Letting Go And Moving On

The last few months I have been pondering letting go of some items I have around the house that have ties to Barry, and the life we lived together.

• Our bed frame that we bought when we were first married
• Our Christmas Tree
• The Roses from the arrangements that my friend Lisa made for me for his memorial service

And that just names a few of them, well, the items that are weighing most heavily on my mind.

Our Christmas Tree we bought when the twins were just 10 months old.  It is 7.5 feet tall, 5 feet wide at the base and is just huge. It has lived in 6 houses, this one being the sixth. It has been set up for 9 Christmases, and held many years of ornaments.  Has had hundreds of Christmas gifts under it.  Has been piled with candy canes, and cursed at for being difficult to put up. Barry even made us a diagram after Christmas 2008 so we would remember how to do it.  Youd think after so many years we would remember, but we did not.  But now it is leaning a bit to the side.  The box was so torn up and taped up, that last year I bought a bag for it. I have to string the lights myself and it is a very tedious job.  So this year I am getting a new tree, with pre-strung lights.

But what do I do with the old tree? Do I keep it in the bag its in for years down the road? When Barry and I bought it, he said wed get the biggest tree possible so that we wouldnt have to buy another one for YEARS. He picked it out.  So have 9 years been enough? Should I make this the 10th year it is up?

I feel like change is needed.  I want a new tree, and will buy one, but I just dont know what to do with the old one. I feel wrong getting rid of it.  But I dont want it to clutter up my garage.  Im all about streamlining lately, and have been getting the urge to declutter and purge again.

Now I have the roses from Barrys memorial service, dried, in my closet.  Why have I kept them? I dried them all, and they sit in a basket out of sight.  I dont want them anymore.  I have no use for them.  But to throw them away would, again, make me feel guilty.  Almost like I dont respect him anymore, that I dont value the memory of that day.

Lastly is our bed frame. This I struggle getting rid of the most. We actually bought an entire bedroom set, and had matching dressers and a nightstand to go with it, which I gave to Habitat for Humanity before I moved. This was our wedding gift to each other. But the bed frame, that is special.  That is the baby making bed, where our family was started.  That bed has seen love, anger, sadness, fighting, laughing, lots of sex and making love.  It has seen everything.  And the night after Barry died, I laid in it, and woke up crying in my sleep at 5 AM.  It was the foundation of our marriage almost, and I have it in my garage right now, leaning against the wall.  I knew when I moved that I would keep it.  But here I am, almost seven months later and I dont want it anymore.  It is taking up space.  What the hell do I do with it?

Does all this mean I am moving on with my life? I dont want to "lose" Barry, so to speak.  I want to hold onto him forever.  But I can not keep all this "clutter" in my life.  Quite honestly, it stresses me out because I see more stuff taking up space.  And I do not want clutter.  I hate clutter. Yet with four children, it is nearly impossible to not have clutter, but I do my best.  And throw away crap I see lying around.  Anyway, I dont want to disrespect him.  I feel bad for wanting to get rid of all of it, especially the bed.  Its just though I dont need it anymore, I wont ever have a use for it unless one of the kids wants it when they move out of the house.  So do I hold onto it for another 10+ years? Hell no! But then there is just that tie to the bed, the one place I last laid with Barry, where I heard him snore and wanted to suffocate him, where we loved each other, and cuddled, and made love and had sex and laughed and fought.  There is so much to that bed.

I know these things dont represent him, our memories of him are in our hearts and our minds, but there are still things that he touched, things he fixed.  Hell, we were going to get rid of the whole bedroom set if we had moved to Pennsylvania anyway! I just feel like its so special now, that how could I possibly get rid of it?

I just dont know what to do.  I want it, yet I dont want it.  I need to move on, and I am afraid these things are holding me back from doing so.

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Florida Re Cap Part Two

Guess its time I get on this eh? I cant forget to write about the trip as we came back TWO weeks ago!!! I cant believe its already been two weeks, time goes by so incredibly fast.

