It’s The Other 5%
It’s The Other 5%…
As the days, months, and years pass by after a loss, you encounter moments that are tough to get through. Most of these moments are expected, and you can see them coming from a mile away. You figure out ways to make the best of these unfavorable situations especially when it relates to the loss of a loved one. You try to prepare the best you can and in all honesty it helps. Don’t over think it and don’t over analyze it. Just make it through and smile.
Of these situations, most are the typical birthdays, anniversaries, kids 1st’s, and other milestones that at one time you expected to experience with the person that you lost. These situations account for 95% of the moments when short waves of grief or sorrow may overcome us. But that still leaves 5%.
It’s the other 5% that gets you good. It pulls the rug out from under you. It can turn a smile or good day on its back in fractions of a second. It’s often short lived and sometimes it’s gone even faster then it arrives, but the impact is much greater than the expected 95%.
Let me tell you about the other 5%.
It’s stumbling across the unused coupons that they cut out with intentions of using at one time, which now lie at the bottom of their purse never to be used. It’s the keys on the key ring that they had used to open the front door or start the car to drive to work. It’s the winter coat that hangs in the closet, the same place they hung it when they last used it. Oh yeah…and the shoes they last walked in right below it.
It’s their bathrobe on the back of the bathroom door. Their toothbrush still in the toothbrush holder, the hand-soap that sits on the sink that they purchased because they could never walk by that certain aisle without buying a new scented fragrance for the season. It’s the smell of their perfume that smacks you in the face when you open the medicine cabinet where the bottle still rests.
It’s the china and knickknacks on the dining room hutch that you are afraid to clean around because you know the last person that placed them there. It’s the pictures on the wall that you don’t want to move or switch out because of who hung them there. It’s the spices in the spice rack that are well past the expiration date, but you know who bought them, so you leave them there and each time you see them you say, “I’m going to leave them there just a little while longer.”
It’s the kids clothes that you’re afraid to get rid of and keep squeezing the kids into because at somepoint they will outgrow everything that they purchased for them. You know that day is coming, but it looks like it fits okay so you have the kids wear it one more time and one more time and one more time.
It’s the dent on the bumper of the car that they put there in a minor accident. Nowadays you rub your hand over it every time you pass by it because its something that they did. It’s the receipts in their glove compartment and the valet parking tickets on there dashboard. The fingerprints on the window. The last CD they listened to in the CD Player and the radio station presets.
It’s the book on the dresser that they never finished. The bookmark still holds the page they left off on. It’s the “feel better” gifts people sent to you that they never got to use. It’s the DVR still recording the shows that they loved to follow.
It’s other 5% that hits hard sometimes.
But we make it through.
– Mindset Matters
