag of his clothing. The shirt he wore the last time he dressed himself--Thanksgiving 2006--three days before he died.  His jacket from the stable where he kept his horse. Nothing smells like him anymore, but I can't seem to let go of these bits.

I have moved the contents of the grief box and the bag from house to house. From our home, where he died, to storage, to my apartment where they were somehow spared from Superstorm Sandy, and to my mother's basement until the recent storm threatened to flood the area.

Now the grief box and the bag live with me again, in the apartment I share with my father.

Recently, I went through the box. I threw out all the envelopes and put a good pile into the shredder. The remaining contents smell like mildew, but I haven't been able to let them go.

There are cards in there from people who knew Paul as a child, or as a young man. There are cards from his former colleagues and mine; from the board members of the organization I worked for; from friends of friends. There are cards from now-divorced couples and from people who have died since.  There is a lovely card from a childhood friend of my sisters; another from the Carleton University radio station Paul listened to online. Still another from the parents of the man who bought our house.  From the chemo nurses and the hospice team.

These are patches that might fill in the gaps for my son.  They paint a picture of Paul's influence on other people's lives. They might help T miss more than the idea of his father.

What am I waiting for? These things make me sad. They only have meaning for me, and I don't know if they will become meaningful for my son who was not quite two when his father died.

Paul would be turning 60 this May. November will be 10 years since Paul died.  Nice round numbers.  Maybe it's time?

Maybe.

I'm ready to move beyond this, beyond carrying these things, the loss, the wondering what might have been if we'd had more time.

I will always love Paul. I will still miss him. But I know that the only way forward is to confront the residue of my grief and to weigh this anchor.