Cariel is invested in her birthday party. I mean, wholly invested. Each day we talk about who she wants to invite while trying desperately trying to set the right expectation: just because they’re invited doesn’t mean they’ll come (I don't know how much traction we're making there). This morning caught me off guard, though, when she asked, “Mommy, can Aunt Sharon come to my birthday party?” Aunt Sharon was my mom’s sister, and Cariel knows her best from the eclectic gifts she always shared. She met her once when we visited Florida, but Cariel was only 18-months old. I’m sure she was connecting Aunt Sharon to fun presents, and thus, a birthday invitation. Typical two-year-old thinking. My stomach dropped at the thought of having to remind her that Aunt Sharon was no longer alive, but I told her anyway. Her response, “she died like Grandma Carol?” Stunned that she connected not being alive to dying, I said, “Yes, that’s right.” “Where are they now?” She asked, well ahead...
After two years of living in our house and shoveling whatever we didn’t know what to do with into our basement storage space, Daryl and I decided to clean it out. Much of what I had to sort through was from my parent’s house. When I cleaned out my childhood home after they died, I had to do it quickly. I wanted to get the house on the market before winter began, because the thought of paying the mortgage and utilities on a vacant space would’ve been expensive… and emotional. In one night and with several glasses of wine , a friend and I boxed up every photograph in the house. We staged it, put it on the market, negotiated a price with interested buyers, signed all the paperwork, then packed, sold, or threw away everything that was left. In just a few months, I sold a house without ever having bought one. In just a few months, my home was no longer my home. Furniture, clothes, pictures—it all went into a storage unit and was eventually moved to our house in Illino...