My husband of thirty-four years died in March, 2009. The first two years are a blur for reasons related to grief and a cancer fight of my own. By then, I had something called "complicated grief" -- which simply means that I wasn't engaged in a grief process. I was stuck. But with the help of a grief group called "Soul Survivor" and anti-depressants, I was beginning to accept the fact of Ted's death after three years. The next two years were spent trying to link the structures of my life back together again....I was the same bits and pieces of my life, but without my previous life to give form or function to my days. Another way to describe it would be an identity crisis and spiritual crisis happening at the same time. Ted and I were married when I was nineteen, so I didn't know how to live as a person who wasn't part of a married couple.
One of the issues I finally figured out was that I couldn't keep up with life on acreage in rural Arlington, Washington, with a total of about 2,200 square feet of stuff that I simultaneously loved and hated. In work I was doing with a therapist, I ultimately realized it was all too big and needy. Too many things, memories, dust collectors. My entire physical footprint, if you will, was like a huge chain around my ankles, time, neck, wallet and soul.
I needed to downsize.
I let go of roughly 70% of my objects. Art. Furniture. Books. Music. Clothes. Photos. Souvenirs. Equipment. Tools. Collections. I sold my home and bought a small, 920 square foot home in a residential area of Edmonds, Washington. It was centrally located to all my kids and grandkids. It was near water, walking trails and shopping. I could "age in place" there; meaning, it was one level and the space could be modified if I live to be in the hundreds and need a walker. It's not too much. It's also enough -- two very different concepts.
There is an article I want to share about downsizing that helped me not plop myself into my new, smaller, enough-ish house, and lock the door behind me. Because, after I downsized, I also wanted to withdraw from the world and be alone. I fight this urge every day. It's probably connected to the guilt that most widows feel about continuing without the love of our life. We want to be dead...and if that isn't happening, we want to act dead to the world. My advice is to fight that tug, and get help when you need it from therapists, friends, family, writing, traveling -- anything that you enjoy and want to do that will make you be in the world in a balanced way. I've been able to figure out how to take Ted with me, and I hope you can do the same with your dear one who has died.
Enjoy the article. It helped me look at downsizing versus withdrawal from life, and where I am at today...seven years into it.
http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/the-best-life/2012/05/01/10-ways-older-people-withdraw-from-life
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