Letting Go

My last post was about haunting and how difficult it can be to let go of those we love. Although I am still experiencing the anniversary of Jez's death my more immediate problems just do not go away and I find myself having to let go of more stuff.
Despite still haggling over this and that and worrying over the usual hitches of any house buying and selling, this was the weekend I chose to clear out my stuff. I am downsizing quite spectacularly from a four bedroom/four bathroom house to a small two bedroom barn conversion. I am using the excitement of my beautiful new bijoux residence to get over leaving behind this house. It isn't that I love the house really, in fact I never really wanted it. My ex-husband fell in love with the place and I could see a future where we could really build a life together. We moved in at this time of year 4 years ago. It was at it's best, with a garden lush and green, trees full of apple blossom, and bluebells everywhere. This morning I stepped onto the verandah and smelled the warm lilac as soon as I opened the patio door. It is a sickly, sweet perfume that forever reminds me of the opening of Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray. As beautiful as it was to move in at this time of year; it has made it even harder to leave.
I had hoped to leave in winter with the grey dark nights, the isolation where after 5pm dark falls and it feels like no one else exists. I have struggled to carry in logs and sticks and clean out fires. I also struggled to afford to keep the oil central heating running by myself. It is dirty up here in the winter, cold and muddy and unwelcoming. Yet, as soon as spring arrives you forget all that and enjoy having the doors open in the evenings, the smells of the outdoors, watching bats as twilight approaches and the woodpeckers on the lawn teaching their offspring to find ants.

A skip came on Friday morning and I started to fill it slowly with help from family, we cleared the attic cupboards, the potting shed and Dad cleared the garage as only Dad could. It felt good and cathartic. I was setting up a yard sale, but rain forced us inside. I couldn't believe the amount of stuff I had and good stuff too. We filled the dining room and living room, then branched into the garage with larger furniture and people started to arrive. There was excitement at making some money - I had set the aim of making enough for a rug for the living room and paying to have some posters framed for the new house. So I went into the day thinking about those things and seemed to be okay with it. As friends wrapped people's purchases and I kept taking the money it felt good.
As the day moved on though it felt strange. I didn't mind letting go of stuff, because after all they're only things. Others who came in and seemed more upset at what I was letting go of than I did.
Stuff is just that though; stuff. Books are just books, although sometimes it might seem like they contain your friends, they don't. My real friends were living, breathing people in the here and now cooking sausages and making a jug of Pimms. Ornaments and china are not testament to a life. The life you have is measured by your friends and the people you have influenced and left an impression on. For me this is an even more difficult lesson because I can't have children so I don't have actual mini-me's running around continuing my DNA. Those that remember me, will have to remember me for other reasons; maybe I taught them something, or made them laugh or helped them understand their life in some way.
I have gone through a lot of loss in life, so am constantly learning to let go of stuff. The last six months has been worse than most. My marriage broke down in September, the same weekend my friend Kathryn died, then the divorce and house sale process started and at Christmas my cat died. Its such a huge list its almost comical. Now, as I hopefully near the end of the house sale and get my decree nisi, I am facing a different loss. I walked round my orchard last night in the early evening and was sad at the loss of hopes. We had walked round this orchard just before we got married and talked about what we wanted to do here. Probably a rather naïve view of making jam, growing vegetables, having chickens and doing up the house. The jam making happened and I grew a few vegetables but that dream of working together here as a team never happened. This was my responsibility, the place where I fell in love with an idea of what I thought my marriage would be like. Perhaps, if I'm really honest, I didn't fall in love with the real person there with me, but the person we discussed as we bought this house. I expected too much, that just by loving and marrying someone, they would want to change - to enjoy things they'd never really enjoyed before or that they would learn to love the things about me they didn't understand such as my experience of loss or my illness. I experienced sadness for both of us and that shared future that never happened and became something so entirely different we couldn't bear to live in it anymore.
Letting go off the stuff is easy. It is letting go of the dream that is hard. Also now, I have to face new starts. A new home and new neighbours. New traditions and making new friends. So I am letting go, even though I'm scared. I have to learn to love people as they are, not how they might be some day. Some days I feel there are so many things I have done wrong in life I find it hard to trust myself. So I inch forward slowly, letting go of what I don't need, hanging on for dear life to those who make me happy and embracing all the new things life throws at me. Wish me luck.