sifting, sorting...

I cannot decide if I owe the person who invented those plastic storage tubs a thank you or a swift kick...

You see I am a sucker for those plastic tubs, they seem so perfect...go to Target pick up a new one whenever you clean out a closet and just pile it full and then off they go to the garage. Out of sight out of mind right?

Well, I have been doing that for awhile; okay a long while. I had yet to ever sift and sort through Camryn and Wyatt's baby clothes; everything just in bins waiting for the day when I chose to sift and sort through them. Camryn's clothes moved with us from our first apartment and just found a home up on the shelf in the garage and I had every intention of someday getting to them. But you know something stopped that reality and so they sat and I was okay with that. Plus I am an admitted sentimentalist...I cherish things, I remember details that most people forget, I love the past and what various things mean. This quality of mine I believe is a bit maddening for my husband...most of the stuff in the garage is mine, and I kept telling him I would get to it, someday.

Someday...

I had planned to do a post-Christmas clean out of Camryn's closet so today was the day. I started in and instead of putting all her clothes in tubs I bagged things up to hand me down to our nieces. I felt good about it in theory, but once the process started I was teary eyed. Many, many memories...Belle and Cinderella dress up dresses that Camryn wore in her hospital room when she was just two. Christmas dresses, birthday gifts with tags still attached found on their hangers. As I started bagging things up I inevitably meant that I would make my way out to the garage...

And I did...

13 plastic bins later...I sifted, sorted, cried, remembered. Memories flooding...found the shirt Camryn was wearing the day she was originally diagnosed before she was 2...her little slippers that logged many a step around the halls at Cedars...little Disney princess t-shirts worn at UCLA...her little black Crocs...the outfit Wyatt wore the day Camryn came home...Wyatt's little pumpkin shirt that he wore on his first Halloween spent without his sister...Wyatt's donor shirt...Camryn's survivor shirt...the list goes on and on.

Many tears, emotionally draining and quite simply something I just did. I didn't want to...there is just something about seeing all these clothes and remembering a time so simple, then a time so complicated, then a time so hopeful, and back to a time of pain that brings me to my knees. I wish I knew a *good* way to relive some of these things, but i don't. I do feel better with it done...knowing that I don't have to do that again, but my heart hurts tonight. Just a lot to wade through...

So my someday of sifting and sorting was today...

I am tired, emotionally spent...but as my friend T encouraged me today, "just think of how you can fill that space with new memories now." And so I am...

Hopeful for new amazing memories...