With any luck...

...In 23 more days, I'll be a homeowner again:


The sale of my house officially closed a week and a half ago, and I was officially 100 percent moved out, possession handed over to the jackass buyer, a week ago Friday, on Feb. 27. 

As far as stress levels go, I suppose the move was fairly low stress--for a move--except that I've dubbed it the Move That Would Never End. It took five days to move out of that house, not counting all the packing that preceded the actual moving days. (And in hindsight, the day the movers came was truly the eye of the storm and a blip of calm relaxation throughout the process.)

I signed on that Wednesday, worked all day, moved stuff in the evening, and then the transaction officially closed on Thursday. (And when I say I was moving on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, it means I was packing the last boxes; loading up my car, my parents' pickup, and their small trailer with stuff; taking loads down to my parents' house; and unloading it there, only to go back for more loads. Probably 95 percent of my belongings were already packed and gone, but it was the stuff I put off til the end--like clothes, toiletries, electronics, and such--that was remaining, plus stuff like my wedding crystal and pictures that I wasn't entrusting to the movers or the storage container or things that I'd need for an indeterminate length of time until I was in a new home, that went to my parents' house. And that was the stuff that ended up taking the most time.) And then I moved stuff again all afternoon and evening on Thursday and again all day on Friday, from 8:45 in the morning until 11:00 pm at night, when I texted my realtor to tell her I was officially finished and out, my keys left inside the house. When I basically was running away, screaming, "Good %^&*@&^#$ riddance!!" (And like a moron, I was supposedly working full time all that week too, except for the day the movers came.)

I was a grumpy, pissy, tired, exhausted wretch by that point on Friday night. I don't mind packing. I don't even necessarily hate the action of loading trucks, moving boxes, etc. But I Absolutely. Totally. Hate. The Cleaning. At the end. 

HATE IT.

Charley was fairly worthless at helping with the logistics of house sales. Because he wasn't listed on the title of my first house, nor was he included in the actual purchase of "our" house (I bought the house in my name only and then added him to the title after we got married, so that we could get a better interest rate with a little personal-debt switcheroo), he argued that legally he couldn't really do much of anything for the various lender and escrow tasks...a fact that I didn't really argue, but what irritated me at the time was that he wouldn't do anything to help get bids for the house repairs, talk to the realtor or any of the contractors, or help lift some of the burden off my shoulders. Curse of being uber-competent, I guess...and me not being outspoken or self-cognizant enough to tell him that dangit, I wanted his help, names on the titles be damned. I remember getting irritated with him as I was selling my first house--and he was living with me in my house at the time--and because I was the only person listed on the purchase transaction and because I could get time off work to deal with logistics (like the home inspection) more easily than he could, I took care of everything for the purchase too. So despite that he had many, many wonderful qualities (and some occasionally obnoxious ones too, even as much as I loved him), he rather sucked at helping with house-buying-and-selling details. 

For better or worse, selling and buying two houses on my own after being widowed weren't any different from my life before being widowed.  Except for the actual act of moving. 

I thought of this several times as I was slogging through the crap of my just-completed sale and the move. When I found myself getting irritated this time, I remembered how I got irritated at Charley too...and depending on my mood at the time, the memory made me laugh, or else it just made me more tired, or grumpier...and it made me miss him more. Even if I was irritated with him five years ago when we were buying our house, at least he was there. He was there to listen to me bitch about the latest complication, to be a voice of reason, of detached suggestions. He was there to talk to, to be excited about planning for our next house, for the new transition to a slightly different life. 

And like every other moment of the last three-and-a-half years, he's not here now. He wasn't here to help pick up the details, the possessions of our life, of my life, of his daughter's. He wasn't here to be supportive, or understanding, or simply an endlessly listening ear. He wasn't there to help take care of the endless, damnable details and work of moving. 

I didn't really think about him all that much during the move. No more or less than I usually do. And there's a difference--while memories of him or references to him or things we did might come up pretty often and regularly, I don't really think about him all that often anymore. About the essence of him, the things I loved--and now miss--the most, how it felt to be around him, to be his wife, to have him present as Anna's doting, besotted father. 

I think about him as a historical fact all the time. But that's different from feeling him as an emotional presence or force in my life.

