A Fresh Start

Faint grey light filtered into my bedroom from the edges of the windows where the ill-fitting curtains could not fully block out the day as it broke. I had been awake to watch the light's slow progression from the pale yellow glow of the porchlight to the dingey white of dawn. My eyes felt heavy and hot, and, while I thought several times about getting up to adjust the curtain, I hadn't moved an inch. I lay stiff and straight, the blankets pulled up to my chin, my eyes focused on the ceiling tiles overhead.  

It's the first day of spring, but in Vermont, that is nothing more than a date on the calendar. I know that beyond my flimsy curtains, the ground is still thickly coated in fresh snow. Even under the blankets, there is a chill in the house that does as much to keep me in bed as the weight of the task I've set myself.  

I've been up for hours, but I wait patiently for the beeping of the alarm to signal the start of my day. When it pierces the quiet at precisely 7:30, I dutifully turn it off and rise from my bed.  

Billy, my therapist, whose childish name belies his silver hair and the kindly laugh lines that frame his face, has told me that routine and structure are medicine, as important as the actual medicine he benevolently bestows upon me in monthly refills.

I smooth the sheets and pillow back into place and walk to the bathroom. I'm only 34, but I note a stiffening in my joints that's worse on these cold mornings. Despite an entire winter back in New England, my body hasn't yet readjusted.

Downstairs, I hear my sister, Jo, bustling around the kitchen, making coffee for us and breakfast for my daughter, Leah. Jo, ten years my senior, has outdone herself in mothering Leah and me for the last six months. Like me, she doesn't sleep much, but somehow, she has limitless energy for cooking and cleaning and making the decisions I've become incapable of making myself.  

Through the open door at the other end of the bathroom, I see the boxes that overflow from the closet into the corner of the bedroom Leah now sleeps in. They're each meticulously labeled with capital letters in Jo's steady handwriting.  

KITCHEN—DISHES  

BEDROOM—SHEETS  

None of the boxes have been moved or opened since they were packed up and deposited into this room. I hadn't been capable of decisions then either, and Jo had taken care of everything, driving us the whole way from Florida to Vermont. She and a neighbor had unloaded the boxes and moved them up the creaking stairs, settling them in the spots they still occupied as I sat on the porch with Leah, barely blinking.  

But Billy insisted it would be my responsibility to sort through them when I was ready. I would have to be the one to decide what could stay and what needed to go. 

***  

Last year, Labor Day weekend, was the last time I think I made a decision by myself. The three of us, me, Leah, and my husband, Vic, spent that week with his family in Cape Cod. The house, old and shabby and passed down through many generations already, was crowded with his siblings and nieces and nephews. It was a pleasant change from the wet heat that had settled over everything back in Florida, but I was beginning to miss home and the quiet life that being a small family of three had granted us.  

"How about we head into town for breakfast today?" I suggested as Vic and I got dressed that morning, dancing carefully around each other in the tiny bedroom we shared on the second floor.   

"Had enough?" he grinned as he slid a t-shirt over his dark, curly head.  

"Oh, no, it's not that, I'm just in the mood to go out," I insisted.  

He held my gaze for several long seconds, not saying a word, waiting for me to answer with less politeness.  

"Please get me out of here and feed me pancakes," I said finally.  

He laughed and told me he knew just the place.  

We made our way downstairs and picked up Leah from the large, finished basement where all of the older kids slept in cots and sleeping bags during this week-long slumber party each year. This was the second year she'd gone off to stay with her cousins instead of sleeping in the small bed with us.

We snuck out quietly, and began walking the half mile into town, Leah picking flowers from the shrubs along the road as we went. Vic stopped twice, stretching his arms and complaining about his back hurting.  

"I think my body has had enough of that mattress," he said. "I'm getting too old for this."  

"You're a real old man," I teased. "Turning the big 4-0 next month."  

"I think I'm ready for my walker," he groaned.  

"Maybe we should think about getting a hotel next summer."  

"You're probably right. My brother and I talked about what it would take to add an extension to the house, but it's so old it would probably cost a fortune. Might make more sense to get a place of our own."  

"We can't afford a house on the Cape," I laughed and rolled my eyes.  

"No, but we can probably afford something somewhere else. Probably something a lot bigger and nicer. My parents could rent this place out. I'm sure they'd like the extra income. The rest of us can start a new tradition."  

"I hate the idea of being priced out of a tradition," I said, frowning and thinking about why we had moved to Florida in the first place. We'd lived in New York since we first met ten years earlier. Vic had been raised in Manhattan and loved it, but by the time Leah was born we had to admit defeat. We just couldn't afford it anymore. We bought a place in Florida four years earlier that was more than twice the size of our small Brooklyn apartment and half the cost.  

"We're not being priced out. We're being birthed out. We all have too many kids," he said, smiling goofily.  

"Your brother and sister have too many kids. We just have the one good one." Leah had just turned six that summer and I knew that Vic wanted to try for another, but I was unsure. I loved being a mom, but I was so relieved to have her in school so that I could have some of my life back. I had finally found a job I loved, and it felt good to be back in adult company. At 34, I knew the clock was ticking, but I was very content with our lives, and didn't want anything to change. 

Vic stopped again and rubbed his left shoulder, twisting into a painful looking stretch.  

"Are you okay?" I asked. He looked pale and uncomfortable, and a sheen of sweat had appeared above his brow.  

"Yeah," he said, "just really achy. I think I might be getting sick."  

