I have adulted my way through a fraught week or 10 days.
And I have come out the other end smiling. Laughing, in fact.
It probably disguises the buckets and buckets of tears I have cried, and the crippling loneliness I was struck down with along the way.
I think I need to write a whole other blog post on the lonely thing. It’s a weird thing that can be completely consuming at the minute.
But on the whole, I’m taking the navigation of it and coming out the other end as a win.
Our rambling weeks of wonders began as we negotiated Father’s Day.
I really hadn’t put enough thought into that this year. Thank goodness other people had.
On the Thursday before, a girlfriend appeared in my driveway with bags of groceries - all the supplies required for a Father’s Day breakfast of bacon and egg muffins with hashbrowns, hot chocolates with marshmallows, and a magazine for me to take 20 minutes out and read.
On the Friday evening, a delivery arrived of a Father’s Day box of chocolate goodies delivered with such love and smiles.
When the day arrived on Sunday I had managed to get together gifts of ‘socks and jocks’ for the kids - it was Father’s Day after all - and we all sat up in bed and had hot chocolates before a late breakfast.
Then we felt the need to fill in the day. It was a glorious sunny day and so we took Pete’s much cherished golf clubs and used them in a way he would absolutely not approve of by swinging, hacking, chopping, tantruming, yelling, laughing ... and doing lots of searching for balls ... as part of a 3 hour, four hole session.
We concluded the day with one of Pete’s favourite meals - chicken schnitzel, chips and pepper sauce.
And we had completed the day.
Tick.
It was as good as could have hoped and it wasn’t horrific. So I think I’ll call that a win.
Then in what could be a rash move, and thanks to some discussions with my own father on Father’s Day, we went and looked at a house to buy on Monday.
We had looked at this house back in January.
But the planets hadn’t aligned then, for many reasons, not the least of which was that we knew we wanted a house but were still waiting for Pete’s estate to settle and we were still raw from surviving one whole year without Pete...
And for other reasons, this house came back on the market recently and this time, the planets did align.
Less than 24hrs after we looked at the house we had an agreement on a price.
It took nearly a week to sign the contracts and the whole time until I had signed on the line I wasn’t really whole heartedly ready to believe it was happening.
But my brain clearly did - it went into emotional meltdown overdrive when the agent rang me to say we had successfully negotiated a sale.
She rang and I took the call and tried so hard to hold back the tears. I failed. And one of my children found me sobbing in the car following the call.
After pulling myself together for a call home I absolutely and totally and completely lost it.
Proper whole body sobbing about how awesome it was we had bought a house, and how sad I was that Pete would not live in it and the whole reason we can buy it is because he is dead, but it was was fulfilling one of our goals for our family - without him - and it would give stability to our family having been so unstable, but the reason we were so rudderless and unstable was as glaring as ever...
Oh I cried hard.
Then my phone rang. And I figured the person on the other end would probably be ok if I wasn’t 100% ok.
What I didn’t realise was, that when I started talking out loud about all of the feelings, how unstuck I would become again... and then almost instantly flip to the benefits of what we had done and how amazingly excited the kids were...
And so the conversation went ... lurching between devastation to laughing highs ... within sentences.
But it was an extraordinary sequence of thought processes as I meandered around and through and in between all the positives and negatives and realities and I basically just spoke whatever thought popped into my head and blurted it out to someone on the end of the phone.
I’m pretty sure that friend won’t ring unannounced again! It would have been pretty traumatic to be on the other end listening to me.
My brain... it’s a crazy space when it’s consumed with emotion.
The night before it had even seen fit to swear at my mother, who was trying to reason with me that I was making the right decision and Pete would have wanted this and all of those things she is meant to say when I was getting upset about the pros and cons of it all.
All I could do was snap back through blubbering tears ‘I know that Mum!! But it doesn’t make it any fucking easier ...’
Clearly being an adult doesn’t mean you always have to act like one.
And so signing has happened.
I have popped champagne - badly!
Anyone would think with the amount I drink I’d be better at it this...
We have been overwhelmed with the support from people - their excitement and tears of joy for us have been infectious.
And I have so struggled with my emotions around it all.
I know it’s a new beginning for us.
I know its what Pete would have wanted for us.
I know that having the security of a house of our own will do wonders for the kids.
I know providing that stability of an ‘our own house‘ is what they need.
I know that I have not ever seen my children so happy as when I told them we had got the house and I had signed the contract and it really was ours.
And that makes me happy.
But I also know Pete will never live in it with us.
That we will leave behind a house with so many memories in it of him.
That he will never get to hold court in a kitchen he would have loved to wield a spatula or carving knife in.
That I will move into bedroom that will never have him snoring in, a wardrobe that will never have his clothes in, an en-suite that will never have his razor or toothbrush on the sink.
And that makes me so sad.
So when I had sad tears from a child when we
were talking about buying a house seriously that it would be sad that Daddy wouldn’t be in it, and we would leave him behind in our current house, I have never been so happy that we cremated him.
Because I could say: No Darling, he comes with us. In his box on the mantlepiece, in the pictures, in the chest of drawers that has all the clothes and things we are keeping. Daddy is coming with us.
In fact, Pete will be the easiest one to move!
I’ve sorted all his clothes and belongings... it’s the rest of us with clothes that don’t fit, odd shoes, old school projects, and the myriad of other ‘stuff’ that has accumulated in this house over the last 6 years that is going to be the hard bit.
I mean, how can anyone possibly ask me to choose which shoes to keep and which ones to toss ... ??
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