It's been one of the bigger changes as the grief has ebbed and shifted over time. That first year in particular, the bulk of the pain was because Charley wasn't here, because I missed him and ached for him, because I could feel the hole of his absence in everything I did. But over time, the hole started filling up. Not because I was healed or healing or happier...but just because it got fill up with...stuff. With the requirements of life, of surviving, of having to face day after day whether I wanted to or not. Of raising our daughter, of having to take care of shit. I wasn't any more complete or fulfilled for the hole filling up. If anything, I felt worse as the hole that was Charley as a living, breathing, loving person was replaced by detritus, by the useless, meaningless, suffocating crap of life. 

And the cost was that I lost a little bit of Charley each day. To get better, to move back to life, I had to let go of the feeling of having Charley here.

It wasn't a conscious choice I ever made. Nor was it a choice that, in hindsight, I liked. As hard and painful as that first year of widowhood was, at least I felt closer to Charley. He was still present in my life, even if the driving force was one of a ghost, of a vacuum caused by his death. But he was still a tangible part of my life.

And he's really not anymore. And for whatever reason, tonight, right now, it makes me really sad. And I just really, really miss him.

I don't know why. Why tonight, this moment, more than others. I wasn't really thinking about him at all this weekend, or this week. It's not like there were any other triggers to make it pretty logical and reasonable why I'd be missing him more.

Except I just realized--as I'm typing and sort of sniffing back watery, in-years-past-would-have-been-fully-teary eyes--that the switch to Daylight Savings Time last night might have something to do with it. Unconsciously.

The switch to Daylight Savings Time was a trigger to a hard day that first year after Charley died. 

But who the hell would think something as simple as changing the time on a clock would be a grief trigger? Except in our household, the switch to Daylight Savings Time meant that Charley started having weekly Saturday-morning practices at the race track* where he raced all late spring and summer. It triggered the start to the racing season--or at least the start of training for it--and a change to our normal weekly schedule. 

Saturday mornings he'd have practice at the velodrome for a few hours. There'd be practices other evenings, but he disliked going to them, especially once we had Anna. But every Thursday night from May though September, I'd leave work in the evening and sit at the track and watch Charley race, for three summers. We'd go to dinner afterward--often to Thai food, our favorite--and our weekend would start. (In a matter of speaking. Charley had Fridays and Saturdays off and worked Sunday though Thursday; I had the traditionally common workweek, but I worked from home on Fridays, so in effect it felt like we always had a three-day weekend together, even though only one day of it was spent with both of us not working.)

Thursday night races were the start of my favorite part of the week: our weekends together. And every year, the first Saturday of April and the change to Daylight Savings Time meant that racing season was rapidly approaching. 

But after he died, the change of the clocks and what it used to mean was a blatant reminder of what was no more...and it also served as the ticking clock, counting down to the rapidly approaching one-year anniversary of Charley's death...something I was horridly afraid of and sickened about.

I was relieved when Congress voted to change the start date of Daylight Savings Time. I don't remember if it changed before the second or the third "anniversary" of the clock-change trigger, but I remember being relieved that the US government had unknowingly removed a grief trigger for me. I could face the beginning of April without being slapped in the face, reminded that the start of Saturday velodrome practices had no bearing on my life anymore. Without the blatant, annual, blinking-neon-sign reminder: "Guess what! Charley's still dead! No more racing! No Saturday-morning training! Still dead! Still dead!"

Because in truth, Daylight Savings Time had nothing to do with the actual start of racing training. It was the fact we were in April that actually triggered the start of training. The weekly Saturday practices at the velodrome always started on the first (or maybe it was actually the second; I can't remember now) Saturday of April...and it just happened to coincide with the switch to Daylight Savings Time...but the two dates always coalesced in my mind, both before and after Charley died.

And in grief, something as silly as Daylight Savings Time became a trigger. And then once the date shifted into March instead of April, it no longer had to be a trigger.

Except maybe it still is. Maybe I transferred the grief trigger as being the changing of the clocks, and not what it technically should be: the shift into April. And maybe it's also a trigger because it means spring is fast approaching, and then summer, and I'm on a downhill slide to yet another death anniversary and another time of year that I hate: summer. Summers have historically sucked since Charley died. So no wonder I dislike reminders that it's coming.

Grief is never terribly logical. It feeds off emotions, off of churning feelings. It doesn't care a whole lot about logic and factual right or wrong.

And who knows. I could be totally full of it, when I connected a little while ago that maybe I'm missing Charley more pointedly tonight because of an old trigger. Maybe Daylight Savings Time has absolutely nothing to do with my feelings tonight. Maybe it's something just as simple as the fact that, for no important reason, I'm just missing Charley more than I usually do. That I feel the jagged edges of the emotional absence of him, instead of just the historical fact.

