Sneak Attacks

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So, I had nothing going on today for the most part, so when I woke up this morning, I looked at the stack of bins and boxes sitting in the corner of my living room and figured I should start going through them. They are full of miscellaneous papers and randomness and I have been putting this off for a while.

I guess having no life this weekend forced me to get into gear, so I reluctantly picked up a box and carried it in and put it next to my bed. I sat there for the next several hours going through it. There were files that had been transferred to that box from our filing cabinet... in those files were so many things. Aaron was the main one to use the filing cabinet, so going through most of those files, I found things that I had never seen before. There were school papers from Aaron's college days, mortgage statements, credit card bills, bank statements, tax returns, a lot of Home Depot receipts, medical bills and statements, etc.

There were also things that I had thrown into that box in the past couple of years as I packed things away. So, today I also found random things like an extra copy of our wedding announcement, photos of Aaron Jr., photos from our wedding, memorabilia from my mission to England and Aaron's mission to Brasil, a large envelope that was missing for a while full of copies of Aaron's death certificate, cards and letters that I received after Aaron's death, a lock of Aaron Jr's hair wrapped in tin foil, cards and letters from family members, memorabilia from our honeymoon... stuff I saved to use in a scrapbook, a copy of Aaron's obituary, a print out of the many comments left by people online on his obituary page, the envelope that Aaron received just two days before his death that contains the pattern for the wooden rocking horse he was going to build for Aaron Jr. that year for Christmas... and many, many, many more things...

I was in tears off and on a lot today... so I finally got Aaron Jr. in the car and we headed to the theater to see a movie. I needed a distraction. When we got home, I needed more of a distraction, so we headed up to Aaron's parents house to say hello... that distraction didn't work because they were not home, so Aaron Jr. and I went to my parents house (they are out of town, but I wanted to use their treadmill) and I ran on their treadmill while Aaron Jr. watched TV. I struggled through my run tonight... I got a side ache worse than I have had in a long long long time, but I just pushed through it.

With the type of day this has been, I had an interesting experience at my parents house tonight. I have always joked with friends of mine that it would be so great to shave our heads and be able to see what we look like with buzzed heads and not have to worry about our hair. I have actually been talking to my sister a lot the past few days about cutting my hair again and how much I wished I would have buzzed my head in that first year after Aaron passed away. During that year when I knew I had no interest in dating and I didn't even care what anyone thought of the way I looked... including myself. Anyhow, when I was changing my clothes at my parents house, their clippers were sitting there on the counter in the bathroom and I came SO SO SO close to grabbing them, pulling a Britney Spears and buzzing all of my hair off. I was close enough to doing it that I even pictured where I would begin the buzzing process. Awkward. :) But I didn't do it...

When we got home, I went straight to my bed and started reading the pages of comments that I had come across that people left on Aaron's obituary page and...

I. LOST. IT.

Another thing I came across was a stack of newsletters that I got in the mail from the funeral home that handled Aaron's funeral and burial. I was reading in them and some of the words kinda hit home today like they did back in the beginning... some of the words were:

"There are some days when nothing helps. Silent pain echoes across the heart leaving tear stains and shattered dreams. It hurts to move, to think, to breathe. It even hurts to be. On those days, when memories burn scars deep into the soul, there seems little relief. All the coping tricks we have tried in the past seem to fail us, and we are left with a pain so deep that we fear we will be consumed by it. We firmly believe that we shall never again find hope or joy in this world. Our own death often seems the only escape. That despair comes at the bottom of the valley. We have all stumbled across those treacherous rocks - many of us more than once. Just as we begin to think that we might survive, something tumbles us back into the darkness, and we are sure we have drowned. What then? It is as if we are left without our dreams or our memories. Existence has become a void, filled with nothingness - not even hurt. On those days, we cannot even feel pain.
"I'm not ready yet to be normal and take my place among the normal people of the world. I look normal, and for the most part, I act normal. Except for our story and for the tears in our family fabric, we are normal. I don't think I'm ready for no one to remember our hurt, let alone the joy our loved ones gave us.
I'm not ready yet to live only on the surface of life. There is still a lot of empty in my heart. Not as much as before..."
~ Darcie D. Sims

Not as much as before.

It is amazing reading words written by someone else that describe so perfectly how I have felt in the past and how part of me still feels sometimes. I don't break down and cry that often anymore... I mean REALLY cry... just once in a while now, so when I do break down and REALLY cry like tonight, I must admit, it sometimes feels really good. Sometimes, it is a good release. As I sit and type this, I am not feeling better yet, but I am assuming I will wake up in the morning feeling better. It seems like I usually do after one of these episodes. :) So, I'll be okay.

Anyhow, I was caught off guard today. I had a sneak attack of the sniffles. These emotions snuck up on me today and I was not prepared for them at all. I still have several boxes like this to sort through, boxes that are full of randomness and if I am going to have a day like this per box, then I guess I better invest in more Kleenex and try to stay away from hair clippers.

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