Ch-ch-ch-changes

We found a larger house. It's in a nearby neighborhood with a bedroom for each kid, a scraproom for mom, a master bedroom with a bath, and a willow tree in the yard.

Of course, we can't buy that house unless we sell this house, so we are frantically rearranging, moving stuff to a storage unit, cleaning, and making basic repairs that have been neglected. Nothing major but stuff we had just been putting off.

It's stressful, this stuff. We've never sold a house before. The market is bad. But the worst case scenario is that we don't sell, we've downsized some and will downsize more as we move our stuff back into the house, and we will still love our house and our neighborhood. We will need to do a little renovating to make one more legal bedroom. But for now, we are working toward a more perfect home. No personal items on display, everything supernaturally neat and tidy ... actually, my neatnik self is not all that unhappy about that. Except my craft supplies will be vastly depleted because they are going into storage too.

Spencer says the house "looks lonely."

Maybe, but as we take bags to the Goodwill, boxes to Habitat for Humanity, and greet people at the door who are coming to pick up goods I advertised on Freecycle, stuff we don't really need is finding its way to people who do need it.

I think of myself as pretty good at cleaning out, purging, and donating when stuff isn't needed. Turns out I could do better.

As for my grief journey, I seem to have turned a corner. I don't know if it was the ending of the grief counseling group I attended for 8 weeks, the reappearance of the sun, the distraction of the move, or simply that it's been 4 months since I left to care for Kris, but I am feeling good and she is no longer my last thought at night and my first thought in the morning.

It's a good thing, I know, but it is sad, too.

I had a dream the other night and she was in it. It wasn't about her; I don't remember what it was about. But she was there. And in the dream I had no awareness that she had been sick or that she had died. She looked normal; the thin, drawn, pain-filled expression she wore at the end was gone. And she told me she was okay. It wasn't a dramatic, emotion-filled moment, it was just a quiet conversation. And in the dream I wondered WHY should would be saying that, because I could see her and she was fine. Her cornsilk hair was shiny, her blue eyes were clear and bright, her expression was serene. She WAS okay.

And when I remembered the dream, I was blown away. It just made so much sense. And I am so comforted by it, even as I move forward, leaving her behind in the mists of my memory.