beginning the next chapter...

The last five days have really thrown me around.  We decided a few months back that we would not renew our apartment lease, but we would look for a new place to "start a new chapter."  (I hate the phrase "moving on."  I will never move on.  Jaxon is permanently a part of our lives.)  We have two days left in our lease of a two bedroom two bath apartment.  This is the apartment we got to know Jaxon in.  This was the place we were going to bring him home to, where his nursery was, where we imagined our lives beginning with him. 

Throughout my pregnancy, we kept the door to his nursery closed because we didn't want our cats on any of his things.  It turns out we kept Jaxon's door closed even after he passed, I guess at first out of habit, but I think as the time passed it became necessary to protect our days.  Not that we don't think of him every single day, every single hour.  We just don't want to remember that day every single day. 

That day contains the evening I spent in labor with him- in that room.  John-Michael and I have pretty much pinpointed when we think he passed and it was in that room.  I have this strange attachment to that room I think, that I didn't really know existed until we started our move.  I cried all day off and on Thursday and at the time I couldn't tell you what triggered it.  But I realize it was the move.  I was going to have to say goodbye to that room. 

I do think that beginning a new chapter in a fresh place with new scenery is a good thing.  But leaving this room behind is almost like leaving a little bit of Jaxon behind.  I am so deep in a wave of grief right now, I don't really even understand it myself.  I will always have these memories, those won't leave me.  Please God don't let these memories leave me, they are all I have left of my sweet boy.  This room is what needs to leave me.  It's like ripping a Band-Aid off, it will hurt initially, but it is what the wound needs to heal.  It needs to breathe. 

I have gone back and forth between wanting to sell some of his things and wanting to keep all of it.  It is such a difficult thing to navigate.  I don't want to see the rocking chair I spent so much time laboring in, I don't want to see his crib that I imagined putting him down in, nor the changing table I pictured changing his diaper on during so many sleepless nights.  These were Jaxon's things.  I can't imagine another baby on these things right now.  Don't get me wrong- I desperately want another baby because my arms ache.  I want a family to take care of, I want to spend sleepless nights feeding and changing our babies, I long for that.  But these are still Jaxon's things.  The memories of what we lost are attached to some of these things.  I sold his rocking chair.  I almost sold his crib, and I still might.  These are painful things to look at for me. 

I do have all of his clothes and diapers and shoes and toys and bottles and crib sheets and swaddling blankets and baseball stuff.  We packed everything up this past Sunday.  We were quiet.  We were emotionally and mentally drained and quiet.  I had tears streaming down my face and he had this look of emptiness on his face.  We did what we needed to do and didn't drag it out any longer than it needed to be.  It sucked.  This sucks.