Reorganized, small victory

[AJ4]

My husband of almost 3 decades had been doing most of the finance organizing, insurance and paperwork filing for a lot of our stuff.  After he passed on my father in law organized everything into one binder with folders and dividers and labels which was handy for me to be able to figure out where things were.  It has been a year and one month that I'd been dealing with his binder not being in alphabetical order and today I took the folders out, moved some that were old and not used anymore to another filing box and put the frequently used ones all in alphabetical order.  It had been annoying me for, well, at least a year and I finally got up the energy? courage? willpower? just to take everything out and do it in a way that made more sense to me.  

[Sally72]

@AJ4 good for you! It is something to celebrate! Each of the small wins… steps forward towards healing 🙂 Life may never be quite the same but mostly it does go on and for me anyway I’m learning to celebrate the small wins (and bigger ones too) such as yours. Each of us need to do it in our own way and time but eventually for our own sake we do need to heal. The scar is always there but healing is good. …

…for me it’s almost 5 years and I had a new “trigger” this week. When my husband was in the hospital we parked in a parking garage during his hospital stay. This week for the first time I was in a parking garage. I was flooded with so many memories from that time… I just sat and cried! I’ve learned by now if I’m alone or with people who understand to just let myself experience and feel the emotions and to process through them… I heal much quicker if I can. It was something though that I didn’t see coming at all and it really hit me hard. I view it as a healing ❤️‍🩹 experience though. As encouragement for all of you who’s experience is much more recent, I do want to say that those “trigger” moments are much fewer and further between by now! Take heart fellow travelers on this “journey”, we never forget, however time is on our side… love and hugs to all! 🤍 

[AJ4]

@Sally72 I know what you mean.  I just had to drive past the hospital (it's not on my normal route) where my husband got most of his chemo and it made my heartache worse.

[DWS]

12 hours ago, AJ4 said:

It had been annoying me for, well, at least a year and I finally got up the energy? courage? willpower? just to take everything out and do it in a way that made more sense to me.  

It takes energy and ambition to accomplish what you did! Your post also gives the rest of us here something to go with....that accomplishing certain tasks can help up us gain some control within our grief. We're so broken and weakened but taking some control back, in whatever small way is possible, can help us gain some strength. I cleaned out a couple of junk drawers and felt less stressed afterwards. Of course, they're still junk drawers but less cluttered and now easier to find things. 

[KayC]

It may not sound like much, but I tied up my wire fence to the post with of all things, bread ties...ha!  I don't have the strength to use a better gauge wire, this works for now, apparently when I had trees limbed, some branches came down and hit it.  It was bugging me so I did something, however small.