They are in the pupils of my eyes…
navigating the landscape of “stuff” after loss
“Deep breaths.”
The mantra I repeat to myself over and over again, as I circle around this page with the blinking curser, knowing what I need to write, what needs to be shared because it’s the truth—but that makes it no less heartbreaking or easier to begin.
This week I found a new home for the last of my boys things, except some toys that I’ll wrap up and donate to a charity at Christmas time.
This is just one of the many impossible tasks that we are asked to face after we lose a child, what do we do with the things that we accumulated to care and tend and enrich this beautiful life?
Do we keep them? Do we give them away? Do we box them up in the attic, where they can be close but not in direct eyesight? Do we leave their room as it was? Or overhaul it to make it a guest bedroom or art studio?
Do we just move all together and pray for some measure of peace to find us on the road or at our new house?
I’ve heard time and time again from friends who have watched the music video James Blunt made for his song “The Girl Who Never Was”, which tells the story of the miscarriage of his and his wife’s baby girl, that the most heartbreaking scenes were the ones where they were packing up the baby shoes and clothes and breaking the crib down.
The heartbreak of loss is pervasive, it exists in everything, and yet there is a specific type of pain that lies in the act of packing away the physical items of someone’s life.
The Girl That Never Was by James Blunt
The stark reality that these things are no longer needed—
because there are no children here to use them.
There are no children here.
One sentence that holds the power to destroy everything.
It’s been three years now that they’ve been gone but I’ve been running from this pain—this special pain held within the act of packing away the last of their stuff.
I’ve circled around this event a thousand times. Getting boxes out and then putting them back with never opening them. Setting out the toys only to pack them away weeks later because it was excruciating to see how they never moved, they never got played with—because they aren’t here.
I couldn’t face that.
So I packed things away and tried to get myself back to that numb place where I moved through the days, aware of their absence but not touching into the truth of the devastation.
Until one day I couldn’t run anymore—
My psyche is breaking and the only question was going to be whether it broke through into a deeper understanding of love or would I find myself gone mad “off the deep end” or would take my own life?
I find I can’t give that pain onto others, so there was no longer any option—it was time to face the pain and hope that there would be a catharsis beyond the destruction.
So I sat myself down with all of their things, a box of tissues, and began to sort.
It took two days of coming to sit and sort, collapsing into wailing and sobbing as I never have before, pulling myself over to my floor bed to rest, and waking only to begin the cycle again. Again and again I released into the ebb and flow of approaching the pain and then tending to the wound—there was no “ripping of the bandaid” energy about it, simply an awareness that it was time.
That “easy” was never going to come.
Gently, softly I approached the excruciating pain with the reverence it was due and I allowed my heart to guide me until everything was packed and ready to leave.
On Friday, a local non profit supporting young single mothers to get off the street came and picked up everything. They are going on to love and care for another child and there is peace to be found in that for my heart.
It’s been a few days now and it still is hard to look around and see their things gone—to see so much of my old life gone along with them, but there is also a “rightness” to the space now.
It is clear when you look around my space now, that it is a Mother of Souls who lives here.
There are no children living here, but their memories are cherished and imbued in every nook and cranny.
They can never truly be gone because I am them and they are me.
And they never truly were in their things anyway, they’ve been waiting within me all this time.
A Journal Entry
Where are you?
Where have you gone?
You have left but so have I.
The light of your souls beckons to mine.
Where will I find you?
Where is the place where the light of our souls will become one again?
I’m not sure of the answer and yet I can’t help feeling this yearning to enter the void—this inner knowingness that the answers that I seek reside somewhere in this space beyond time and structure of this physical world.
How do I get there, wherever it is you are?
Is it safe there? Are you warm enough? Have you found your grandma there so she can take care of you until I can be there?
I look for signs of you here with me, I see you in the blossoming flowers and the brightness of the cardinal who visits my window each day. I see you so many places here, you are always with me.
I worry that you don’t have any signs from me wherever you are. That since I’ve never been there with you, when you look around you don’t see me at all. That you can’t feel me there with you.
I worry that you are alone and scared.
I want you to know that I love you both so very much. I want you to know that I’m trying to find you, I’m sending my soul into the void and calling your names.
I hope one day you will be able to hear me and I will be able to hear your voices guiding me home to you.
I will follow your voices and the light of your souls Home, to the place where we are once again together.
I love you so very much Liam and Miracle 🤍
I miss you and I’m searching for you, I promise.
I’ll never quit trying.
Love, Mama
You are brave and strong and surviving. I do not have advice, or anything to make it easier. I only share the words that came to me when I felt pressure to let go.... they are ' I do not let you go but hold the part of me where you reside. Your heart with mine. '
Packing up after is probably the hardest thing I ever did in my life. Sending so much love. Nobody ever feels the same pain or will understand completely, but this is as close as we can get. 💫 🩷🩵