At 11 Months...335 Days

At 11 months ... 335 days after ... I am sitting in the living room of my childhood.
It doesn't look the same.  The gold flowered all paper, brown paneling, and green shag carpet have been gone for about 27 years ... the same length of time I have been teaching.  I remember living through Pop doing the remodel himself.  Now, 27 years later, I have worked in spaces in this little brick house and discovered my father's handwriting and other methods of what I have called Fredification.  I would often come in, through the back door where I would immediately see her sitting in her chair.  Usually, she would be crocheting a baby blanket for someone that she most likely knew but then again, maybe my sister or I would snag it for someone having a baby that she would not know.  I would announce that when I get to heaven, Pop and I were going to have a serious conversation about home remodel.  She would laugh and keep crocheting.  

335 days later ... I still walk through that same back door ... there is no MoMo.  Since she left on her journey, there have been similar instances of finding things that have been the victims of MoMofication.  Though, most of that has been in the form of the "As Seen On TV" items that it has sometimes taken a few days, weeks, or months to figure out just exactly what it for.  

335 days later ... the two matching high back Lazy Boy recliners have long been sold. In the days following her leaving, my son and I could simply not handle seeing "the chair."  We moved the two chairs in her walk in closet for about a month and then took them to a resale shop.  Houses that were built in 1876 are very square and because most were built in sections, you can walk a complete circle through the first floor.  We came in the back door and there was "the chair."  We came down the stairs and there was "the chair."  You had to pass "the chair" to get to the front door to get the mail.  You have to pass "the chair" to get to the kitchen.  It didn't matter what direction (which was limited) we came, there was "the chair."  I replaced the rug in the living room within the week because it still just looked like it did that night we found her.  335 days later, I can look at the rug that is currently in the room and know that it will be replaced soon.  More for the reason that since my dog (who is 12, a lab and named Isis - and is also not a terrorist) is no longer able to always hold her bladder and or bowels when I have to pull long nights for Parent-Teacher Conferences because she no longer has her personal butler during the day.  You really cannot teach old dogs new tricks.  It will be replaced with an indoor/outdoor rug.  For the past two weeks, I have been very restless about the arrangement of the furniture in the living room.  While it is for the most part the same furniture as when she was here - minus the two chairs, something just isn't fitting.   

Today on Facebook, the memory that popped up was from a year ago.  A year ago, my son and I went to University of Central Missouri for one of their Choose Red days.  He chose Red that day.  It was exactly a month before she left that pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place to let her know that everything was good and she could go.  

A week ago, I had my first birthday without MoMo.  The card she gave me last year sits on my jewelry box in my bedroom.  It is my forever birthday card from her.

As my year of first are winding down, I find myself in an odd place.  My son is now at college and it is just myself.   Well, it is myself and Isis along with 4 cats inside.  I have Destiny and Lily still along with Gracie, MoMo's cat.  It took Gracie a good month and a half to let me touch her without her hissing at me, which was really not abnormal.  The problem was that she had not had any human contact because MoMo wasn't there.  In March, one of my student's grandmother passed away and had a number of furry creatures.  One that needed a home desperately was Oliver, a yellow and white domestic short hair cat.  I had to take him because he was in the same position that Gracie was, his MoMo had left too.  In July, Harry adopted me in the back yard.  Harry is a gray and black tabby cat that seems be displaced.  So, I have a fifth cat that owns me but hasn't made it inside yet.  So, technically, I am not alone and I am sure that if anyone could over hear the conversations that I have with the any one of the animals would think I was completely off my rocker.  

I am lost.  Lost in a way that I have never been lost.  It isn't dark but there is a sublime (like that for the addition of a little transcendentalism) light.  I walked around today looking at the crafts in the booths at our downtown fall festival and just felt I was wandering aimlessly without any particular direction.  

I am not motivated.  I have yet to work into my school routine daily trips to the gym.  I go to school every day but do not feel the motivation or that it is where I am supposed to be.  I go to bed at night, often at 7:30 on a school night because I simply am done for my day.  

I lack direction.  The only thing that I do know about the path I am traveling is that I am eligible for retirement in July 2021 with full benefits and I will retire.  See one of my previous posts about why I will retire.  Otherwise, I wonder just where I am going and what I am doing.  

I think of ways to make the house my own but not lose the sense of comfort and peace that I felt in October of 2015 when I moved back into my childhood home.  I know that comfort and peace came because of the security that came with my MoMo being here.  My sister recently came to visit.  At one point she made the comment that the house is so much work and that you may not be able to keep up with it alone.  In my heart and mind, leaving this house is not an option.  It is the only place that I feel I belong.  If I didn't have to go to school, the store, where ever, I honestly think I would become completely content to observe this world from the windows of this house or to sit on the patio in the back and listen to the cicadas trying to be louder than the noises of cars that pass by or the voices of people in the neighborhood.  I can sit with my eyes closed and know that this is the only place or thing I am sure about in this world, right now.  

On day 336, tomorrow, I will go to church and assist.  I will look out at the amazing family that I have at the little church on the hill and see MoMo's chair next to her best friend empty.  I will hold back the tears that I have been welling up for 335 days.  I will know that I am loved there.  I will come home and walk in the back door and see her reclined in the chair that is no longer there as if she were asleep.  I will see the paramedics pulling her out of her chair and laying her on the floor and the pop of each metal snap on her duster she was wearing.  I will see them working on her and Thomas helping them.  I will hear the gasp of my sister on the phone when I told her that I could not talk because I was waiting for the ambulance to come because I thought that MoMo was dead.  I will hear the sirens and see the neighbors come out of their front doors.  I will see Pastor Aimee's face when I arrived at the hospital and she met me on the parking lot outside the ER and told me that she was gone.  That has been the one constant in my life since October 23, 2016.  No matter the changes in my life ... that has been the one thing that has not changed.