The things you don't need anymore

I am trying to finish a project that has stretched out too long; cleaning out your room to get rid of "baby" things still lurking in the corners and make room for Ian to share a room with you.  Perhaps passing on outgrown baby things generally gives a mom's heart a twinge, but I do think your "outgrowns" comprise an unusual list.  So here's a very small inventory, the mix of your first three years, odds and ends still hanging around from earlier "cleaning outs" . . .
--Size small swim diapers
--Three Huggies containers used for home-made wipes . . . my potty trained (mostly) boy doesn't need so many stockpiled wipes
--infant sized yellow hospital gown, one you wore in those first two weeks in the hospital
--three U-Bag urine collection bags (missed these when I passed on all the syringes and alcohol wipes to Brittney for her Africa mission trip)
--two Tegaderm patches
--sterile packaged latex gloves
--baby blankets
--pacifier (never used)
--three stuffed "happy dolls" symbolizing goodwill and healing, made by children in Japan (a NYC momento)
--"Elijah's Room" signs and decorations made by Hannah and friends for your hospital room when you were a baby
--pic of you mounted on a little "card" for a Christmas tag,  one left over, others used for little gifts for our doctor and nurses your first Christmas
--two monogrammed burp cloths
--scrap paper where your Dad ("I call my Daddy Dad" you like to say) jotted down your full name, with options on the middle name varying

It is time.  Time to put away in a box somewhere those keepsakes from your baby days, to get rid of other stuff . . . to make more room for today.

And somehow, my mother's mind and heart tries to sort out it all, what to keep locked in memory's safebox, what to let drift away.  My mind cannot hold it all anymore than this little bedroom can.  But this sifting is even harder, and perhaps it is my reticence to do it that has kept this poor little room so cluttered.

There are the things I cannot help but keep--the 2 AM memory of your little 7 week old body lying on a table, with about 5  nurses standing around you, taking turns trying to get your veins ("we'll all try two times"), until your Dad stopped them after "only" three tries (they were offended), you screaming, pitifully trying to breathe . . Your head thrown back up and to the side, trying to find the "sweet spot" where you could breathe around your tumor . . . Your smiles and happy spirits on your first day of chemo, and generally every day, kicking your foot with the pulse ox like crazy, that little light just dancing around . . All the infant and toddler nights, morning, days of npo (nothing to eat/drink) and your happy, resilient spirit . . . And someday, I will need to pull your jammies you wore in NY after your big surgery out of your drawer, and I will store them away.  I will keep the memory of how you looked so dapper the fourth day after your surgery, when you finally began to get up and walk and went on a trek from the POU to the hospital playroom on the 9th floor of MSKCC 2-3 times.

There are memories that will inevitably drift away.  I already know this, when something triggers a memory of how one of the kids (now which one was it?!) said a particular word so cutely . . I won't be able to hold it all. There are things, aren't there?, that might as well be left behind.  Can I leave behind the lagging, dogging sense, that this is just another break but we will get hit again?  Should I, or does it make appreciation for today sweeter?  Can I leave behind the need to read up on all the latest in NB treatment, and on every odd illness that touches children in my circle?  Where do I put all that energy I devoted to your active treatment, and researching options for your care and healing?

Obviously not to cleaning your room.  So I better get back to it.  Sifting, sorting, what keep and what to let go .. with the sounds of you and Ian playing, laughing as the soundtrack.