Keepsakes

There used to be a popular call-in segment as part of our local country music radio station known as “Crying, Loving, Laughing, or Leaving” where listeners would call in and talk to the radio host about whichever action applied to them at the moment and then they would request a song that fit their situation. I couldn’t help but think of this as I continued the process of sorting Carter’s belongings in his room upstairs…a process that has been 3 years in the making and one that I just began to tackle earlier this month. Seeing his handwriting, school mementos, sketches, and favorite belongings had this 8-month-pregnant lady experiencing the full gamut of emotions. I’ve cried, loved, laughed, and left memories behind in his room that have helped bring much needed peace and a modicum of closure, so I decided tonight to blog about the process on here in case there are others who are recently bereaved and facing the task not knowing where to start.

The first thing to note is that there is no timeline that is going to work for everyone. Some people dive in right away. Others wait months and years. Still some never get to the place where they do it…everything is left the exact same and that is OK, too. Grieving individuals have to do what works for them at the time without added pressure to do what society dictates. Our fourth child is due to arrive any day now, so perhaps I should credit the nesting instinct for kicking in and jump starting the process for me. All I know is that all of a sudden I had an overwhelming desire to get in Carter’s room upstairs and go through his belongings a few weeks ago. You couldn’t even see the top of his bed for all of the stuff- his things, items that have been mailed to us and given by loved ones and friends, stacks and stacks of papers and cards, etc. I’ve found myself repeatedly overwhelmed since his passing and all I could do was just put things on his bed and walk away all the while telling myself that one day I would get to the place where I could sort through it and organize. That day finally came at the beginning of September.

I have shared on here in a previous post that Caroline has transitioned back to her original room upstairs. She is doing well and has gotten acclimated to using the bathroom where Carter ended his life after we had a contractor close friend of ours come in and make some changes to it. I cannot emphasize enough how big of a deal it was for her to be back upstairs. Talk about conquering fears and overcoming mental hurdles! She’s so strong and amazing. I’m so very proud of her for her resilience and “can-do” attitude. She’s such an inspiration to this Mama. In addition, we have moved our toddler’s nursery to the downstairs guest bedroom that Caroline had been using since Carter’s passing, and we are in the process of setting up baby boy Carsen’s nursery in the room that was originally an office/music room when we built the house 5 years ago. Every space it seems like is being transformed in some way, so it was only fitting that Carter’s room get some attention as well. It was starting to weigh on me that his room had become more of a storage unit and less like what it was when he was here with us, so one morning I trekked upstairs and just started working on one thing. My advice is to focus on one thing at a time. Maybe it’s a single drawer or cabinet. A box. A storage tote. It doesn’t have to be a huge thing. Just getting started is what matters once the decision is made to go through your loved one’s belongings.

For me, that one thing took me 2 days. It was a desk that was in our office and had gotten moved to Carter’s room when we converted the office into our youngest daughter’s nursery last year. We had decided to move the desk into a little nook in his room where it was out of the way and not a focal point so that it could be used as storage. First, though, I had to clean it out. You wouldn’t believe the books, papers, and office supplies that I purged. I quickly decided to make 3 piles- one for keeps, one for giving away, and one for trash. This helped tremendously because a lot of what I came across was junk that just needed to be tossed. It felt so good to fill up a trash can and feel a burden being lifted. Some of the items that were still in good condition but not necessarily special enough to Carter and his memory went to other people- art supplies, games, and books that others could use were donated and that also made me feel good…one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, after all. I came across stacks of CDs from our former pastor which blessed my soul so much in addition to handwritten notes and letters of encouragement from him. We named Carter after this very special man of God, so seeing those special keepsakes that I had forgotten about truly came at a perfect time when I needed to hear from heaven. Once the desk had been cleaned and sorted, I decided to decorate the top of it with some of Carter’s Americana treasures, thus paying homage to the theme of his room and one of his greatest passions. The desktop now has the folded flag from his great-grandfather on display, a signed postcard of his great-uncle who stood guard at JFK’s funeral (Carter’s favorite president), Trump’s presidential pin, model airplanes, etc. Stepping back and seeing what was once a jumbled mess then transformed into an organized little space that reflected Carter gave me the urge to move on and tackle something else.

