We started cleaning out her house in April, but there was a big push in the last few weeks to get it done. During that process, I was also cleaning out my house to get ready for her. I still have loads of Tony's stuff. Apparently, I am getting rid of it in shifts. It started a few weeks after he died, but I've gotten rid of more two or three times since then. Right now, I'm down to my favorite dress shirts of his, the khakis that looked awesome on his ass, some of his tshirts, etc. I was really befuddled over the baseball hats. I know I must have gotten rid of some before... why did I still have the hat from the local butcher shop? It didn't survive this round.
There were other ones I kept: the Notre Dame hat he loved because it could pass as a Celtic hat, the black hat he personalized with an Army Ranger patch given to him by a family member. No one will ever wear them again, keeping them is totally illogical. I'm just not ready to part with them.
I gave my mom the master suite, and moved back into our spare bedroom. It was our bedroom when the girls were little, because I didn't want to walk across the house in the middle of the night all the time. We were super excited when we first moved into our remodeled master suite... the first time we had one. It was wheelchair accessible because we knew we would need that. Maybe a strange thing to be excited about.
Redecorating the spare bedroom (now my room) has been fun. I'm not done hanging pictures, but it's getting there. It feels like my room. I wondered (as I do often) if I was being disloyal by wanting my own room (not a room that Tony and I decorated together). It's hard to change things without him, and I question it all the time. But living in that room that we shared together wears on me too. This feels like a fresh start, and it is. And when my mom moves out, I can return to our master suite and make it my own. It's a circuitous route to change, but a much easier one. I'll even make a place for those baseball hats.
