Room

I am ready to make another Goodwill run. The truck is loaded with books, clothes, small furniture, VHS tapes, DVDs, CDs. All Colby's. Once. There are still many piles of his "stuff," in his room and in the basement. But neither are piled floor to ceiling. Anymore. I make progress. Slowly.

I hear of parents sorting through their child's belongings in an afternoon, a day. If you read this blog you know that Colby had several lifetimes of stuff. I sometimes think it will take me a lifetime to go through it all, but I know eventually I will find an end. In the Spring. Maybe. But what then? What will I do with his room? Some parents keep their child's room much as it was before their child passed. Some clear it out completely, start over, make it a brand new space. Both ideas are right, for some people. I think I am in the middle. I cannot imagine the room not having an essence of Colby, of having some of his things in there. But I know he would also want the room used. I could move the office in there. Or, turn it into a den. Or it could be a storage room, an exercise room, a second guest room. I just don't know. Yet.

When we first moved into the house Colby chose that room as his bedroom because it was closest to the kitchen, to the refrigerator. An important consideration when you are 12. During the next few years he spent hours in his room drawing, painting, reading, playing music, recording, doing homework, listening to music, talking on the phone, sleeping, watching tv, and everything else a young teen does. The room is so filled with Colby that some days it overwhelms me.

This Sunday, in three days, it will have been three months since Colby passed. Still hard to believe. Hard to fathom. I think in many ways I am still in shock. There is a heaviness when I breathe, a hollowness in the pit of my stomach, a nervous panic, anxiety I didn't have before. These are constant reminders that Colby is in a different place. Gone. Free. So hard to believe.

I know that making a decision about Colby's room will lessen some of my physical symptoms of grief. Carefully laid plans help. Order eases my brain. So I will be thinking of the best use for the space. And I will be thinking about what Colby would have wanted me to do with it. But whatever I decide, in my mind, that room will always and forever belong to Colby.