Stubbing my toes - still

How long is it before the little twinges stop? Am I doing myself favors by brusquely pushing them aside? Or is this the right thing to do?

I’ll be in the midst of doing things, and stub my emotional toe again on memories. I have never thought of myself as a dweller, but I guess I am.

I went into the out-building this weekend to get tools, and all of Michael’s gardening things are still out there. Immediately memories came back. The year he spent all that money on gardening stuff, and plowed up the back yard. The year he got the brass dragonfly yard ornament for Christmas. I later found it after he left, buried in weeds in the back yard. I went back in the house, and kept doing what I needed to do.

When I cleaned the bathroom, my terrycloth bear puppet is still in there. We were somewhere and found Michael’s monkey puppet when we were dating, and after I gave it to him, I chased him all over his apartment, tickling him with it. Years later, we found the bear puppet in a store in Charlotte while we were visiting friends. I decided not to buy it, but he bought it anyway, and surprised me with it later. They were both in the bathroom together until he left. I wonder if he still has the monkey puppet, and if it reminds him of me.

This morning I took our old comforter to Goodwill. After we shopped for a year for a comforter, I finally just picked it out and brought it home, where his old cat Vesta proceeded to destroy it. We slept under it for years, and it was in terrible shape and covered with picks. But it was hard, for a moment, to leave it in the bin at Goodwill, full of memories of fights and cold nights and togetherness. Another bit of my past discarded.

I still have the vase under the kitchen sink that my last flowers came in. The last anniversary before we broke up. I just can’t bear to part with it yet. Should I? Or not? I can’t decide. I’m trusting myself to know when the time is right.

It reminded me of a story my grandmother told me about cleaning out the house after my grandfather died. She found a packet of strawberry seeds he had bought. He had been planning to re-sew the strawberry patch in their back yard. She said “They seemed so much a part of him for a moment that I just had to have a good cry over them.”

So I’m still stubbing my emotional toes, over a year later. Do these memories get sweeter? Or do they stay tinged with pain? I guess I’ll find out. The past is part of who I am, and I don’t want to reject that. There were good years and good times. But these little moments are hard. I push past them and go on. I'm afraid if I don't, they'll weigh me down. But I worry about losing pieces of my life in the process.

I guess that's the way it works though. You decide what to keep and what needs to go.