No Shrines in Our House

Our house is small, less than 1000 square feet, with small rooms and small closets. In anticipation of Nathaniel's birth we had to do a lot of rearranging. It seemed like we moved everything in the whole house around. Abby was moved from her nursery to a big girl room in what was the office and craft room. Everything that was in there needed to find a new place to go. Now the bookshelf, desk, and computer are in the back room and everything that was stored in the closet is now spread all over the house in other closets. Craft stuff is in our room. Some boxes of old pictures and mementos that were supposed to go in scrapbooks and kid friendly art stuff is still in Abby's closet. Games and outgrown clothes and wrapping paper and stockpiled presents are in Nathaniel's closet.

His room is still his room, though he never lived there, but now it is where we put all the stuff that we got for him before and after he was born. The changing table is now piled with mementos from that hospital and cards and envelopes and books about grief. His crib is filled with Abby's clothes that are too small and need to be packaged up and put away in the garage. His shelf is stacked with little tubs filled with dried flowers from arrangements from his memorial service and empty baskets that we got at that time that had been filled with food or flowers. All the toys in his room that were within Abby's reach have been taken by her and are now added to the large collection in her bed. She also took the Bible that the hospital chaplain gave us, but I think I replaced that one back in his room.

His room is not off limits in our house. It can't be and I'm grateful for that. We sometimes go there if we want to be alone to read or write or watch something on the iPad. Right now Dave and Abby are in there having a great time making a ramp out of toilet paper tubes and cardboard and tape. It's nice to hear laughter coming from there. I just wish that it was the laughter of siblings playing together or a baby having a good time in his bed when he is supposed to be sleeping. That can still happen. I just have to wait. Waiting is hard especially when you are waiting on something that you should already have.