Justice for R and F

This one is about my house, I suppose. 

It’s been on my mind lately while I muster up the bare minimum energy to take care of it, because it is very tenuously the only thing I have left. 

I’m not so much worried about the interior anymore. It’s mostly a ghost town. Half of the rooms go untouched.

There’s a lot to probably fix inside, but over half is a time capsule of when my babies were here and I cannot bring myself to touch it. 

65% of the upstairs has a film of dust over it, blanketed over floors, beds, toys. I can’t bring myself to touch it. 

Ro, you left a candy bar hidden under your pillow and I found it a few weeks after you were taken, when I was still under the belief I’d have you back soon so I put it in a Ziploc and I left it where it was. I didn’t want you to think I was mad at you for it, so I left it there. It’s still there. 

Your bed is still covered with all of your stuffed animals, your life size lion and your chicken nugget pillows, your soft blankets and your shark pajamas. I don’t touch that stuff anymore.

I used to go in and fold it and refold it. Every day. Felt like I was still taking care of you. I haven’t gone in there in a while now. When I go in I don’t leave for hours. I crawl under your loft bed in your little space and I curl up with a stuffed animal and cry myself to sleep, and Ive done that for over 600 days in various locations throughout my shrinking world, but being in your room makes it worse. 

I can still barely hear your laughter bouncing off the walls during the day, your inquisitive line of questioning to prolong bedtime in the evenings. Sometimes I still hear your footsteps coming down the hall at night, to jump into my bed. I wake up and you’re not there, and it flattens my heart. 

So I don’t clean in there. It’s pristine. So is Frey’s room, but it’s been pristine since she was born. 

Freya, you never even got to see your room in any sort of self aware capacity. I spent months and months painting it and finding every little trinket and token of love I could for that room. 

There’s a fine layer of dust on that as well. The table with the book I used to read you untouched, haunted by grief. 

The playroom is mostly empty except for the five hundred pounds of Legos we bought you, Ro. 

The play house was sold, when I was rounding up anything and everything I could to pay the lawyers trying to save our lives. You could barely fit in it anyways. It was full of squishmallows to the tippy top, and pulling them all out knowing you put them in there was so very painful. 

The closet in there is ransacked from when I was allowed to send you things. So many art supply care packages and craft kits. I know I need to go through it. 

I’m sure most of the paint in there has dried up now.

The entire hallway leading to those three rooms has a layer of dust on it. I leave the playroom open a bit, and the sun streams in sometimes. I see it when I walk downstairs, when the light hits all of that dust. When the air intake kicks on and I see a cloud of past messes and memories. 

The house is all I have left. They tried to sabotage our finances and take it from us but we’re still hanging on. Its a hard thing, though. I bought this house for you, my babies. Being in it is torture but it’s all I have left of you. 

Sometimes when I get bold and have any modicum of energy I clean something or try to be productive and I find things you’ve tucked away. A hot wheels car in the couch, a squishy ball under a dresser. 

I don’t really clean anymore, because finding those things kills me another bit, another chunk gone. 

Your cabinet full of dishes and fridge magnets and party supplies in the kitchen untouched. Your drawings still on the fridge. How can I clean those up? I leave it all. 

When we had to replace the fridge it took me three days to prepare for them to come get the old one because there was a smudgy little handprint on the bottom of ours. God, how I miss that smudgy little handprint. 

It smelled like chocolate. I can still smell it. 

On the surface I try to keep things tidy but half of the days, I can barely get out of bed. I do what I can and it gets less as time goes by. I wonder if grief can just eventually shut you down. It really feels like it is.