a vacant room

I have to admit it's a relief to have Leola gone. Still I miss her. In a way, it seems like she died rather than moved to foster care. Her room still has furniture in it and lots of her clothes still hang in the closet and are stuffed in drawers. Boxes of her things are still here, but she is not. There is a sadness in our house that feels similar to death, but yet it isn't.

I remember when my mother died 3 years ago and I had to leave my brother's house in Birmingham, AL (where she had lived with him) to go back to my life in Oregon. She died on a Sunday, just hours after I had arrived on a seemingly endless flight from Portland to Atlanta to Birmingham. I like to think she was waiting for me. During the next few days my brothers and I took care of arrangements for cremation, cleared out her clothes, boxed up her stuff, laughed and cried when we went through old photos. It was a healing time for the four of us. The funeral was to be much later at Arlington Cemetery in Washington where our father was buried. I'll never forget the day I had to leave to come back to Oregon and the feeling of pervasive sadness in Patrick's house. How difficult it must have been for him to say goodbye to us that day and be left in the house with her empty room, seeing it day after day. I don't think I've ever missed anyone as much as I missed my brothers in the days after I returned.

I avoid going downstairs where her room is because it seems ghost-like. Yet I know we are going to have to deal with all this stuff of hers sometime. Even if she can't stay at the foster care home and needs to move somewhere else, she won't have room for all of her clothes. I thought we might trade them out from time-to-time, to give her something "new" to wear while we dry clean some of the sweaters. She loves her clothes. I hate it that she can't have them all with her.