That something else was his bed. It was overwhelming to see all of his things so I made little piles and worked on a pile at a time throughout the week. Perhaps the hardest piles to tackle were his school notebooks from his 6th grade year. School had ended at the beginning of June and we lost him in July. I knew that there may be clues hidden in doodles and in his writings within those folders and binders full of paper but I was scared at what I might find. Part of me longed to see any clue he may have given us and part of me was terrified. He never left a suicide note. Would something that he wrote point me towards the exact reason he chose to end his life? Talk about standing on a precipice of the unknown and being afraid! He had binders for each subject so I sat down at the recently cleaned and organized desk and went through each one a paper at a time. I tossed a lot of the daily warm-ups and classroom “busy work” but saved his essays, funny doodles, and papers that were just “him”. As a typical 12-year-old boy, a lot of his papers were scattered and loose, so it felt good to make his binders tidy and have everything neatly stored. While I never got any real clue as to the impetus for his suicide, there were several things that he had written that punched me in the gut. One was a writing prompt about his fears. He wrote that he was afraid of death. Another was about his feelings…he wrote that he felt afraid on test days. Another writing prompt asked if he had ever been picked last for a team. He wrote, “Yes, I used to be non-athletic, and I was always picked last. I knew, so I wasn’t surprised. I was a little sad, but it motivated me to lose weight.” Ugh…my Mama’s heart ached for him. I knew that he was self-conscious about his weight at times. He was a little chunky but definitely not “the fat kid” in school. His pediatrician had even told him to get ready because his body was preparing for a major growth spurt and he would lose that baby fat and stretch out seemingly overnight. He was projected to be 6’1″, but that growth spurt never came. While there was never any evidence that he had been bullied in school, I wonder if his peers had made comments to make him feel bad about himself. The fact that he was scared on test days made me think we had somehow unknowingly put academic pressure on him to succeed. I do know that he wanted to make us proud, and we certainly were of all his accomplishments and bragged on him repeatedly. Did he somehow internalize those comments and twist them to where he thought his worth depended on his grades? I shudder to think that but can’t help it. We will never actually know.

By far the most gut-wrenching sheet of paper that I came across was the very last page of a marbled composition notebook where he had written in cursive, “Is it too late to say sorry?” Not sure when he wrote it…I just know it was sometime that year and the fact that it was the last page of a notebook was significant to me. I felt like he was speaking to me from the grave and I wanted to tell him that it is never too late…that I’M THE ONE WHO IS SORRY, and that he had nothing to ever be sorry for. I don’t blame him. I’m not angry with him. I’m hurt and mad at MYSELF for not being able to save my son. I took that piece of paper as a sign from him that he was sorry for my pain and I just had a sense of peace that he was speaking to me and letting me know that he didn’t want me to continue to beat myself up over what I can’t change. I have to learn to forgive myself for not knowing what I didn’t know at the time. Finally, after going through each class subject, I decided to place his last year of binders and folders in his red Under Armour bookbag which is now propped up against his nightstand beside his bed. Whew…a huge hurdle completed. Off to the next pile…

His Papa had developed pictures from that June where Carter and his sister had gone on vacation with their grandparents to Charleston, one of Carter’s favorite places. I remember getting those pictures the week of Carter’s passing and being so devastated to see that just 3 weeks prior to losing him, he was doing his best to mask his inner pain and turmoil by smiles that didn’t quite reach his eyes. I could “see” that something was off, but it was too late. Hindsight truly is 20/20. Those pictures were so painful to look at that they immediately went upstairs and onto his bed. Now I found myself having to sort through them. I have always taken a lot of pride in keeping photo albums of printed pictures for each child. I had stopped printing pictures in 2015 but had them saved on my phone and on my camera. I knew that it was time to work on finishing his albums, and those pictures from June 2017 were part of his story so I sorted them along with many others that I came across. Some were from 2016 when he went to Barrier Island with his fifth-grade class, and others were from when we were in the process of building our home in 2015. He had gone to Hilton Head the summer of 2016 with his grandparents and had started an album himself, complete with his own hand-written captions. It still had plenty of blank sleeves, so that is where I decided to place the loose photos from 2015-2017. I didn’t get bogged down on making sure everything was chronologically correct…it just felt good to give his pictures a “home.”

