My New Bedroom
A few months after Coleen passed away, I rearranged our/my bedroom. It was the last room in the house to go through changes because I always considered it the most sacred part of our house. After all, it was the place where we had our most intimate moments and by that I don’t mean sexually. It was where we shared the most of ourselves and talked about our fears, dreams and secrets. We cried there, we laughed, we argued and we planned. For a long time after she died, I did nothing to that room except clean it, make the bed and change the sheets. I left the rest of it intact as it was the day she left it for the last time. There were books stacked on the floor with random magazines mixed in. The tope of her dresser was cluttered with medicine, jewelry, perfumes, notes, and all kinds of miscellaneous items. I got rid of the medecines and all things that had to do with sickness and cancer but I left everything else. Then one day, probably during the fifth month without her, I started thinking about changing the bedroom. So I did. It wasn’t drastic but I moved the bed to another location and put a different comforter on it. I moved a dresser and the television. I took down a big mirror and replaced it with a print I have of the 16th hole at Augusta National where they play the Masters golf tournament every year. I changed a couple of other wall hangings. I grew to like the new look and for some reason it made me feel like I was making progress with my healing. Whether it really helped or not wasn’t important. Only that I thought it did. Eventually I removed all of Coleen’s things from the room. Her books, her clothes, her notes. Then later I even took our brass bed down and traded it for a queen bed without a headboard that had been in a guest room. It became my room which was kind of ironic because Coleen always referred to our bedroom as “my bedroom” as in “Oh I think I left that up in my bedroom.” We always joked about that. I am writing all this because two days ago I re-rearranged what is now my bedroom. I don’t know why I did it but I had an overwhelming urge to put things back where they had been. Something was suddenly haunting me about what the bedroom had become. It was darker and a little more masculine because of a brown comforter on the bed. The bed itself was too big and looked stupid without a headboard and footboard. So I took down the queen bed. I reinstalled our/my brass bed in the exact same location we always had it and I put the off-white comforter back on the bed. I rehung the artwork on the wall behind the bed and put the pillows with the red shams back where they came from. Some of the other furniture is in a different place than when it was in Coleen’s bedroom and I have different art on the walls but it feels more like it used to. It’s the same in some ways but different enough in others. Why did I do that? For one thing, it looks a lot better. I like the look and feel of it. I am sleeping in the same place I did when she was alive, when she was in bed with me. Coleen will never be back but someone else will and I feel that I need to make room for her and to make it right for her. The room seems pure now, like it’s ready for a new beginning. It’s not a virgin bedroom but it appears fresh and revitalized. I very much like how it looks now and I am very careful to take care of it and keep it especially neat and pristine. It is a special room to me and it always will be. My bedroom is like so much of my life now. The same only different. I like things like that. People used to tell me about something called a “new normal” and I was never sure what that was supposed to mean. I guess I am getting closer to that though without fully understanding it.Trackback from your site.