Dirty Socks and Mountain Dew

I got brave today.  It's the five week anniversary of her passing, and in a moment of grief I went into the girls' room.  I haven't moved anything in their since it happened.  Khaily sometimes goes in there, but she doesn't do it very often.  I took down the pack n play a few days after, because the shadows at night made it look like she was there...and that was just too much.  She had a toddler bed that she slept in for a looong time, but around August for some reason she just wouldn't stay in bed at night.  There are two doors into her room, so we tried locking the main door (knowing we could still get in through the door that adjoined our room to their room,) that didn't work, we tried standing outside her door and just holding the handle, she was strong as an ox for a one year old, so she quickly figured out that it was just us and that didn't work, so we brought the pack n play back out and that's where she slept for the last couple months.  Anyway, I went into their room, sat where her pack n play once was and cried.  I laid on her bed and cried, the turquoise sheet still stained with juice or whatever she had spilled on it...a ball and an empty mountain dew bottle hidden underneath...found some of my missing Tupperware hidden in the room too (she had always had a thing with getting into the drawers in the kitchen, always after my bowls and measuring cups.)  A shoe in the corner, balloons, a burp rag...all little reminders that she was here.  I looked around and thought to myself, "Ya know what mama, if she was still here you would never have allowed this room to stay this messy for this long..." So I cleaned it.  Just as I would have if she were here.  I put the stuffed animals on her bed, picked up the dirty clothes, straightened up...and found a dirty sock.  Not something that would normally open the floodgates, but my sister has been doing my laundry for me, and if I'm not mistaken it is the last thing of hers left unwashed...the dirt on the bottom proof that she was here...that she ran through the house, that she climbed on the furniture, that she lived.  After I cleaned, I looked around, and I remembered something my sister told me a couple weeks ago.  She told me that she didn't die all at once.  That it would be slowly over time.  The smells would fade off of her blankets, we'd start boxing things up...and that hit hard today.  Their room is clean.  Her last mess is gone.  Another piece of her.  I'm so afraid of the day when she really is just a memory.  The day when all physical evidence (other than pictures of course) is packed away.  I will never be ready to say goodbye, it's been too short of a time since I said hello.  Her clothes are mostly put up...I still have a few boxes from our last move that have her newborn clothes and stuff to go through, but all her recent clothes are packed up, the pack n play is down, her room is clean, her diapers have been given away, her carseat isn't in the car, I wiped down her high chair without thinking a couple weeks ago...it's still in the kitchen, but the mess is gone, she really is disappearing one tiny thing at a time. I'm not ready.  I will never.be.ready.