Home is where the heart is...

Oh my word...  Life is cuh-razy right now.  I sold half of our large pieces of furniture today on Craigslist and am packing up books & clothing to ship to Josh. He should be moving next week into the new housing up in Marshall (where it is 19 degrees today!) and I will be moving in with my in-laws in three short weeks and turning in the keys to our duplex before December makes its debut.  So I am rushing around like a mad woman.  I finally had to go to the grocery store this afternoon and the drive was the first time I had sat down all day long.  That's when it hit me.  

I'm moving. 

We're leaving.

Sure, I hate the place where we live (the slugs, the bumping music, the speeding cars) but it's still home. And it's a home I have worked hard to make a cozy place for us to all land at the end of the day. So to see it thrown into shambles as I sell dressers & pack cardboard boxes is painful. This is the place I brought all my babies home to. That bedroom is the nursery where I would walk, bleary eyed, to cuddle a crying boy in the middle of the night.  This dining room is where we first fed the twins rice cereal and taught them to feed themselves pudding. The bathroom is where I found out I was pregnant both times, standing nervously at the edge of the sink, waiting for those pink lines to show up...

Lots of years, lots of memories, lots of crap. I can't believe how much stuff I have to get rid of before we go. And I have been doing nothing but sorting, organizing and preparing for this move since we found out about it last April!

But through it all (the chaos, the selling of my beloved belongings, the sometimes raw emotions) I am keeping in the forefront of my mind the picture of our family, the five of us, together again, sitting down for dinner at a new kitchen table, in a new dining room in our new house. A beautiful new place that will be a blank slate for us to write our memories on. That's what helped me dry my eyes as I drove home from Winco with a trunk full of groceries. Things are just things. So I will let the rocking chair go, even though it pains me. I will let the boys' nursery furniture go, even though I adore it. I will let those things go, because the memory of those things will stay with me forever, even if the item itself is gone.

I am thinking that "Home Is Where the Heart Is" 

might be my big life lesson as I head into my 29th year here on this planet.

I was talking to my grandpa when I took the boys to the beach Tuesday (which I did all by myself- and was quite proud!) and he was telling me that his doctor stops checking for certain cancers at his age because by the time it caused a problem, he'd be dead anyway. (He turns 80 in January.) And I asked him if getting old bothered him, and he said no. He said he notices that he's slowing down and isn't as able-bodied as he once was, but that doesn't bother him either. So then I asked him the real question. I asked him if the thought of dying bothered him. And he said to me, "I've always thought there are worse things than dying. Dying's easy. Then it's done. No, I think there really are some things worse than that."

What a change in my mind was made as he said that and those words really sunk in.  Maybe being without Josh is as bad as it feels. Maybe the pain of living is unbearable at times. I find that strangely comforting. Going through the pain of losing things, losing loved ones may be rough, but the alternative (dying) isn't worth trading in on.  Things'll get easy when I die. I'll have plenty of time for rest when I'm dead.

Meanwhile, I've got boxes to pack, furniture to sell & a husband to miss.