Remember when you were a kid and your mom or dad would tell you to go clean your room? And remember, when you were done, how you’d go say “Mom, Dad! Come look at my room!” It was tidy and you’d worked hard on it so you wanted to show someone; you wanted them to be proud of you.

Maybe that’s just me. I know that part of mine and part of my husband’s love language was words of affirmation. It’s one of my kids’ love languages, and I can already see that in my one-year-old granddaughter, too. Honestly, my husband and I could never really figure out what our primary love language was because we both had a strong affinity for all five of them. When he was alive, cleaning up the house while he was at work was an act of service for me, another love language. I knew he loved clean sheets and a made bed. I knew chaos made him stressed while organization made him feel more calm. The odd thing about this is that we both had some serious ADD going on and always had to work hard to be organized. So when we were home and wanted to relax, that’s what tended to fall by the wayside after the struggle of keeping everything detailed and organized at work.

Fast forward to now: I’m experiencing what I assume is a new part of the grief process. I make this assumption because this inclination is absolutely not ordinary for me. I’m cleaning. Everything. I’m typically kind of a pack-rat (not a hoarder, by far, but I do tend to wonder if “I might need that later”) but right now I am purging my home. Mind you, nothing of my husband’s is in the throw-away or donate piles. I’m not there yet and don’t know that I ever, ever will be. But, for example, I worked in my kitchen for about six hours today, simplifying my life. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to reach minimalist status but, to me, this is as close as I’d ever get.

Chaos…for almost eight months my mind has been pure and unadulterated chaos. I don’t like it. It makes me feel the way that being late makes me feel. I hate being late. And if I am, by chance, running late – for anything, really – then I feel a very similar sensation to panic. I don’t like to be in a hurry (although my mind and my body always act like I am, in fact, in a hurry) and having to rush just causes me undue stress and anxiety. And that is the feeling I have lived with these last eight months…constantly.

With no point in acts of service for my husband, I had let my home just run amok as far as cleaning or even keeping things in their place were concerned. My home didn’t become a hovel, but I definitely was uncomfortable when people showed up to visit. I know, I know; people understand, but I still felt disgraced. To top that off, I couldn’t really sit down to write without constantly thinking about the mess around me. I began to realize that I felt stuck. Not stuck in my home; I adore this home that we bought together. I just felt stuck in the chaos and, apparently my brain suddenly said “we can fix this!”

From a therapeutic perspective, I do somewhat anticipate getting the house back in order and then cognitively realize that none of the cleaning “fixes” it. I expect that my subconscious thinks this is going to make me feel “all better” but, when I’m done, my husband still will not be here so there is bound to be a let down. Still, for today, it feels as if I have accomplished something.

But back to the first paragraph, when you asked mom & dad to come see your sparkling clean room (and hoped they didn’t check under the bed or in the closet for the things you stashed away to create a more pristine appearance…)

When I cleaned house while my husband was at work, I would eagerly anticipate his arrival back home. Obviously, I was always happy to see him get home for lots of reasons but when I had really worked hard to make our home pleasant and comfortable, he would come in and I could just feel the sigh of peace that came from him. He didn’t have to say “you did a great job!” or “I’m so proud of you.” I just knew he felt comfortable and glad to be home. He might say “the house looks really nice, honey” or “this dinner is really delicious” but he didn’t have to; I knew how he felt about it and I wanted him to be able to relax at home without feeling there were things he needed to do right after work. Seeing him at peace gave me peace. Reading that back it sounds like some Leave It To Beaver show but it’s true; maybe I was born in the wrong era.

Today the kitchen is pretty close to tip-top shape, but he isn’t coming home to see it. I found myself feeling sad because “it’s all for nothing.” I know it’s not, but a part of me can’t help feeling that way. There’s a saying that goes: “If a tree falls in the forest but no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?“ If I clean my house and it doesn’t really matter to anyone but me, does it really make a difference? It’s dumb, I know, I know. Some of you who are super perfect at keeping everything spotless all the time are cringing at how this sounds but it’s only one of the things that grief brain does to you…one of the many.

To clean or not to clean may not be a struggle in your world. With depression, however, even taking a shower can feel like a chore not worth completing. As gross as that sounds, things that are simple, everyday tasks for most people require gargantuan effort and determination for someone fighting the minute-to-minute pitfalls of even regular depression, much less major depressive disorder and/or C-PTSD.

I don’t even know how to end this blog post. I guess I just want you to know that if you are walking through grief and you feel something like this, like you just really miss how your loved one would recognize your accomplishments and appreciate them or even celebrate them with you, you are not alone. A lot of things about grief make you feel like you’re literally “going crazy.” I talk to myself (or to him, as if he were here) more than I talk to anyone else these days. It is alarming and disarming even to me, at times, but I’m sure it certainly is when someone walks in and finds me doing it. And yet, most times when I speak to another friend who is also a widow, I find that whatever it was I experienced was, indeed, something they went through, too. Isn’t it strange how we all think we are so different but, so many times, we are actually so much the same? I don’t know if I would call all of the stages or phases of my grief journey “normal,” but they’re as normal as I get. Yours are, too.