Sunday, September 29, 2013

Sunday, September 29, 2013

Tonight's picture was taken in October of 2007. In fact, it was snapped in the exact same spot as last night's photo. Right outside one of Mattie's favorite restaurants. This was a great spot, because right behind us was a lovely pond filled with koi and turtles.



Quote of the day: It always is harder to be left behind than to be the one to go... ~ Brock Thoene

Peter and I never left our home today. I have been suffering with a massive headache all week. Mind you I do not know what one solitary day looks like without a headache. I have had a daily headache since April 4, 2002, the day Mattie was born. Most of the time, I can work through the pain, or at least I have learned to given the fact that I have had a lot of practice! But this week's pain is intense and the pain can wear me out. It is hard to get motivated to do much when I have such a headache, but nonetheless, I spent a great deal of time in Mattie's room today, as I continued to clean it out. I honestly think the toll of cleaning out Mattie's room is just overwhelming on so many levels. I began by tackling Mattie's drawers. The ironic part about this is I remember picking out this chest of drawers with my parents before Mattie was born. It seems like it were only yesterday.

Though I am donating a large chunk of Mattie's clothes, I am keeping one of his first hats, mittens, and gloves. I remember him wearing these items often.

This is what Mattie's bed and area around it looks like now. However, as we keep cleaning out and changing things around, it won't be looking like this for much longer. Mattie loved hanging things on his walls and we are trying to take photos of his room so we can always remember how it looked when Mattie was with us.

Mattie had an unbelievable collection of clothes and that was thanks to my mom. She always went shopping for him and mailed us care packages from California. It was a saving grace to me because Mattie HATED shopping, and DESPISED the mall and clothing stores. Which is a problem since as a little person, his size was constantly changing and he needed clothes. As I pulled out Mattie's clothes today, I organized things by type (shirts, sweaters, shorts, pants, etc). Though Mattie wore all these clothes, he kept his clothes in excellent condition. So I have no doubt donating these items will be helping many children. In many of Mattie's clothes, I ironed in tags with his name on it. These tags were useful when Mattie was in school, because his teachers would always know what items belonged to him. Before donating these items, I pulled out every single ironed on name tag. It took longer to remove the tags than to iron them in years ago. Somehow taking out the tags seemed very symbolic, symbolic of a good-bye to Mattie. I am not sure why, clothes are clothes, but clothes with Mattie's name in it, seemed much more personal!

While going through Mattie's clothes several shirts just struck me as his favorites. Though this wasn't my initial goal, I decided to reach out to my friend today who designs t-shirt quilts. I would like her to take 20 shirts of Mattie's that meant something to us, and create a Mattie quilt. I have set those aside and have also set aside some other items of Mattie's that I feel must stay with us.

Going through the clothes was hard enough but then we decided to move furniture as well as disassemble our two filing cabinets. Today's workload was intense and now that it is 6pm, we are stopping for the week. There is much more to do but it is hard to believe all that we have accomplished in a few weekends so far. I could never had done this clean out process early on in our grief journey. Cleaning out clothes is just too raw and just too painful. As time moves forward, I have developed more clarity about what is important to have around me and what must be kept. When you lose a child, it is very easy for others to give you feedback and set upon you their own time lines. But that is just it, it wasn't my timeline. I am happy I followed my own instincts and my own feelings about this, because at the end of the day, I am the one who has to do the cleaning out and I am the one who has to live with this decision.