Uses Butterfly Basic Celebration Edition by Little Butterfly Wings:
http://goo.gl/RHDeOu
I wrote this just before we got on a plane last week - so perfect timing for the challenge really.
journaling reads:
I will be honest, this is by far the hardest move we have ever made. I could not quite put my finger on why it was so hard for the longest time, but on Wednesday night I sat by myself in what was left of our home and just sobbed.
My goal at the time was to finish clearing the house. To pack the last bit of what we were taking with us on the plane into our 10 allotted bags, and to box up what needed to be shipped so Jonathan could take it to post Thursday morning. The rest was to be donated or thrown away. We had been selling things for months, having "yard sales" for weeks, ad yet there were so many choices still to be made.
And it hit me.
It was the memories that were causing me so much trouble. The 3 foot stack of drawings that our oldest has accumulated over his 13 years of life. The innumerable little notes my sweet girl had written to me over the last 6 years. The photographs and the school papers. You can't sell those things, and we could not take all of them - it was just too expensive. But how do you choose which memories to keep and which ones to let fade?
It is a normal part of life, this fading of memories, but usually we don't have to consciously choose which ones to hold on to. In most cases it just happens, without our even noticing.
Each time we left the US we simply packed those memories away with our family we were leaving behind to rediscover each time we returned. When we moved from Burma to Thailand we bagged up those memories and our sweet friends slowly brought them over to us over the course of the next year. But this time there was no where to leave them, no one to bring them to us. We had to choose and it was hard.
And as I realized what I had to do in order to finish my task, I just allowed myself to grieve each memory that I had to leave behind. Because if there is one thing I have learned in the past 15 years it is that I have to let grief have its place if I am ever going to find healing.
So I cried over the scribbled drawings and drippy paintings. I smiled and chuckled over the funny little notes with sweet words. I touched the little keepsakes that had to be left behind and said goodbye to memories that would soon be crowded out by new ones.
And I took time to just sit and say goodbye to the memories that swam in the house around me. The sound of the children's laughter as they played together, their feet pounding on the stairs. The frogs singing their lullaby in the orchard behind us and the tokays calling out to each other.
We had only lived in this house for 2.5 years, but that was longer than we had lived anywhere for a long time. This was the house where my youngest learned to walk, to talk, to navigate stairs and express himself. It is where my oldest shared his first crush, and started on the teenage journey to adult hood. It is where my middle finally lost a tooth, and found her voice to share her thoughts with the world around her. There are a lot of memories in that house.
And finally it was done. The house was cleared, the bags were packed, far too many boxes were addressed and ready to be shipped and a forlorn pile of things that had to be left behind sat in the living room.
It was done. I said goodbye, turned out the lights and locked the door. Time to find a new home.