But this is me: I always like to my grief to be logical. Consistent. Easily understandable.

I always was too bloody analytical....

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I wasn't really intending any of this post to go anywhere it did. Yet another example that I have to write my way though figuring out that something might be affecting me, to trying to understand the whys and wherefores. 

Really, all I meant to do was post a quick update about the house. What I meant to say was that I went out househunting with my realtor last Saturday and Tuesday, and I found a house I liked. And I wrote an offer and--shock of shocks--it was accepted, without any drama or fuss. (Well, technically the seller rejected my initial offer and wrote a counter offer, and I'm accepting it...but same difference.) As of this past Friday night or Saturday, it's officially pending in the system. No short sale, no bankruptcies, no second offers this time (unlike the house I wrote an offer on a month ago), no being dicked around by an asshole (like with the buyer of my house in Sandy). 

Well, at least not yet. ;o) 

The home inspection is already scheduled for next Wednesday, and the loan process and appraisal are on a rush status (I love my credit union =)) so we can close by March 31. So with any luck, that picture I included at the beginning of this post will be Anna's and my new home in less than a month.

And other than the house details, my other purpose for writing was just to say that, "worthless" as Charley might have been at times during house sales and purchases, he was FANTASTIC at moves, at taking care of logistics for moving, for packing, loading, keeping us on schedule, driving a truck, unloading a maximum amount of stuff into a minimum of space (we moved into a storage unit for a week, when we were between house closings), at cleaning up at the old place.

I remember a move going a lot smoother when Charley was involved. Maybe it was partially because we just didn't have as much stuff. No kid and the ensuing accoutrements, very little furniture in general (and certainly little to no nice furniture), not a lot of extra crap. In other words, none of the stuff I have in spades now. And partially the move was smoother because there were two of us to split duties. And no children.

As I got into the last two to three days of my move--the portion that was really maddening and tiring, even though 90 to 95 percent of my stuff was already packed, loaded, and gone--I thought a lot about Charley and moving. 

Especially as I had to clean up and pick up the last little stuff lying around the house, that random, loose crap that you never know what to do with during a move, that always gets put off until the very end. Charley liked to clean. And I was reminded anew how very much I. Hate. To. Clean. 

Violently hate it. And during a move, that last cleanup and the loose junk at the end are my very least favorite part. And it was a part that Charley was very good at.

Darn him.

No wonder I got in a pissy mood by the end. 

Anna and I have been living with my parents for 10 or 11 nights now. And it's fine--parts of it are great, even (I got to take a long nap this afternoon! Shocking!)--but I'm reminded that I'm out of practice at living with other people, after being single for over 3 1/2 years. 

And I'm very much looking forward to having my own space again, my privacy back. I'm looking forward to having a yard--a first for me--big enough for my child to have a play structure and still have room for her and the dog to run and play in (although occasionally I wonder if I'm seriously smoking some crack, buying a house with a 10,000 square foot lot; I dislike mowing a lawn only slightly less than I dislike cleaning). I'm relieved to soon have a house that's small enough to be manageable for a single, working mama without being too small. I'm excited about living close enough in to go do things--like the zoo, go on a walk, meet friends at a restaurant, have playdates with my friends' kids, spend time with Charley's family, wander as the mood strikes--that I haven't been able to readily do since moving to Sandy over two years ago. I'm excited to get to start over again, to cull through the pieces of my old-old life--the one I had with Charley--the one I had after he died, and the one I had in Sandy and find a puzzle configuration that works for the life I have now. 

But at the same time, my brain keeps sticking on the irony that the house is only 30 blocks from my old house, the one that Charley and I lived in. It's probably only two or three minutes away. If I still live in this new house when Anna's a teenager, I'll have to drive by my old house every single time I go to her high school (our old house was only a block up from the school). 

When I cooked up this scheme a year ago, I wanted to move back closer in to Portland and I was theoretically okay with living in Milwaukie again--a location that's actually been really hard for me to face in my grief. I love going to places--restaurants, parks, cities--Charley and I went to, can face them without cringing, fear, or cowering...but our house in Milwaukie is the lone place that's been too hard for me to face. Somehow over time it became the Bogeyman of Grief for me. 

