Tossing Guilt

So I've been going through trying to clean for the party for the last week or so. In the process, sometimes I come across things I meant to do, and didn't. Things left undone, and I can't go back and do them now.

Today I found a stack of 20 thank you cards from Karl's funeral. I'd made a list of people I had to acknowledge, and slowly went through, able to do 5 or 6 cards in a sitting before breaking down. There were, I'm grateful to say, a LOT of cards to be sent. Unfortunately, I ran out of motivation? stamina? time? before I ran out of cards. Then they got buried under the masses of stuff.

Once, a few months after Karl died, I found this same stack, only bigger. I felt terrible that I'd forgotten them, and vowed to finish this time. I sent out a few more cards, but not all of them. It was still hard to write the words - to brush against those raw memories, barely healing. So I let the chaos take the rest of the pile again.

Today, when I found them, I felt terrible again. Then, I made a decision. I recycled them.

Perhaps a late thank you is better than none, but I have to believe you can forgive me, and I have to forgive myself, for not getting them all out. I'm done with feeling guilty about anything to do with Karl's death. I'm doing my best, and it just has to be enough for all of us.

While we're on the subject, I have to tell you that I mean to call more often - I do! - but maybe you don't know that I'm actually quite phobic about the phone. Ask my mom about the time she tried to get me to order a pizza. Actually, don't. It's not a good story for either of us. Let's just say that making phone calls is always a little traumatic for me, and maybe you should know that, so you know when I do call, well, it's more effort than you might think.

And I do beat myself up about it, but I think maybe I'm done with that too.

So here's hoping Earth Circle takes more than paper, glass, and plastic this week. I'm going to let them have a little something that wasn't on their list, and I'm not even going to rinse it out first.