Cogitatin’ and Cleanin’
April 5, 2008, 11:30 a.m.
When you can’t sleep, and you’ve said all you can say, should you go back to bed? Or sit still and cogitate? I tried both this morning. Neither worked. Nor did my usual escape routes of visualizations, nor any of my meditative-transference practices. So, I cleaned the house. It didn’t stop me from thinking, it just kept me moving. Two things were accomplished. My house is cleaner (a very good thing), and I kept moving. I wanted to start packing things, throwing stuff away, but that was a little too much – so I moved some furniture, rearranged one kitchen cabinet, cleaned out the refrigerator, and I’m still doing laundry. Just to keep moving.
April 5, 2008, 8:30 p.m.
And, soon after, I stopped moving. I’ve been looking at the couch we brought home from Dave’s mom’s house last weekend, for seven days now. I think I’ve sat there all of ten minutes throughout the week. I’d been complaining about not having a couch for over a year.
Once I stopped my cleaning episode (I’m not prone to massive housecleaning all in one day), the couch suddenly looked very important in our living room. Could have something to do with my having moved some of the other furniture into Lea’s old bedroom, and the overall sweep of the entire downstairs. The couch looked like it belonged, at last.
Okay, it’s not a couch I would buy, being Early American and upholstered in 1970′s orange wide-wale corduroy, but dang, it’s comfortable…by way of being well-made. I keep hearing the colors from the 70′s are coming back. Ya know, I hope not. I didn’t like them then, and I don’t like them now. However, as I was lying prone in the aftermath of two sobbingly-sad movies, on the phone with Lea, I noticed that most of the paintings in our living room actually complement this huge splash of orange. By the time we move (it’s a plan, we gotta get out of Petaluma – driving across the River two to four times each day is much like packing – just too much), maybe the part of me that cares about things like my environment, will have returned, and we can plan our living space as something comfortable, colors and all.
The couch belonged to Dave’s grandmother first, then when she passed away, his mom took it home with her. Now, that it’s at our house, we realize, you just can’t get rid of quality furniture. All that “thrifty” stuff we bought over the years, all the garage sale bookshelves and dressers, eventually ended up in our own yard sales. We’ve had some nice pieces over the years from the periods when we cared enough to get up early for estate sales. When we moved back to California from Washington, most of it went to new homes, even the good stuff.
All this is just a convenient way to avoid talking about how horrible my early morning hours were. Awake at 5:00 a.m., visions of what happened to Owen, and the ensuing panic because I’m not all-powerful and can’t turn back the calendar. No amount of cogitatin’ and cleanin’ will work that one out.
When Nat was little, he loved the movie “The Neverending Story”, and as big brothers do, he shared it with Owen before he could even understand it. They watched it over and over – for years. Both of them became avid readers, and it’s easy to see the influences, not just in our family, but also from movies like this one. Our neverending story is not nearly as sweet, especially on these early morning trips into the black pit of grief. The sweetness eventually intervenes, and I get to that place where I can remember our lives together, and how much we all learned from one another. That’s sweet.
My 7:30 a.m. phone call with Lea, and simply-hard physical labor put me back in my body this morning. Thanks, Lea Kel.
Song for the night: Movie score from The Neverending Story, Klaus Doldinger and Giorgio Moroder.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=22_RP21pA0Y
I can relate to what I call the “cleaning frenzy.” Sometimes when I can’t face something, I end up just cleaning for hours. It seems to help somehow. I don’t know…like I need to order something in my life and all I can manage is the cupboards. That reminds me. The first thing I did after eating when I returned home from Peru is reorganize the kitchen pantry. Strange.
And here I thought I was the only one who vacuums (sp?) and organizes tupperware drawers and does laundry and washes dishes and cleans house in the middle of the night to avoid sleep…and that urgent need to move, move, move. In fact, that’s what I’ve been doing since 3:30 this morning. Because, let’s face it, sleep is a painful thing for me, and for anyone who has survived a tragic, traumatic event(s). Nothing quite like waking up in a panic, remembering, remembering.
I can also relate to the hand-me-down furniture. I’m pretty sure I have three pieces of furniture in my entire house that didn’t come from Grandma and Grandpa’s house, before Grandpa died and Grandma moved to the nursing home. Comforting in some ways, disturbing in others.
I have Grandpa’s easy-chair that he used to sit in all the time, as well as Grandma’s pink fabric-covered rocker that she left only once she needed a lift-chair. For some reason now I have to sit on a hand-me-down couch from a friend of mine and can sit for hours on end, glancing over at these pieces of furniture and thinking, remembering, almost seeing them there…and thinking about how I can’t sit in them, but I can’t get rid of them either.
Sleep and sweet dreams to you.
Rose