I've been packing, all day.
The possessions, all the things, the stuff that made up our Purple Life, packed into boxes; to come to the New House, to go to the charity store, to be stored at relatives.
I cried, silent tears rolling down my cheeks to match the deluge of rain on my windscreen, after I dropped a load of baby goods off to be resold for a fraction of the price they were bought for. Clothes, a bouncer, walker, high chair.
Disappearing proof of life, the absence of which spells it out- no more babies for Tony and I, no more milky smelling newborns for me.
I find things, pieces of the past playing hide and seek. A pile of X-rays behind the bookcase. A framed movie poster in the cupboard under the stairs. A comic, carefully cut from the Sunday paper.
I'm surrounded by the whispers of ghosts. Fragments of laughter and conversation. Memories that seem to become more fresh, more vivid and colorful, as I pack them into an ever growing castle of boxes in my garage.
Some things, I pause over, run my fingers over, while my mind tortures me with the memory of my husband's smile, my husband's laugh.
I take pictures from the wall, pictures like this one...
...and I pack them, wrap them, deep in a box and tape it shut as tightly as I can. I'm not sure when I'll open it again, whether I'll have hooks on the walls for pictures, whether there will be room... whether I'll ever want to open those (Pandora's) boxes again.
Give it back, my Purple Life, and I'll take it... the shit bits, the boring bits, the surbanness of it... I'll take it back, trade it for this adventure, in a second. In a heartbeat.