Just A Box of Tissues

 A Box of Tissues.

It's not a box of gold to treasure. It's not a container of trinkets to cherish. This box of tissues sitting there on the bathroom counter, right there near the window sill, right there where he liked it to be, it isn't worth anything at all to anyone- but me.

So many things have been taken out of their place- it was inevitable because one of the ways I deal with uncertainty's unfathomable stress as it bombards me is to move things. You know you can't see stress, but you feel it's affects in your life if you take a few minutes to recognize them. I don't feel like a wind-up toy ready to be released the instant a fingertip moves from my string. Yet, underneath the surface of my skin it's there, this odd vibration telling me my life is out of sync. There is a strange energy I need to expend and believe it or not most of the time I'm not even aware it's there. That's stress. It hides inside us playing its special music unique each of us. The silent tune resonates through my life right now fixed in me for the time being and I sing along with it by moving things around. There's a purpose to each move, it's not random and chaotic. There's a thought process involved.  When Jerry was in and out of rehabs and hospitals for almost a year it first started - that invisible thrumming of stress. When it became apparent he would eventually come home different from when he left, that things would need to be moved, my newly strung internal instrument of stress found a source of sweet, yet brief, release.

Things had to be moved, and moved they would be.

You know that too wide dresser had to be replaced by a thin shelf. A too big of a chair exchanged for a smaller chair. A desk in slow decay- gone for another used desk, but only at the beginning stages of its decline. A sleeping chair made way for a hospital bed.  All these many changes resulted in many moves. First things had to be rearranged this way and that way just to see if we could manuver with a wheelchair moving about- that was a lot of moving involving many days and nights (it varied) of doing so. Of course, all the moving of things really meant little until Jerry could come home and test run through it all. My feeble attempts to mimic his invalid state never got it quite right. 

I could wheel around through the room this way and that way, I could reach this and that, I had access to this thing and that other thing… all in a wheelchair… but it wasn't the same not one bit. I wasn't weak through muscle atrophy. I wasn't wracked with pains- sharp, dull, and everywhere in-between. You can't truly imitate the reality of another's existence- but - you can try.

You could ask my son about this little moving stress monster inside me- he'd come home or wake up and see the daily changes and shake his head, voicing his concern with his oft repeated words-- "Don't overdo it, Mom, please." My mostly mute stressling inside me would choose this time to speak for me. "I won't." I'd reassure Matt, and of course I never ever moved things with the idea of overdoing it, I can't speak for Stressling though. 

Now in our lives, with Jerry no longer here, on a whole different level things are being moved constantly, almost daily. The upheaval of my life demands it because of my lack of financial security. I don't have time to rest and grieve, I have time to move and mourn. My stress simmers inside sometimes buried deep, other times in ripples under my skin. But isn't that the way it is for a lot of people? Worries, stress, this isn't unique to me or you, it's just life. 

Let's return to the unmoved tissue box that has managed to escape the constantly moving household landscape of my life. I had an awful revelation today as I plucked a single tissue from the box and realized there were only a few left… 

How will I use the last tissue from the very last box of tissues we will ever have shared? 

It's only a tissue box, it's only tissues, but they were our tissues. He touched that box, he used the tissues that came before. Ah, the things that stand out as I move and mourn, silly little things. The question remains unanswered, I don't know if I will use the last tissue from the very last box of tissues we shared. I just don't know.

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C.S. Lewis quote- "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world" "Always keep alive an eager longing for the next." 

'Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.' Romans 8:28

George MacDonald quote- "The Christian life is a constant fighting. You think that Jesus Christ came to save you from any suffering and to do you good. He came to save you from your sins, and until you are saved from them He will step between you and NO suffering." 

'As many as I love I rebuke and chasten. Be zealous therefore and repent.' Rev. 3:19 

Zec_13:9  And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The LORD is my God

Jas 1:12  Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.