For a year or two after I moved, I couldn't even drive close to Milwaukie, but sometime last year it started shifting, started feeling less scary--even okay at times. And as I earnestly started feeling better since last fall, the last phantoms about Milwaukie mostly subsided...I think. But all the same, I never expected to live quite so close to my old house. 

And as I drove on familiar streets with my realtor and later on my own, saw old landmarks that have changed or been updated in the last two years since I last drove by them, part of me felt like I was coming back home. It felt familiar, and safe...but a little weird too. It felt good to know that I'm going back to many of the same exact benefits as I had from my old house, minus the painful parts: no expecting Charley to walk in the back door, no policemen coming to my house and shattering my world, no memories of funerals and open houses and some of the most painful memories of my life smacking me in the face the moment I open a door. 

But.

If I'm moving basically back where I started from, it makes me wonder what any of the last two years was good for, what the point was of moving to Sandy in the first place.

I don't logically give any weight or credence to this small voice. I know it's the illogics of grief, hindsight, and two extra years of knowledge whispering to a vulnerable part of my brain. I don't consciously or truthfully feel that my move to Sandy was a waste...but gosh...that voice needs to shut up.

Then again, a month from now, I'll be so busy unpacking and working out the kinks of My New Life, version 3.0 (or am I up to a much higher number now? I've lost track), that I'm hoping it'll erase the memory of that small voice. 

But if I've learned nothing else these past 3 1/2 years, life--and grief--always evolve. Something always changes, there's always something to have to process and react to, and something new or something confirmed always emerges on the other side....

But thank god--at least I'm already 98 percent packed for this next move! =) Because good lord, I hate moving. 

But decorating a house? Now that part's fun. And fortunately I won't have to spend any money doing it this time. 

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*The race track where Charley had weekly practices and races isn't the one he died at. It's a velodrome--a smaller, oval track for fixed-gear (i.e., no multiple gears, no brakes) bicycles that has angled walls. Charley first started racing at the velodrome in Portland in the summer of 2003--the summer before we got married--after being interested in track racing for quite some time. He'd always been a pretty avid bike rider, but one of his friends from high school raced competitively in college and after, and B's continued participation in bike racing--particularly track racing--perked Charley's interest. He started training with a Beaverton team that had pretty good support for beginning racers in the winter of 2002, but the summer of 2003 was the first time he started racing at the velodrome. And for three summers--as a fiancee, throughout pregnancy, and then with a baby in tow--I spent every Thursday night watching him race at this track, something I enjoyed getting to watch and be a part of. When I think of Charley racing, it's primarily at this velodrome.

He only started competing in road races--in bike races held on surface streets and roads, rather than dedicated, bicycle-only venues--the summer that he died. He'd started commuting by bike to work after we had Anna, a fifteen-mile ride each way, because he hated having to deal with the traffic while driving. To him, it was a win-win: he got to ride his bike regularly (something, needless to say, he loved doing) and it only took him about 10 to 15 minutes longer each way than it did to drive.

It turns out it was a win-lose for me. It was a win because he loved doing it...but it was a lose because it ended up killing him. Because he was actually riding and training (even though it wasn't official training as he commuted) on a regular, daily basis, his endurance, strength, and speed improved quite a bit. And as they improved, he could be more competitive, could actually try to compete for finishing in the front pack of cyclists at races, when in previous years he couldn't. And he was pulling out to sprint for the finish line when he crashed into the pole and died.

I always loved watching him race because it was wonderful to see him enjoy something, even when he didn't do that well at it. And compared to how hard he was on himself as a teenager, in college, when he didn't live up to his impossibly high standards--good lord, he would grumble and get in a bad mood if he played a bad round of golf or had a bad shot--it was fabulous getting to see him do something without castrating himself for not doing all that great at it.

But that being said, it was just as wonderful watching him race as he started improving, as he was more confident in his abilities, as he could actually push to try to finish near the top in some races. I didn't care about the finishes or his placement; I was just so proud of him, in and out. For working so hard, for improving...and for him realizing at the same time that it was just for fun. That it wasn't as important as Anna, as me, as our family and our life. 

It was amazing getting to watch him grow and change over the years. You always hear the basic truth that people don't really change. But after knowing him for 11 years, after knowing him better than anyone else on the planet, after seeing him transition from being a boy to being a man, a father, a husband, he was proof that a person can change. That a person can mature, evolve, shift in small--and big--ways and become an even bigger, more wonderful person.

And as much as I miss him and wish none of this had ever happened, I am glad that I got the gift of knowing him for 11 wonderful years.