In our accordion file of important documents we keep our social security cards, passports, voter registration cards, marriage certificate, birth certificates, and wills. We also have Lev's death certificates and autopsy, Lev's passport, Lev's birth certificate, and Lev's social security card.
Whenever we need to get to a document it is like entering a field of emotional land mines. I steel myself, getting ready for each careful step, scared to death, not knowing if the next piece of paper will rip my heart out, bring tears to my eyes and make it hard to breathe, or will it just be my passport or Liana's birth certificate.
Tonight, after many tears, I retrieved Tony's and my passports and Liana's birth certificate for our trip to Vancouver. I also kissed Lev's social security card and reviewed his autopsy which added more awful images to my repertoire of traumatic images.
Then I decided to avoid stumbling through the land mine of our important documents in the future and I reorganized the file. I moved Lev's documents to a Lev section in the same files. I renamed the "unpaid bills" file "Lev", which was the only empty one, but also seemed appropriate. The grief is always unfinished and hangs around, coming back again and again like an unpaid bill. Moving his documents was the right thing to do for my mental health, but it means Lev isn't an active part of our life anymore. He gets filed away as the rest of us continue on, using our damn documents. It is all so unfair; poor Levi is missing out on his life.
I miss him and feel so badly for him.
