One of my son’s household chores is to clean his room at least once every two weeks so that it can be vacuumed. In between, he can keep it however he likes, as long as it’s safe and healthy (i.e. no Lego gauntlets for me to walk across when I tuck him in, and no abandoned snacks serving as the genesis for exotic new forms of microbial life).
Some weeks, it’s a struggle, and I get it. From his perspective it’s much more convenient to have all your books spread out on the floor—you know exactly where everything is and they’re immediately accessible. Plus, it seems like a huge task to excavate far enough down through the pile to be able to see the carpet again; it’ll take hours and hours, I don’t wanna! (Usually, it takes about 10 minutes once he starts.)
Worden’s fourth task of grief (see here, here and here if you missed 1 to 3) feels like that to me. Grief chore four: emotionally relocating your relationship with your loved one, and reinvesting that energy in other areas of your life. Your relationship with the person you’ve lost needs to change, and you need to continue living in a healthy way. You need to put the books in the bookcase so you can vacuum.
This is a tricky chore to write about because, like my kid, I don’t wanna. My relationship with my late wife has obviously changed: now it’s a relationship based in memories, photos and videos, stories, traditions. However, who she was, and what that relationship was, is still a part of me. Healing will, down the road, mean finding a new way to connect to her—not abandoning that part of myself, but figuring out how to turn it into a source of joy and strength that drives a full and meaningful life. You don’t throw away all the books on the floor when you clean your room; you figure out where each one goes on the shelf. If you don’t, where will you ever find room to build a giant Lego robot and an awesome train track?
And so for this chore, I’m taking some advice that my son once received on what to do when cleaning your room seems like an impossibly huge ask. Pick up one book, just one, and put it on the shelf. Easy. Now your room is a little cleaner than it was ten seconds ago, so pick up another book and do it again. The difference, and the thing about Worden’s “tasks of grief” that I find so comforting, is that there’s no time limit on this. I can pick up a book and find a great place for it, switch to another chore for a while, and drift back to this one when I’m ready. Just one book at a time.
Check back on Monday, March 21 for the next post: Helping my kid fail.