Eureka!

I found them. I have been looking for these pictures since Adam died, but have really been looking for them on and off since we moved into this house in 2006. I was starting to think they were gone for good. But then tonight I knew I needed to search again. I'm sort of shocked to have actually found them.

I'm sort of (or more than...) a packrat. No, not a hoarder (truly!), but I am very sentimental. I keep cards, notes, maps from trips or ticket stubs to special dates and outings. For years I kept up on it (placed these things in 3-ring binder/scrapbooks), but when we moved from our apartment in '06, I somehow didn't keep up on it all. Instead I keep hanging file folders that are divided by person in our family and year. When I get back in my groove (I'm still hoping for that to happen) I will scrapbook them. No, I don't make cutesy scrapbooks either. Tried it for a short time but realized it would be entirely too much work for how I scrapbook. Anyway. So papers are my demons. I will sort and get rid of things and then somehow the next day I'm full of paperwork again.

It was a good thing that Adam was one of the most laid back people in the planet. He never once yapped about my cleaning my paperwork piles--probably because he knew me well enough to know that my own yapping at myself was a constant in my head! It's interesting though, my "saver" attitude has come in handy. I think I have nearly every letter or note Adam has written to me, nearly everything that could possibly be tangible of him now. That is comforting.

I had to laugh a bit at the contents of that box tonight. The pictures were right on the top in little manila folders--they were the pictures that we bought of ourselves at our last cruise. They weren't great (so we thought at the time) but now they are priceless and perfect. We never took very many pictures of ourselves together through our years of marriage. It seemed we were always chasing kids to get pictures, somehow deemed those pictures as more important. I find myself very conscious of that now--taking pictures just of the kids without me in the pictures. I try periodically to have other people get a shot of us together. It's tricky now.

I found good and bad things in that box. The pictures are priceless. So is the card that I found from Adam on what must've been my birthday or something. But I found a few interesting things. Some writings I'd done that need to go in a burn pile. Thoughts from a different space in time. I found coupons. That makes me laugh. I still save coupons periodically but I find that they're generally more work than worth the 50 cents off some item when I'm wrestling 3 kids in a grocery store. I found a picture from Justin that I didn't know existed. And then I argued with myself whether he looked like Carson or not. Carson is such a fun mixture of Adam and me. I think in the end he will look more like Adam though. And then I found one more thing for my "to-do" pile: a giant medical school class picture. It was really nice. The "to-do" for me is writing down the stories I remember Adam telling me about his classmates. We talked about so much, even though these people didn't/don't know me, I felt much like I knew them--I knew their family stories, their relationship drama, their religious beliefs, their bedside manner, even as a young med student. It all was amusing. But more importantly, this picture reminded me of certain people that I'm sure do not know that Adam died and would want to know. Yep. I have more homework assignments. Off to search Facebook for more people. Facebook has turned strangely useful for my own therapeutic way of finding Adam's old friends. Good old technology. And to think it all started with a box tonight. How I wish there were 10 more such boxes like that in the basement. I'm bummed it is the last one.

At least I have new pictures of my handsome hubby to reflect on. I'm so grateful for that.