A lot of things are in motion and my mind is having a hard time sleeping through the night. We close on our house sale this week and I have been busy sorting and packing and deciding. There were a few hiccups after the inspection so we thought everything should be just fine, but there was another bigger one having to do with the contingency on the other house that has been resolved and we feel extremely grateful.
We had our last garage sale yesterday, our third! So many of the things that we have been collecting over the last almost 25 years were sold away or given away. It felt a little surreal and still does. I think the most difficult things were the bulk of my kitchen items. It is not that I can’t buy new ones eventually. It is more that those items still hold memories of all the cooking and baking and serving my family over these many years. Why do we get sentimental about things that don’t last? I am still not sure, but I am learning how to let go. And I am still seeing the hand of the Lord in all the small things. I heard from the many people that came to our garage sale that there were no other garage sales yesterday and even though it was a scorching hot day, we had so many people show up and everyone was very kind and generous. I will always love this place for that reason and many others.
I feel so grateful that my sister Rebecca and her family were the first at the garage sale and took a great many things that were once valuable to us and rehomed them. And they were the last ones to come to the garage sale when they brought their big van with the seats taken out and loaded up the things that did not sell and hauled them away to Goodwill. We had many people that we know come and support us. Rachel and her family came as well.
Speaking of Rachel and Casey, they have been generous enough to offer a corner of their storage area for us to store the few belongings we have decided to keep such as our guitars, family history books, pictures, our family table, my more expensive kitchen appliances that would be much more difficult to replace and of course, a very large bag of stuffed animals. Who does that? Only people who love you and support you.
Ben and Jamie are going to be housing us (for the most part) until we leave in a couple of weeks. And I know how much of a commitment that is to feed and clean up after nine extra people. School is starting here next week and they are still willing to take us in. I am so grateful for the extra time we will have to see them just a bit more before we leave.
Rebecca had us over for dinner tonight. And I was trying not to think about how they just got back and will be staying here at least through this school year. I will miss being a part of all the carpooling and supporting each other’s kids in concerts and sports events. But I am so grateful they she will be here for Rachel and Jamie. I can’t help feeling a little sad that we are leaving my family behind that live here, especially since Rachel will be having her seventh, a little girl, a couple weeks after we leave. I am super sad about that.
Another turn to our already crazy life is that since we have rehomed Millie she has gone downhill, not because she hasn’t been loved and pampered like crazy, because she has, but because she is just old. She is 14. She has had two strokes, she has arthritis, is nearly blind, and most likely has kidney disease now. She is showing signs of having pain pretty much all the time and doesn’t seem to be as lucid all the time. So Cynthia has decided, and we concur, that it is time to end her suffering. So Tom and the little boys and I will be making a flying trip to Utah this weekend to see Millie off to her next destination where she will be reunited with Lou, our beloved cat.
How do I put into words what Millie means to me? She has been such a beloved companion to our family and has definitely enriched our lives in so many ways. She has been my walking and running friend and has given us reason for so many nature walks. I ran farther and faster because Millie loved to run and I always felt safe taking her along. She loved it, too. She was so smart and learned all the phrases that mattered to her. “Go on a walk” and “Dad home!” were the two that would make her the most excited. She tried to keep us all in order and would herd us all when things got too crazy. She was gentle and actually loved all of my babies. Another way I could tell she was in more pain lately was that she had a really hard time with Jack and Hyrum because she was feeling grouchy from the pain and with two toddlers that are unpredictable, I would be a bit bothered too if I were her. She had some anxiety, which set her apart. That is how we ended up with her. And I didn’t know well how to get past her anxiety to train her, but she still learned a few tricks on her own. She was our girl for 13 years and I want to see her one last time. At first I was a little frustrated about this, thinking we should have just kept her here so we don’t have to drive all the way to say goodbye again and we would have saved Cynthia all that trouble, but I felt something let me know that this, too, was orchestrated and has been a good thing for Cynthia and for us. I remembered that we just got new carpet and that recently Millie has had more incontinence. And I do believe that this is how it should have been.
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