Never in my life had I really considered Halloween a spooky day. It was fun - you got to dress up (or at this point in my life, dress the kids up), go out and collect candy and have fun parties with friends. It was all about being happy and having fun...at least until a few years ago.
11:00 p.m. on Halloween 2006 my Mom passed away, a moment visually burned into my memory forever. She was holding my hand, looking in my eyes and then she was gone, and so went an incredibly large part of me, or at least I felt so at the time. My biggest cheerleader was gone. The one person who gave me love and encouragement, especially when I didn't deserve it, was gone. How was I supposed to go on?
Just a few hours before Mom passed, the priest came to the house to give her last rites. Though Mom hadn't been able to talk in a few days, when the priest asked her what she wanted for her family, she clearly said, "Be Happy," thus the title for this blog.
It seems since that day, I've been wandering around like this 5-year-old who can't find their Mommy. I have a wonderful husband and three beautiful children and have done everything I can to try to put up a brave front...though often I have felt that the harder I have tried, the worse job I've done. It's hard to hide the pain. Most days I have wanted to drive up to the tallest mountain top and scream...but I can't. What good would that do for my family? I would often find myself in the car or the bathroom, crying my eyes out and then straightening myself up again so no one would see how crushed I was.
Through all the time that has passed, my house has turned into a storage unit. Not long before Mom died my grandmother had passed away. Mom had started sending up some of my grandmother's things that she thought we would want. After Mom passed, Dad started sending up boxes full of Mom's things too. I would open every box, look, cry, cry some more, and then find a stack somewhere where the box would fit and try to go on not letting everyone see how upsetting this was to me. It got to a point where it was hard to walk anywhere in the house.
Eight days ago my husband's new computer arrived. It's this fancy Alienware thing and I had to make room for this monstrosity. I knew this was going to be hard, and avoided it at all costs, but finally I had no other choice than to go though some of what was in the dining room. I wound up with a stack of boxes in the hallway that need to go upstairs to the spare room, but in cleaning this one area of the house I did find a little happiness. I look into the dining room from the kitchen, see my husband happily fiddling with his new computer, but in finally getting something done here it was as if...I was happy??? I think I've vacuumed the dining room five times in the last three days and it makes me smile???
I think I've told myself a million times, "Be Happy," or, "Mom said to 'Be Happy' so you have to," but I never felt it. I was always painting on this face and doing what I could to try to make everyone else happy because I didn't feel that I would ever be able to be truly happy again anyway, so at least seeing everyone else happy gave me some satisfaction.
All of the sudden I felt some happiness, and I wasn't quite sure what to think of it. How did I find happiness out of cleaning one room out? Where the heck did that come from? I still have no idea, but at this point I don't care. I have this little corner to look at that's clean, and there sits my husband happily playing on his new computer (or I should say mostly happy when he's not cussing at rearranging new computer settings :). I still have probably 100 boxes to move, a house to organize so that it looks like a living area instead of a storage unit again, plus I'll still have about 200 boxes to cry my way though, but that's okay. If cleaning some part of my house apparently has some effect on cleaning a little of the sadness out of my heart, then why not keep going?
I doubt anyone will ever be reading this, but it sure feels great typing about it. I figure I'm going to blog my way though these boxes and see if it will allow me a few more bits of happiness.
I know that would make Mom happy.
