A Painful Move
We spent the last month packing up and moving out. Really, this should have happened sooner, but we just couldn’t get the logistics worked out. Emotionally, we didn’t want people we know, even our best of friends, sifting through our closets and drawers to help us gather contents for disposal. The idea felt like an overexposure. While everything in the house was to be trash for the dumpster, items still held personal value to us. Each Christmas ornament packed away under the stairs, or birthday card shoved in a dresser drawer, or piece of artwork with Luke’s little thumb prints still held meaning, a memory, a moment in time.
I spent an entire afternoon calling moving companies and junk disposal services looking for a crew that we could pay to empty the house for us. Distancing ourselves from the actual event sounded appealing, but no one would take the job. When I asked for a crew to move the entire contents of our house into a dumpster, all companies asked “Why are you getting rid of your stuff?” And when I said, “Mold,” they all said “No,” some more politely than others.
Bagging Memories
So in the end, we threw all of our stuff into heavy duty black contractor bags and piled them around the house. David did most of the work as I was told by my doctor not to enter the house more than twenty minutes at a time, even with a Tyvek suit, gloves, goggles, and respirator. It turns out that throwing everything you own into garbage bags doesn’t take near as long as packing for a move. I think we bagged the whole house in about twelve hours. Packing up and moving out shouldn’t be so quick.
The Strength of Memories
Memories that are tied to strong, emotional experiences have a clarity that doesn’t seem to fade with time. I can remember the moment I first heard Luke cry. I’d been rushed in for a c-section and was lying on the table with my arms outstretched and strapped down. My eyes were covered with a cold towel to dampen the bright lights of the operating room. I felt the deep pressure and pull in my abdomen and then from the table where they were cleaning him off, I heard his first little cry pierce the silence of the room. I cried immediately, deep, shaking sobs. There was such a release. Such a flood of love. I remember that exact moment like it was yesterday. There are several moments from this past month that I believe are burned upon my consciousness in much the same way.
Where Time Stands Still
When we first entered the house to begin the clean out process, we had not been there for about three and a half months. I remember pausing in the doorway and looking around the living room, dining room, and office with such a feeling of bewilderment. I once saw a photo documentary about Chernobyl called “Where Time Stands Still.” Images of apartments with dishes on drying racks, teddy bears tucked into bed, and half finished cups of coffee still on the table flashed through my mind.
We too left our house in a hurry that Easter day. Luke’s train set was just as he’d left it. On the entertainment center was a vase of dead flowers that had been beautiful when they came home from the hospital with me. In the kitchen, we found a dishwasher full of dishes yet to be run, and a row of dead plants in the window, though my aloe was still trying hard to stand tall, even after months without water. Those little flashes, all around the house, of our life once lived, will stay with me forever, like a haunting memory of what used to be.
We tried to document things that held emotional value. I had already lost most of my childhood memorabilia to Hurricane Ike, but David still had all of his. Before bagging his things, we laid all of his models out on the driveway and took pictures. We photographed each and every piece of art that he’d saved from his high school days. Some things we overlooked. Like we meant to snap a few photos from our high school and college yearbooks. We forgot. We also forgot to photograph the afghans and quilts that were special to me. There was just so much to do. Even with our daily check lists, we still found ourselves overwhelmed. Packing up and moving out is usually a happy thing with hope on the horizon.
An Apologetic Goodbye
One day, when I was in the house with David, I took on the job of bagging my books. This is yet another experience burned into my brain, mostly because it affected me in a way I wasn’t expecting. I had told myself again and again, “They’re just books. You can buy them all again.” Even so, I found myself apologizing to each and every book as I shoved it into a bag. I found myself talking to the authors who wrote them and to the characters in them.
For so many of the books, I could recall when I read them and what was happening in my life at the time. A flood of good and bad overtook me from one book to the next. It was a quick rush of so many deep emotions from the past. I will always remember whispering, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” again and again and again, the weight of my heartache growing with the weight of each bag. Packing up and moving out shouldn’t be this hard.
Loading Up
Once everything was bagged, we had a dumpster delivered to the driveway. We asked a small group of friends to help us carry everything from the house. Our furniture went first. My buffet that I bought while living in Hong Kong. The bookcases my dad made for our office. The cedar chest handmade and gifted to us for our wedding. Luke’s crib. Our custom living room furniture that we’d purchased just a few years before. Then came the bags and loose items. Suitcases. Baskets of toys. Small kitchen appliances. Pillows. Craft bins. Baby clothes.
When the dumpster was nearly full, I saw one of our helpers bring out the rocking chair that my dad made for me when I was a little girl. Burned into the back of the wooden seat, it said, “Jesus Loves Jennifer.” I watched as our friend tried to place it on top of the pile and when it wouldn’t fit, he brought it back down to the lawn and picked up a sledge hammer. This I will remember forever. Not because I saw my chair hacked to bits, but because I couldn’t watch. I turned my back and walked away, even as I heard the wood splinter and crack. I’m not angry at my friend. He was doing what needed to be done. But the weight of that moment is probably what I remember most about dumpster day.
Packing up and moving out hurt.
Still Thankful
Through all of this, we can say that we are thankful for several things. We are grateful for the friends who watched Luke every day that David and I needed to enter the house. Luke has not been back to the house even once since we left on Easter Sunday. So while he knows that our stuff is gone, we are grateful that he doesn’t share all of these deep memories that David and I bear.
We are also thankful that we were able to put some time in between leaving the house and dumping our contents. I can not imagine the emotional burden this would have been had we had to do it right away after leaving the house. At least this way, it hurt a little bit less knowing that we are established in an apartment with some new contents to call our own. And lastly, we are thankful for the friends who suited up with us on dumpster day to graciously help us do the dirty work of moving.
Standing in our empty home, both David and I were struck by the oddity of our moving day. We never expected to leave our home so soon. And we never expected it would be a dumpster move instead of a moving truck. Even so, it’s good to be done. Toward the end of dumpster day, I noticed a rock that I painted at a MOPS meeting last fall. It simply said, “Trust God.” And that is what we are doing as we move forward. We trust that all things are yet in God’s control. Even the packing up and moving out. We move forward, praying for good health, and a one day home to call our own.
