Savannah's Room

I was supposed to do this Friday, but I just kept procrastinating and procrastinating until there were no more days left.  And then today I had nothing else left to do.  

But I was heavily hung over from way too many allergy meds yesterday, and the day was grey and rainy and cold, and there's nothing left in my house anymore that feels like mine, so all of those things together made me super emotional this morning...probably not the best day to take on something I knew I would be super emotional about doing.

So I put it off for a while longer...  

I went to brunch at my VT's house and lingered there for a couple of hours with her and her comp and their cute kids.  

I stopped at the grocery store on the way home to get some Claritin because I'm not taking any more of that other stuff that makes me sleep like the dead and wake up feeling still dead the next morning.  And when I cried all the way through the grocery store because I was going to miss the cute little special needs kid who always waves at me in the parking lot when I drive in, and the nice sushi guy who always saves me samples, and my favorite checker of all time who always always says hello whenever he sees me and then always has some funny story to tell me while I'm paying for my groceries, I realized there was no way around the tears today.  

So I drove into the garage and braced myself for the inevitable.  And then I came home and talked to Craig for awhile, and answered a few emails, and responded to a few IG and FB comments...and put it off for a few more minutes.  

Finally, when I could put it off no longer, my neighbor Karryn happened to text and ask me how my day was going.  When I told her what I had to do, she said, "How about if I come over and help you?"  And that might have made me cry a little more.  

Savannah and I painted the chalkboard half of this room together right before her birthday in September 2011 just after we moved into this house.  The previous homeowner's little girl had cute baby pink and white stripes below that chair rail and it was a little too young for an Savannah.  The chalkboard paint was the perfect solution.  That one little change transformed her whole room.  I thought those walls would change over the years, but they never did.  Every time a friend came over Savannah would have them draw something and sign their name on her wall and she never erased a single one.  Every picture and every love note from every friend or relative or neighbor who wandered into that room and picked up a piece of chalk stayed there until today when Karryn and I cleaned it all off.  

I kept putting off this thing because I thought it was going to be impossible to do without my heart aching.  I thought it would feel like erasing Savannah.  But it didn't.  With Karryn here to distract me a little, it was just fun to reminisce about painting that wall and to think about some of Savannah's goofy friends who I hadn't thought about in such a long time, and we finished it so quickly.  It was almost painless.  And guess what...I still have all those pictures and all the blog posts and all the memories of sitting in that room.  I'm sure there will be some other space that Savannah and I will decorate together.  And without all of her personality in that room, I'm kind of ready to turn it over to the new people who want to live in it now.  That was the last thing I was hanging onto.  

I'm grateful for hard days that turn out to not be so hard, and for really good friends who always show up just at the right time.