This post is kind of a non-post, I suppose.  I realized today that it has been two months since I last blogged, and I am writing to let you all know what has been happening in these intervening weeks.

I believe I have mentioned in previous posts that I had begun the process of packing up my mom’s things.  This endeavor evolved into the decision to sell her house.  Being the pragmatic, motivated and energetic person that I normally am, I met with our attorneys and decided that this was the most logical course of action.  Though we are living in said house, and have some emotional attachment, of course, we have moved many times, and I truly thought it would be no big thing.  A month or so, and we’d be out.

That was in August.  We finally finished packing up the house in October.  I cannot even begin to tell you how hard it was to pack up the house of a loved one.  It was all-consuming, drained every ounce of time and energy that all of us had.  We cried every day, we worked from waking to bedtime. Some days, I got a reprieve in the form of seeing my prenatal clients or flying out the door to attend the birth of a baby, but most days… it was just this continuing march through what became near-despair, hoping there was a light at the end of the tunnel.  Forget time for writing, even if I had had the spirit to do so.

Sounds dramatic, right?  Well, the clinical explanation is clear:  I didn’t see my friends enough; I didn’t get enough sunlight; I didn’t get enough exercise; I didn’t eat right.  These things alone can drag you down.  But more than this, the daily question, as we were touching all of Mom’s things, packing away her treasured possessions, changing the quirky things she loved about her home with paint and landscape work – were we doing the right thing?  To sell this house, this place that had held so much love and so many life events.

In October, we got our reprieve.  We took our annual trip to a beach house in Lincoln City, OR, to celebrate Mom’s life.  I have a post in progress about this trip.  When we left for Oregon, we joyfully (well, maybe not joyfully, but with so much relief to be done!) put her house on the market and drove away, counting on, in this hot market, being under contract when we returned in three weeks.

Ha, ha.  Just kidding – we are back in Colorado now, and back in the house. No one is interested, so far, in undertaking the updating that needs to be done.  We live in an affluent area where people kind of expect to have it perfect when they move in.  We are moving the price all around and doing more work on it, and struggling with the same questions.  Are we doing the right thing?  Should we just price it low to sell and move on?  Or should we keep it?  Around and around in circles.  Oddly, this is the most stressful period I’ve experienced in years, even in comparison to Mom’s death. What makes it so?  I think there are just too many choices before me, too many decisions that rest upon me.  Though I know I am so lucky to have these choices, I can’t help but think how much easier it might be to just have one option.

Perhaps the difference is that death doesn’t leave us a whole lot of options.  We simply have to ride the train to its inevitable end the very best way we can.