Thursday, August 16, 2012

The empty apartment

This weekend marks the four month anniversary of Charlie's passing, and it went unnoticed by everyone around me, including my husband (seemingly). We were helping to move my stepmom, who has be gracious enough to let us practically live with her, into another apartment, so everyone was distracted- everyone but me.

The apartment was comfortable- sparse, high ceilings, big windows, wood floors and in historic Old Louisville, the neighborhood David and I lived in before we decided to get married and have children. The slumlords always just slap a fresh coat of paint on everything before new tenants move in- including door hinges, window sills, and just about everything else. But the neighborhood has it's own meaning of "home" for us.

There was some part of me that was sad to see it go. I became an adult there, fell in love there, decided to get married there, and when it came time to go through something has tragic as grieving my child, I even returned to the old hood to do it.

As we were packing the last few items and I stood in the room where we landed the night Charlie died, the apartment where I must've spent countless nights awake crying and ridden with anxiety that if I slept I'd wake to find my daughter gone too, I looked around and felt a sense of closure. It was hard to leave the apartment, but in a way, it was like closing a very bad chapter in my life.

Old Louisville isn't our home, Springfield is our home- where our house is, where our life is, where our son is. It's been good to have this place to have space to grieve in a place where the walls wont look back at me forever, where I can say goodbye to the mirrors I looked into with tear stained cheeks and windows I looked out of wondering what would happen if I just fell. It was a great temporary grieving zone, but now it's time to go back to the real world.  Thanks mom :)

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