Choices, decisions and red velvet dresses....

De-junking.

It sucks.

It's hard work.

It's dirty work and....
I hate doing it.

So many little things build up, pile up and otherwise clutter up the shelves of our homes and our lives....

Today, I found a red velvet dress that my mother had made for my oldest daughter when she was only six or seven years old. The dress is a mostly frayed and tattered now.

I know that I should throw it away. The dress isn't salvageable and this strikes me as rather sad because it reminds me that in the end, our relationship as mother and daughter never proved salvageable either.

My mother died earlier this year. Because we were at odds most of my life, I sometimes feel that the finality of her death has stolen something from me. The possibility of reconciliation is gone now...cold...dead... and moldering in some Georgia grave along with my mother's ashes.

So, when I found my daughter's velvet dress with it's fraying seams, all worn and ready for the garbage, I couldn't bring myself to toss it away in the dump pile.

I've decided that I'm going to save the fabric.

Why?

I don't know. Perhaps, even in the face of my mother's death, I'm just not ready to let go.

And so, I sit here...a little bewildered by all of the boxes of junk around me, and just a little surprised that all these months later I feel as if I've once again been pimp slapped by grief, and loss, and by the finality of death itself.

I hate it.

I hate it and I fight it so because in spite of the all unkind words and hateful actions that were exchanged between my mother and myself, I still loved my mother.

Part of me hates myself for loving her...

and...

part of me is grateful that I did.

In this moment, I choose to cling to that grateful piece, just like I chose not to throw away the red velvet dress that my mother made all those years ago....

These are good choices I think, or at least they are ones that I can live with until the next de-junking day rolls back around.

There. I'm done. It's time for a coffee and a pecan sandy.

Two perfect endings to one productive day!