Sorting through belongings, or refusing to
“My response to his passing, both in the immediate aftermath and in the months that followed, was like a caught breath. To me, grief has come to feel like bewilderment, a kind of “Idunno” shoulder shrug when trying to suss out my emotional responses. The clearest evidence of this flinched stalling has been my reaction to the various home improvement attempts my older sister has made in the house we all shared. I find myself reluctant to indulge in any of the sorting and tidying, the paring down of my father’s effects, that indicate a moving on from him being a physical presence in the space. He doesn’t haunt the home, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t somehow like him to. The indoor domain I want to remain a shrine, a place that would still appear familiar to him were he to inhabit it again. I’ve moved into his old bedroom but resolutely reject the idea of reorienting or discarding his bed or furniture. I reluctantly allowed my sister to erect a shoe rack and set it against a wall.”
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