Clutter

"Clutter" is an odd word, a common word, a trite word, with an apparent low level of concern. Yet that is the word that comes to mind when I think of my life now.  It is clutter with a variety of issues on a multitude of levels.

There is the physical clutter on my desk, on my book shelves, in files and drawers. Memorabilia from my life with Janell abounds throughout the house. Legal and financial papers in folders and stacks lay strewn in my office, waiting to be discarded or filed. The countertop where Janell did her scrapbooking is layered with pictures, some in frames and others in stacks, again waiting to be hung, placed on display or stored. The remnants of the get-well cards, the condolence cards and the other periphenalia of her service are loosely boxed or stacked in baskets. Her clothes are segregated into two areas: her professional clothing is hung in the closet, waiting for the trip to the YWCA to be distributed to women needing them for interviews and potential jobs. Her others clothes are boxed and labeled, and sitting in the downstairs family room, waiting to be donated to either Goodwill or to the YWCA.

However there are other forms of clutter, less apparent but more subtle. There is the internal clutter, my mind filled with thoughts of Janell, tasks that still need to be completed, goals left dangling; hopes that need to be packed away; and a life that requires reframing. And there is the relationship clutter, friends who have slipped away and have to be let go; shifting responsibilities that need to be analyzed and readjusted related to children who are not really children or adolescents for that matter, but unfortunately not fully adults either; duties to a parent and sibling that mandate attention; and finally picking up the pieces of my life that lay scattered all over my house, my work and my world, like a piece of crystal dropped on a concrete floor.

Clutter, as I've said, may not be the appropriate word for family, friends, my physical world and the internal workings of my mind and heart, but it captures the sense of chaos and disarray that exist in my life. And where is my broom and dustpan?