We packed SO much into that trip, and thankfully I had the foresight to bring a pedometer with me.  A couple of the days we walked 10 miles.  yes. 10 miles.  I had sore feet most days, and put the kids to work giving me foot massages.

Day two was October 8th, so Es 8th birthday!! That day we went to Epcot, and walked. walked. walked. and walked some more.  It wasnt quite the traditional birthday for her, but seeing as were going with that trend the last two years, we may as well keep up with it I guess.

Now, if you havent been to Epcot, you dont know how big it is.  Its massive, like bigger than all the lands in Magic Kingdom massive.  There are two "worlds", Future World and the World Showcase.  We started off in Future world where we did a character meet and greet with Mickey, Minnie, Daisy, Donald and Goofy.  That took up quite a bit of time, as we had autographs and what not to get as well.

After that, it was time to haul ass over to Epcots "Norway", as we had lunch reservations at Akershus to have lunch with the Disney Princesses as a special treat for Es birthday.  We were early, so we did a bit of poking around Norway, rode Malestrom (really lame boat ride), and found a cute little gift shop.  I was in heaven here, because they had my IKEA COOKIES!!!! haha.  I stock up on those cookies every time the kids and I head to Ikea (an hour north of us), and we hadnt had them in awhile, so I forked over a few bucks for that.

Lunch with the Princesses was a lot of fun, albeit very expensive.  We got a ton of food, and I had mentioned to them before hand when were being seated, that it was Es birthday.  After lunch, they gave her a special birthday cupcake and we all sang Happy Birthday to her.  The food at Akershus wasnt too bad I suppose, I enjoyed it, but the kids didnt love it too much.  We were there more to meet the Princesses anyway, and we did! Part of the package is getting photos taken, so when we were ushered in, we had personal photos taken with Belle.  They treated us well there, as we got a family photo package (8x10, 4 4x6), AND E got a photo pkg with just her and Belle (same amount of photos as I just mentioned).   During the lunch, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White and Ariel came around to the tables (they staggered the princesses, so each princess went to each table), and did autographs and pictures with the kids.  I have a ton of pictures.  I really enjoyed this part, as seeing the kids face light up with each new princess was priceless.  They got to actually talk to and personally interact with them, not like normal meet and greets.  The princesses interact with the kids, talk to them, take pictures....that alone is worth the cost of the lunch.

After  lunch, Im pretty sure we went all the way around World Showcase. For some reason my memory of that part of the day is foggy, I should ask the kids.  Honestly, Epcot World Showcase was pretty boring for the most part. We didnt see any of the "shows" inside the countries, but just looked around, took pictures etc etc.  My favorite was Germany, as was the kids I think, because they got their Giant Gummy Bears.  Which are disgusting by the way.  Now, normally I love gummy bears, but these tasted like pure crap.  I liked Canada, but I was very disappointed how my home country was represented. Tres Boring! The shop had smarties and wunderbars, and I so wanted to, but I wasnt about to spend $3+ dollars for a box of smarties.  We went to the UK section and met Pooh and Tigger!!  That was really fun, as theyre pretty much our favorite characters.  We also saw "The British Invasion" perform a few Beatles songs, and they were pretty awesome!

Sugar Ray was supposed to be performing at Epcot that day, but we didnt stay because it was packed due to it being the Food and Wine expo.  After seeing all the countries, we did some of the other stuff in Future World.  We did LOVE Spaceship Earth, we rode that a couple times.  It was awesome.  We missed Soarin and Test Track (more on that another day) though, but did most of everything else.  We did NOT stay for the fireworks. I was bummed out about that, but at Epcot you NEED to get a good seat, and I was not in the position with four kids by myself, to sit and hold our spot for almost two hours.  So we left after dinner and went back to the hotel.

That was a long tiring day, one of our most tiring actually, and I cant remember the little details about it.  My feet were positively aching by the time I sat down on my bed in the hotel.   Next ReCap, Ill cover October 9th (Animal Kingdom), the 10th, and the 11th.  I dont think I could possibly write about all that now, there is just so much to say and remember.

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