I still mother them….

Today my grandson and I went through about 15 bins we brought home from my daughter’s house.

Bins and bags and boxes full of a whole entire person.

10,000 pens because she never met a pen she didn’t take with her somewhere. Doodle notebooks with half thoughts and grocery lists and reminders and things she meant to do tomorrow. Hair ties wrapped around everything. Little scraps of paper. To do lists that will never get done now.

And I found myself angry.

Angry that she left things unfinished.
Angry that somehow I am the one left here to finish them alone.

I think today was probably the loneliest I have felt since she died.

Not the loud kind of lonely either.
The quiet kind.
The kind that sits in your chest while you hold your daughter’s wallet in your hands trying not to completely fall apart.

Inside was a picture of her and her brother when they were little.

I remember the exact moment that picture was taken. The sunlight. Their faces. The way life still felt normal back then.

It feels like a thousand years ago and 10 minutes ago all at once.

And then there was her son beside me going through her things too. Trying to act tough. Trying to act like it didn’t hurt.

That part cracked something open in me in a whole different way.

Because nobody tells you this part.
Nobody tells you someday the people who loved them most will be standing in rooms full of their stuff trying to decide what stays and what goes while pretending they are not drowning.

Today made me want to get rid of every single thing I own so nobody ever has to feel like I felt today when my time comes.

But maybe that’s grief talking.
Or maybe it’s love.
At this point I honestly don’t know the difference anymore.