Ghost Stories

We lost our daughter, big sister, best friend October 1st, 2017. There has been so much that has transpired since that date that all our lives have been inexorably changed forever. But one of the hardest things that we had to do was to clean out her house. My husband, her aunt, her best friend, and I cleaned out the house in which she was raising her children, the house where she had made a home. We went through the stuff, I’d assume, like most people do. We sorted everything into three categories: things to keep, things to give away, and things to throw away. Then we went about the business of giving away and throwing away. This whole task took several weeks and was emotionally draining and completely gut wrenching. So the things we decided to keep we brought to our house, put into a room, and locked the door.

Every now and then over the past months since we cleaned out the house, I’ve had reason to go into the room to look for something. And every single time it brings me to my knees. Roxanne is everywhere. Everything I pick up smells like her. Everything is a memory from her childhood or a reminder of how full of life she was. There’s a box of snow globes that she used to collect when she was a child and full of wonder. There is another box of her ribbons and photos from horse shows, stock tie pins, and spurs. There are photo collages of high school boyfriends, dried corsages from homecomings and proms. She kept every birthday, Christmas, Easter, graduation, or get well card she ever got and had them meticulously separated and labeled. Every ticket stub or show program  to every concert or show she ever went to was kept as a cherished memento.

Then there are the baby clothes. She had keepsake boxes for each of the children. A box that held their first Halloween costumes and first Christmas outfits, first birthday party invitations along with a piece or two of the decor from the celebration. She also kept all their other clothes to pass on to the children her friends and family may have had. She kept Christian’s first lost tooth in a tiny manila envelope. She had binder after binder of each child’s artwork and school papers, all labeled with pride.  Her children were obviously her most precious treasures.

She was so organized for the young working mother that she was. I mean, I’m almost 50 years old and I’m still not nearly as organized. Plus she spread happiness and glitter wherever she went. These are things that make me sad and that I miss about her.  But the things that really break my heart are the things that show how she had plans for her life.  She was setting up an office in her house so that she could really be more involved and play a bigger role in our event and floral design business. I opened up a box and found her glittered office supplies for her home office. She had sparkly stapler, letter racks, desk blotter, letter opener, and, my personal favorite, the gold sparkly business card holder. She was also planning to renew her wedding vows with her husband in Disney World. She had ordered personalized hot pink boxes with the girls names on them asking each to be one of her bridesmaids. There were party poppers filled with confetti to go inside the boxes. The girls were supposed to pop them if they agreed to be part of the wedding party.

All of these things that were part of the story of such a beautiful life, of such a beautiful girl. What could have been a beautiful novel but now they’re just ghost stories, ghost stories of what could have been.