I am actually a very tidy person. I cannot stand clutter and I tend to put things away. When I moved in with my roommate ARD in 2004 I warned her of that and told her "if you don't get mad at me for moving your shoes: I won't get mad for moving them." It worked with her. It was a subject of many arguments with Jeff, LOL. Jeff was not tidy.
However, I have always had a few areas of shame, where I am not tidy: my basement, the garage, and my office.
The basement suffers from the accumulation of all things I cannot find a place for in other areas of the house. It also collects the things that I am considering giving away. Only, with my minor hoarding tendencies it takes me 3 to 5 years to actually get rid of the things I piled up in the basement to "get rid of". It was worse with Jeff. Jeff had MAJOR hoarding tendencies so those things I was ready to get rid of... didn't go for 10 years. It's a process with me: I filter and move stuff from my house to collect in the basement and then finally when the basement is overloaded I realize I haven't used the junk in 5 years and get rid of it.
The garage was all Jeff, actually. Before our current home I never had a garage and it really was his "man space" but Jeff being Jeff never put anything away. It was a hassle for my father in law JPB who would spend hours putting stuff away whenever he came to work on a project with Jeff only to turn around and find the garage a mess 2 weeks later. I was capable of ignoring the garage and only harbored minor resentment for the days I had to help Jeff organize it (and not because I was helping but because I knew it was as futile as Sisyphus and his rock). Last August my father in law and Jeff's best friends BT and KK came to clean out the garage for me and I was able to park my car in the garage for the first time in the 7 years I owned my house! Since then, I have still managed to keep the car in the garage, but the kids toys were taking over the periphery.
I managed to get both these areas tidied up in the past few months and then found some motivation for tackling my office. I hate to file, both at work and at home and I usually wait until some extraneous event (like taxes) forces me to actually sort my papers and put them away. I hadn't done my filing in about 15 months and it was overwhelming. I also piled all my pictures, scrapbooks, and memorabilia up in the office in a great big pile that was threatening to fall over. I couldn't face the pile for fear of running into memories of Jeff so the pile kept growing. New photo's of the kids and myself getting lost in the mix as I just couldn't bear to sort through it.
I bucked up and did it this weekend and I found a treasure: the picture above. It is one of my favorite pictures of Jeff and it always makes me smile. It reminds me that Jeff was fun-loving and enjoyed being silly, it reminds me of all his best qualities. I had a few difficult moments as I sorted but I also was happy to find pictures of the boys, memories of the good years, and even a few questionable images of some of Jeff's fraternity brothers.
I only sorted the pile, but I'm thinking I might be ready to actually do something meaningful with all these imagery's of Jeff. Create some scrapbooks and albums that the boys and I can look through to keep his spirit alive.
I am thankful I did not continue to ignore this pile or else I would never have found this treasure.
Sincerely,
Jeff's Wife
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