Scrapbooking Sympathy Cards

The cards started pouring in the Monday after Max's fatal accident on Friday.  There were so many of them, it was impossible to display each one.  One of the kind helpers at our house found a large gardening bucket and we started collecting them there.  The bucket was jammed full when the last card came in.  I have gone down to Max's room several times and read each card and cried many tears.  Each time brings up that raw emotion we had those first few days when we were receiving those cards. 

I have wanted to scrapbook the cards, it sounded like such a great idea, and it will be ... when it's done.  The process is much more overwhelming than I thought it would be! 

First, I knew I would have to get rid of the gardening bucket.  It would never be anything but where we collected the sympathy cards.  I knew every time I saw it, I would think of that, and so, I emptied it and started pitching the trash into the bucket.  I looked through each card one last time, deciding what was worth keeping, and what I was able to part with.   Then the ones I had decided to keep, I started trimming and cropping to ready each piece to go on a scrapbook page.  Then as I finished that, I pitched the remnants into that same gardening bucket, and walked it out to our dumpster, which gets picked up in the morning. 

As I walked away from the trash bin, I felt this overwhelming heaviness in my chest.  I had that same feeling when the pieces and parts of the vehicle laid out in the trash bin, after we had all agreed to let them go.  I thought "I can still change my mind and rescue them from the trash before the truck takes it".  Laying in bed tossing and turning, I figured out part of the reason.  If I had left the cards and the bin "as it was", and didn't deal with them, it would have been easier ... I don't have to recognize that time is passing since that awful day ... I don't have to process through the emotions of love and loss ... I don't have to face that Max is not coming home.   If I don't mess with it, then his death stays enshrined in a safe area.  But by choosing to tackle this project, I am facing all those things. 

I felt horrible after asking Wesley to go through his pile of sympathy cards.  It was the first time he had touched them since that week, and I noticed his hands were shaking as he read each card.  I felt like a lousy mom.  Just because it was the right time for ME to do this project does not mean it was the right time for him.  And Todd hasn't even looked at the cards at all.  He is content to lay some ground rules about what to keep and not keep, and look at them once they are in the scrapbook. 

I guess that's the way of grief.  You pick up a small piece and sort through it until you can let it go.  Or you pick up a big piece and wrestle with it for awhile.  This is a big piece.   I hope I am not causing too much trauma for the two guys I live with because I am tackling it.  I am a little stressed now that this project is all spread out on my kitchen table.  There is never a "good time" to do something like this, I guess, you just have to dive in and deal with it.