Next item on my “to-do” list in his room was his toy box. Most of it contained beloved stuffed animals, so it wasn’t too cumbersome to organize. I found a large tote in the attic upstairs and transferred many of them to that tote and placed it in his closet underneath his clothes. We then moved the toy box downstairs to Carlen’s nursery where Joseph painted it a bright coral to fit the color scheme of her room. She now has two pieces of furniture from Carter’s room- his old changing table/dresser that he used as a TV console and his toy box. In the space where his toy box formerly was we now have his bicycle propped up against the window. Maybe one day Carsen will ride it and find joy in the simple pleasure of zooming through our neighborhood with the wind blowing through his hair without a care in the world. That is our hope.

Speaking of Carsen, we moved Carter’s tall dresser into Carsen’s nursery along with his full bed that we converted back into a crib in addition to a storage unit which has blocks of space for colored totes that were once filled with Carter’s games, books, and toys. We kept some of his special books in one tote and look forward to reading them again with Carlen and Carsen. We also kept his beloved Thomas the Train cases filled with trains and toy cars. Carlen is fascinated by all of his “choo choos” and it has been very bittersweet to see her playing with them. We know that Carter would want that, so it does our hearts good to see her touching what gave him such joy as a little boy. With his bed and dressers removed from his room upstairs, we were able to move our guest room furniture up there and place everything in the same spaces so his room still looks very similar to the original.

His personal desk was the last thing to go through and at that point, it was fairly simple. I had already designated spaces for things, so special school keepsakes went in one drawer, art supplies and sketch books in another drawer, and all the cards and letters from his passing and subsequent years went in the last and deepest drawer. The top of his desk looks the same with his Leggo government sets, red clock, red lamp, and tin of “thinking putty” with one special addition that I found- a framed shadow box of pictures with him and his “girlfriend” Cortney. She presented this to us when she came to the house to help us honor and remember him on his first birthday in heaven. Along with the pictures she had included a typed letter. I have the frame propped up against the wall on his desk. She was so special to him and I know that he thought the world of her, so it was only fitting that she be a part of his personal space.

It was an exhausting week. Mentally, emotionally, and physically draining in every sense of the word but there is nobody else that I would have wanted/entrusted to do that task. It was my honor and duty as Carter’s mother to be the one to tackle it. My husband came up periodically to check on me. He stayed and went through some things and helped as he could, but it wasn’t something that I could just let him do on his own. If he had even tried to go through a notebook and thrown out a sheet of paper that I hadn’t personally seen with my own eyes, I would have been a wreck. He trusted me with the task, and I appreciate it. I can’t say that I would have felt the same way, but that isn’t his fault at all. It’s just the nature of a mother. I carried Carter inside of me for 9 months. His very heartbeat was a part of my body. I was the last person to see him alive and to speak with him. I wouldn’t have trusted a single soul to know what was worth keeping and tossing in his room, because at the end of the day, I knew him best. He looked like his Daddy, and his Daddy was no doubt his hero, but he was “mine” in his very nature and personality. Therefore, our bond was unique and I will forever treasure it.

With Carter, there was never, not one time, a slammed door, smart remark, sass, or bad attitude. Never ever. All we ever knew with him was pure sweetness, a gentle and kind spirit, and love. What an incredible gift. I shared so much of what I came across on my Instagram stories and many people messaged me and stated that they felt like they had gotten to know Carter better through my posts. To have known him was to have loved him, and to have loved him was (and is) one of my greatest joys in life. I am SO LOOKING FORWARD to that sweet day when I can see him again. I’ll carry him with me always. As I say repeatedly, he is loved and missed forever and a day, and he’s still as much a part of me and my life as the air I breathe. He is irreplaceable and regardless of what the future holds, I know that my life has been blessed beyond measure to have had his precious life a part of mine for 12 wonderful years.

I will continue to speak his name and share his story as long as I live because that’s what love requires. That’s what a mother does. And that’s what my boy deserves.