In life, as each day goes by, we create memories. For the most part, most of those memories aren’t that important so we forget about them. But the important ones sometimes feel like they embed themselves into our brains.

When my daughter died I knew I couldn’t go back and live in the house where all I had surrounding me were memories of her. Pictures on the wall. Her sippy cups. Her food. Her bedroom. I was a stay at home mom of a child with severe autism whose life completely revolved around my daughter to now having her gone. How was I supposed to go back to live in the house and be there all day everyday by myself without her?

So we moved. I packed up every last thing that was hers whether it made sense to someone else or not. Packing up our daughter’s room had to be one of the hardest things I’ve done. All her toys. All her clothes. All her DVDs. All her bathroom stuff. All her hair stuff. Everything. All packed into boxes with me sobbing to the point my body shook and could barely see through the tears at times. All the pictures on the walls got packed away into boxes that stayed that way for over a year before I got to the point where I wanted them out again. The bottom line is I kept everything of hers.

When we were getting ready to move to Kentucky I bought a bunch of bins and transferred all of her stuff to them. It was hard to believe how many bins I had for my daughter but her stuff was now better protected.

It wasn’t until my niece and nephew came to live with us that I even started to get into her stuff. For the most part, I still have everything of hers and it’s been over five years. It’s been a slow process but that’s okay. When I’m fully ready I will continue to get rid of more things. Until that time, all of it will remain in those bins.