10. Stuff

“Each death leaves a hole in someone – you left a hole in me.  There is no going back to that other person, that other place.  This thing, this stranger, she is all you are now.” 

~The Brave One

One of my favorite books of all time, The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, suggests in the title that people are very much defined by what they choose to take with them as they go.  When Jon died, I was left with two people's worth of stuff, a heart full of sorrow, and no idea about how to even begin sifting through the things and the legacy my husband left behind.  Over the past 5 years, I've moved 6 times with the Army, and each move has proved equally if not more difficult as I find myself wondering every time what to keep and what to discard, if anything.  It seems ridiculous to require a big, expensive house in order to accommodate all of our stuff, but there is no price tag you can possibly place on certain items, like the cards he wrote me on birthdays and holidays and the photo albums and scrap books I created for him while we were separated by deployments and training exercises.  His clothes, his DVD collection, his toiletries, his electronic toys, his Army gear...every single item carries some private meaning and some deep significance.  "Get rid of it," some people would say.  "Lock it up somewhere that you can come back to it but where you don't have to see it all the time," said others.  One of my peers, a fellow Army co-worker, once referred to me as "emotionally unstable" and "crazy" because I refused to part with certain sentimental items; he suggested that having pictures or reminders of Jon in every room of my house was kind of creepy and might scare other people away.  Um, hello?  If pictures of my beloved husband offend or "scare" anyone, those people do not deserve to be in my life in the first place!!

My therapists over the last few years have often asked about the ways I've coped with Jon's loss on a day-to-day basis, and I've joked about how, as a result of all of my retail therapy, I now own 150 pairs of entirely unnecessary shoes.  Honestly, who really needs 5 pairs of almost identical black leather boots?  I've filled my house with beautiful decor and scoured the stores for hours at a time to find the perfect accessory to fit an empty wall or accent a piece of furniture.  I think I've thought that I could somehow fill my life with pretty things to ignore the gaping void that my husband's absence has left behind...but as I've now discovered, once I finish my shopping spree or interior decorating project, I'm left with an awful, crushing sense of disappointment.  What's the point of all the pretty shoes or dresses or furniture or accessories in the world if Jon isn't here to share them with me?  Sometimes I look around the room at the end of the day and think for a few moments about how much Jon would probably have loved what I've done with the place.  The next second, I turn on the TV or pick up the phone so that I'm not left with the silence that hangs over my beautiful - but empty - life and home.  


The memorial projects seem to help relieve the loneliness for a little while, but they too can sometimes serve as a painful reminder of what exists only in my memory.  For almost four years, I continued to maintain Jon's Facebook account until one day I received a message from one of his high school classmates.  I guess she hadn't heard about what had happened via alumni publications and sent a casual message asking Jon how he was doing.  Having to tell her on Facebook that I, as Jon's wife, maintained the page in his memory and that Jon had passed away 4 years ago in Iraq broke my heart.  After this experience, I changed the name on the page to "Remembering Jonathan Grassbaugh" in order to make it clear to everyone that it is, in fact, commemorative rather than an active account.  I've also collected and reorganized pictures, letters, and emails about Jon a million times over the past 5 years...and there are still some pictures and letters that I cannot bring myself to look at.  I know it's because I want to save a little part of him, almost like a reward for when I'm having a really terrible day and need to see a picture of him I've never seen before so I can pretend he's still alive.  While I still have these things, it's not really, truly over.  But if I look at everything I have, then what do I have left to keep me going for the next however many years?  How am I supposed to make it for another 50 years with only 5 years worth of beautiful memories?


It feels like I've now read the same words so many times from so many other military widows - why in God's name did they think that it was a good idea to send home his laundry from Iraq CLEAN and smelling like Tide?  And who gave them the right to delete all the photos and videos I wanted off his personal computer?  One widow said it best when she asked, "do they not have a single, functioning brain cell in their heads?!"  I remember taking a blue, polyester blanket out of the black tuff boxes that contained all of Jon's personal effects and sleeping with it for many nights because I knew he must have used it on the flight back to Iraq after his R&R when I last saw him alive.  I put his maroon beret in a ziplock bag to preserve it because it still has his tiny hairs on it, and every now and then I'll put on one of his favorite t-shirts and spray it with his cologne so that I can pretend he's still here with me.  It's kind of ironic when I think about it all in terms of the title of Tim O'Brien's book - you'd think that the things we carry would weigh us down or burden us as we continue to trudge down the walk of life, but to lighten the load of a military widow would actually be far worse than continuing to allow her to lug along as much as humanly possible.


So I'll take the things of Jon's I want with me...and I won't care what other people say or think.  Like I said before, anyone who's anyone worth knowing will understand.  Author Anne L. Stael once said that "we understand death only after it has placed its hands on someone we love."  The death of someone we loves brings with it many emotional sorrows and many physical things...and until those who have criticized my decisions experience it for themselves, holding onto his razor or stamp collection may not make much sense to them.  But that's okay with me.  I'll take Jon's things with me on my travels and carry our love with me in my heart.  And they can't take that away from me.