But like everything, it is a fleeting emotion. After crossing any imaginary finish line, I still have this burning desire in me to define what is next and move towards it. The momentum always keeps me going.
Now what? This momentum has been replaced by confusion. We are here, we are back in New Jersey and I can't make any sense of what to do next. This apartment will do, but it has nothing to do with the life I desire. Work is very good, but I just feel like I could do so much more with the agency. However, for the time being I am limited. It would take a hell of a lot more school to be prescribing medications. I hope to get there, but I don't even know where to begin.
I am itching to buy another house in '09. I want to stay in Rutherford and the next year is probably a good time to pursue this as housing prices continue to fall. By my estimation, and given what I would be bringing with me in cash to a deal, I could actually wind up paying less per month on a mortgage AND taxes than I pay per month in rent. This is a tantalizing possibility.
There is also the aspect of owning my own home again and doing whatever I please with it. Not having to share a roof with another tenant in another unit sounds like heaven. Being able to just let the dogs do their thing in a yard that's not filled with the other tenant's TRASH sounds good too. Not worrying about the baby getting tetanus from the various pieces of jagged metal CRAP sounds really good too.
It is very hard to find a 3 bedroom apartment that allows dogs. I have briefly toyed with the idea of actually placing the dogs in another home so that I could find a different apartment, but this was just madness talking. The dogs are getting along like champs and I could never part with them. I love them with all my heart, even though they spend the better part of their evenings getting scolded for carrying out their canine lesbian sex acts in front of me.
I think a big part of making this decision to buy a house is that it is not something I'm doing with a partner, or even in memory of a partner, or under any sort of spell of grief that is making me think unclearly. It is a very real, very worldly dilemma. As far as wanting a house, really feeling like I need my own home again-it's a very clear need of mine.
There were a million and one reasons why I should not have purchased property in Florida 3 months after my husband passed away. The understatement of the century may have been that I wasn't thinking clearly. I get so angry sometimes over having done this. I wish someone would've talked me out of it. I think once Scott may have gently asked if buying property was really the best choice right now, which I waved away like flies off of a pie. The truth is, no one in my inner circle was thinking clearly. All of us-our grief was so very raw at that time.
At a time like that, all thinking is delusional, magical, and highly flawed as far as the real world is concerned. It's just what happens. The air is filled with special catch phrases: passed away, happens for a reason, would've wanted, and so on.
I've come to pick apart some of these phrases once the magical thinking began to abate and reality set in. Here is what I've come up with:
Passed Away-this sounds quite peaceful, and I believe it was for him, which I am grateful for given how much I loved him and how I wouldn't have wanted him to suffer any more. However, the reality of the situation is, here was a man at age 37 who died unexpectedly, 2 days after moving to Florida to start a new life with a wife and 2 children ages 14 and 1 1/2. So while he may have "passed away," in reality he was severed from our lives in a most horrifying way. Sadie was just getting the hang of the idea of being a teenager and Penny, unfortunately, will have absolutely no memory of this man at all. And not to beat a dead horse, but this makes my job as a mother very difficult.
Happens for a Reason-this one I've come to hate the most. I don't think I can ever utter this to another human being in regard to a death for the rest of my life. For anyone who has said it to me, I'm not aiming this at you. Sometimes there is literally nothing else to say. I've said it to myself over and over again and still come up empty. We were just trying to convince ourselves that the reason is out there some where and will materialize and we'll all be so happy again once we just find that reason. I'm not beyond thinking that the reason might be that I am just not allowed to enjoy my life fully, and that my children don't deserve the deep, rich happiness of having a very good father figure in their lives partnered with a mother who is content with life.
(I will allow this much-possibly the reason will not become apparent until generations from now, long after we're all gone. This gives me a glimmer of hope but only because I am a sucker for genealogy. It's the only theory that holds any water about the Happens for a Reason line of thinking.)
Would've Wanted-this one has caused me the most trouble. This is where the guilt comes in and I wish the whole idea of Would've Wanted didn't even exist in our vernacular surrounding death. We are told, even in the funeral mass we were told, that the dead are in a place beyond space and time. So why are we encouraged to make them a part of our worldly decisions that are ours and ours alone? The dead do not care what you do with their bodies, what you do with the money, what you do with their clothing, or anything else that is of the physical plane. The living, while they're alive, might tell you what they wish you would do in certain circumstances after their gone. I was left with basically this blue-print: make sure that Penny understands football. That was as far as the discussion ever went. And I don't know a damn thing about football. So I'm going to need some help on this one.
So regarding my very adult dilemma about what to do next...whether to seek out another rental (because this place is not going to make the cut come next September) or to pursue the option of buying another house, I can no longer ask myself what Rob would've wanted. Sure, we always liked Rutherford but we always felt the housing prices were a little beyond us. This was back in '04 or '05 when the ticket prices on the homes in every town were completely distorted. Now, they seem doable.
Right now the ball is my court and my court only, and there is no one along side me to make half of this decision, to talk me out of a nonsensical decision or confirm the wisdom of my, or I should say "our" choice. This is really uncharted territory because I have given up on the magical thinking that led me to buy a house in error last time. Reality is what lays before me and we really haven't been the greatest of friends up until now. I recently just met reality when I sold my home in Florida for, um, LESS than I payed for it. It was an awkward beginning, but it was true, and the house IS sold so at least reality is reliable. I guess reliability may be what I need most right now.
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