Just a few months before Dominic was killed, this hoarding homeschool mama decided that it was time to finally give up some of the thousands of pages of handwritten, color-crayoned papers stacked in the attic, the storage building and floating in corners and crevices throughout the house.
Four children and twenty-two years of teaching them at home had produced a mountain of memories. I began to sort through the ones I deemed “most important to keep” and “everything else”.
Several loads were taken to the dump and tossed unceremoniously onto the trash pile.
It felt like freedom.
Now it feels like regret and longing.
Because what I have left of the physical presence of my son is represented in the scraps I have kept-the clothes, the notes, the scribbled comments in the margins of his notebooks and college texts.
I hear his voice in the tweets– his wit and wisdom, cynicism and societal critique.
Sometimes I hold them and think of the boy,the teen,the man who wrote them.
Sometimes I hurry past because thinking of who he was and feeling the absence of who he would be right now is too great to bear.
I wish he had left more voice mails-
I don’t erase them anymore.
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thelifeididntchoose 
I, too, was a homeschooling mom and just weeks before the death of my son, I went through EVERYTHING and got rid of so very much…. A thought that brings me at least SOME comfort is that if I had NOT done it then, I would NEVER have been able to let go of any of it, and I would now be overwhelmed with box after box of papers and scraps that I couldn’t bear to either look at or get rid of…. I do have the cards he gave me and some of the “best” of his school work…. I even have his nearly-empty laundry detergent bottle from which every so often I inhale the fragrance that reminds me of him….
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I used to be almost OCD about deleting text messages and voice mails…. not anymore. So thankful we still have Jacob’s phone line. I still call and hear his voice or simply just text him.
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I really wish I would have saved any voice mails. My sweet daughter was 33, but she still spoke like my little sweet pea on messages. “Hi Momma”, and would always say “I you momma” at the end.
I do have soom text messages from her I saved. They are mostly about letting me know her chemo & radiation appts. Or she would send me pick of her little baby/toddler💕
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I so agree! I have hoarded greeting cards sent by my children and husband over the years. Those cards (along with little pictures they drew before writing) are among my most looked after remembrances of my son. A child of few words, he realized how important those greeting cards were to me. Even though he HATED buying them, as an adult he went out of his way to please his mama.
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Melanie, I am Albina’s mama , my cell phone # 205 -520-6588, call me please
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