Not ready
It’s mid-December. Tommy’s been gone over 6 months now. I haven’t listened to any Christmas music. We put up a tree but with lights only. It feels like I’m easing myself into the holidays. Steve and I are traveling on Christmas Day. It seems like the most un-Christmas way to spend the day, but I struggle with the fact that I’m trying to avoid Christmas while I still have Peter here.
I’m not mentally ready for Christmas, or this holiday season, even though we’re almost through it. I’m not ready to have a Christmas without Tommy here. I’m not ready to have a Christmas that feels so unsettled. I hate that emotionally depleted right now. I wonder how many years it will take to feel a little less sad.
I haven’t yet deleted Tommy’s profile from my Netflix account. Every time I turn it on, I’m sad to see his name there, but I’m not ready for it not to be there yet.
I haven’t removed him from our family text chat. I’m not ready to not see him as a physical part of that chat. While seeing his name there constantly breaks my heart a little more, not seeing him there feels too real. Too painful.
I still have his phone. I bought it for him just two weeks before he died so it’s brand new. No cracks, no scratches. He was hard on things, so it wouldn’t have been unusual for it already to have been broken. It’s turned off and the phone number has been disconnected, but while it’s a brand new phone and I’m still paying for it, I’m just not ready to not have it, somehow waiting for him. If I wipe it clear, I’ll no longer have access to his instagram, or anything else that he had on that phone, even though there’s not much since it was so new. I still have his older phone, which is full of data, but I think it’s unretrievable and I am not sure it would be good for me to have access to all of that information that must be on there. It would be too painful.
I have no idea what the login is for his facebook account. I was able to change his passwords to his email so I still have access to it. It just doesn’t even matter, but I’m just not ready to have these ways of keeping him close be gone.
While I was skiing the other day, I saw someone with the same overalls that I had bought for Tommy in the last 2 years. I still have them. No one will ever wear them, but I just wasn’t ready to give them up.
This is a theme in my life now… I’m just not ready.
Photo above was taken in Idaho, February 2010
