Oh moving... it’s bad and hard at the best of times.
We seemed to move a lot in the last 20 years within towns and around states. In the years Pete and I were together I moved 10 times.
You’d think with that kind of experience I’d be better at it, or less challenged by it, or not accumulate so much ‘stuff’ because I know what it’s like to need to pack it...
But, no. No, I am not.
Over the years there have been different types of accumulation. Physical things that were of a time in our lives that the last time we moved we felt it wasn’t time to throw it out - surely it would be useful again, or once we stopped renting and bought a house we would unbox the ‘good things’ and use them, how could we possibly throw out that thing from that time, or the present from that person, or all those special things my Mother has kept from my childhood?
But now ... now this is a move the requires me to really sort through what I need and don’t need.
This is a move that is such a defining one in our lives.
This is one that so clearly marks a life with Pete and one without him.
There was also the small matter of recently discovering rats in our shed and a fear I had they were destroying things that I held dear, even though they were in a box that had remained unopened for some time, years even... ok, in some cases, a decade!
I’d been given some sense of hard this was going to be when the purging had begun in my kitchen last week.
I had been cavalier in my approach to this day - it’s just stuff, I figured. I could do this. Surely sorting paperwork or recipe books wouldn’t be hard? It’s just things.
Oh how wrong I was!
And perhaps most frustrating for me personally was how much I had mis-interpreted how hard it was going to be when I considered the things I was sorting to be so unemotional.
As someone wryly pointed out: Only you could think you would be unemotional about it.
But I honestly thought I could!
So shed sorting - where I knew there to be so many memories and special things I had prepared for.
Again, someone suggested I shouldn’t do it alone. But for this job... at least for the start of it... I needed to do it alone.
To open the boxes and relive the memories, to smile at them, to shake my head at them, to scoff at them... to cry at them.
Also to be completely revolted by the state of them as I discovered dust and rodents in places they shouldn’t have been because the things were impacted were actually so special.
I squealed like a child when I found a nest with multiple rodents in it - they jumped at me and I squealed and the kids came running - I rang someone and said: I need a man... there’s rat in a box and I don’t want to deal with it in a pathetic whiney voice like a hopeless damsel in distress ... that was my last straw with capably dealing with things.
With everything else I was trying to deal with ... physically dealing with rats - nope!
I found things I had forgotten about; couldn’t work out why we had kept; couldn’t work out why we hadn’t been using...
I found things that will mean nothing to anyone else except me.
I found things that meant nothing to anyone except Pete and I.
I found things I couldn’t believe I had kept but was so glad I had.
I discovered we have WAY too many books (I didn’t think there was such an affliction!) and way, way too many CDs.
I realised we had boxes put together at the end of previous packing exercises that were clearly ‘just shove it in a box and we’ll sort it out when we get there’ and simply never had... some of the greatest treasurers were found in those!
I found pictures I had forgotten about and pictures I knew I had but had searched so unsuccessfully for last January to include in Pete’s service.
I threw out a LOT.
I kept a lot.
I made rash and rational and irrational decisions about things I had kept out of obligation for so many years - gifts people had given us, or things we had paid a lot of money for that we felt we should keep even though they never fitted into our lives, tastes, or worked the way they should have.
At one point I found myself sitting on the ground reading through my school magazines and Merino field day booklets from decades ago that just instantly transported me back to that time.
And at the end of the day I had WAY bigger piles of stuff to keep than I had imagined I would, stuff that remained unsorted, a trailer that was partially filled with things I was tossing, children who tried to help and instead spent a lot of time saying things like: Oh, I remember this!! and climbed on the trailer rather than boxing or putting into vermin-proof tubs the things I was keeping.
And while it wasn’t finished, it was started (I’m actually really good at doing that - starting jobs and not finishing them ... the ‘just shove it in a box‘ unsorted boxes are evidence of it...)
It was super hard, but also, so nice.
Because as someone who was the recipient of many a ‘omg look who I found!’ messages during the day pointed out: what wonderful memories of a great life you have made for yourself.
It is true. For as much as I struggled looking through the boxes or sorting the things or being equally revolted and frustrated that we hadn’t checked whether our things were either rodent or weather-proof when we put them in the shed nearly 6 years ago... it really WAS a wander through my life.
It was a reminder, difficult as it might have been in some cases, of the people and the places and experiences and the fun and challenges and highlights of Pete and my life together for the last 20 years, and of my life in the 20 years prior to Pete coming into it.
The whole thing has reminded me once again how lucky I was to have had the life I did and make the family I did with Pete.
It hurts so much that I and we and all of our friends and family won’t ever have that again.
It was such a marker that our life with Pete is over.
But shit we had some fun when we did have him.
And if I ever forget - I have boxes full of hats and stubby holders to remind me because in all
of our moves, those there the things he never EVER let anyone throw out.
I have absolutely zero use for them all now. But they are absolutely moving with us.
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