"Do you want to go back?" I asked, instinctively raising the back of my hand to his forehead. 

"You're not warm," I said.  

"No, I'm fine. Let's keep going, I'm starving."  

***  

"Good morning," Jo said as I entered the kitchen. She sat at the breakfast table in the corner, sipping her coffee and looking out the window where a light snow had begun to fall. A plate of toast sat untouched next to the day's paper, both cast aside with disinterest.  

"Happy spring," I muttered and poured a cup of coffee for myself.  

"Hm."  

"Leah left already?"  

"Just a few minutes ago." She knew I knew that. I rarely descended from my bedroom before Leah was on the school bus. Facing her first thing in the morning was too hard most days.  

We sat quietly, watching the flurries fall to join the soft mounds of snow that had been with us since November's first snowfall. It had been a long, cold winter, and we had spent most of it indoors. Or, I had spent most of it indoors. Leah and Jo had gone on wintry adventures, skating at the pond, skiing in the nearby mountains, going on school trips to a local museum I had never even heard of.  

I had spent that time wrapped in blankets, just being still.  

The only times I left the house were for my appointments with Billy and to grocery shop with Jo when she insisted I do so. Everything I did exhausted me; every step drained the energy from my body. So, for most of the winter, I did as little as I possibly could. I woke up, showered, changed into fresh clothes, and had a cup of coffee. I busied myself with chores around the house. Then I sat and watched Leah do homework or color in the afternoons while Jo made dinner. This was my routine, the only structure I could give myself.  

"I think I'm going to clean out some boxes today," I said, breaking our comfortable silence and causing Jo's head to snap up in surprise.  

"Are you sure?" she asked, the concern plainly visible on her face.  

"Yeah," I confirmed after a few moments of heavy silence. "I think it's time. I promised myself I'd do it in the spring. Fresh start and all."  

"You don't have to if you're not ready, Hannah," she answered quietly.  

I thought about this. I didn't actually have to do this today. There was no rule that said that you had to spring clean on the first day of spring. No one was asking me to sort my belongings into items to keep, donate, or throw in the trash. The boxes had sat neglected for six months, but they could stay there indefinitely for all Jo cared. Even Billy had cautioned against putting a timeline on this. 

"I know," I said. "It's time."  

***  

The ambulance arrived six minutes after I dialed 911. The operator, a kind and no-nonsense woman with a thick Boston accent, talked to me until they arrived, talking me through the steps to check that Vic was breathing, that nothing was obstructing his airway.  

Leah clung to me. She hadn't stopped crying since her father fell to the ground, crumpling mid-sentence and falling into the grass near the shoulder of the road. Her screams echoed around us until the sirens arrived, drowning her out.  

The small ambulance couldn't take us with them, so we watched them drive Vic away, sirens blaring, and waited for Vic's brother, Jeff, to pick us up and follow along to the hospital. He arrived minutes after I called him, wild-eyed and bare-chested behind the wheel of his parents' station wagon.  

Jeff dropped me off at the entrance to Cape Cod Hospital and drove back with Leah still sobbing in the backseat. He promised he'd be back to wait with me as soon as he dropped her off. Then he was gone, and I was completely alone.  

The morning was growing warm as I stood outside the entrance, too terrified to go in. I knew Vic was in there, I knew he was alone and scared, and so I forced myself to walk through the automatic doors and up to the tall wooden desk just inside, where I gave my name and Vic's name and was told, unceremoniously, to have a seat in the waiting area.  

"But can't I go be with him?" I asked in a voice that sounded small and whiny like my daughter's when she's tired.  

"I'm sorry, I'll let you know as soon as he's ready for visitors."  

"I'm not a visitor, I'm his wife," I insisted, more firmly now.  

"I'm sorry, Mrs. O'Connell. Please have a seat, and we'll let you know as soon as you can go in."  

The waiting area was nearly empty, and I sat in a stiff wing-backed chair in the far corner of the room and tried to slow my racing thoughts.  

How could someone have a heart attack at 39 years old? It didn't make sense. Vic was young. He was healthy. He ran five miles almost every morning and was annoyingly meticulous about his diet. He'd never had so much as a concerning blood test during his yearly physicals. None of it made sense.  

I don't know how long I sat there before Jeff arrived, fully dressed now and carrying a cardboard tray with paper cups of coffee.  

"Anything yet?" he asked, placing the tray down on the small table between our chairs.  

"Not yet."  

"What the hell happened?" he asked, handing me a coffee, which I sipped but couldn't taste.  

"I don't know," I told him. "We were walking into town to get pancakes. We were talking, and then he just...fell."  

"It just doesn't make sense. He's so young."  

"I know," I whispered.  

After a pause, Jeff added, "I mean, it's good he's so young, you know? He'll be fine. Probably just have to get some meds or something."  

"Yeah," I agreed, holding the paper cup firmly between my hands.  

Shortly after, when we were offered condolences and a bag with Vic's belongings, the clothes and wallet he'd had with him that morning, I was still gripping that cup between my hands. The coffee in it was still warm.  

In less than two hours, I had become a widow.  

***  

Jo offered to help me with the boxes, but I insisted that I needed to do this alone. I could see how reluctant she was to give in, but she didn't say a word when I got up, rinsed my mug in the sink, and headed back upstairs.  

The boxes with Vic's belongings were the furthest back in the closet, behind boxes of sheets and towels and books and all the other accumulated ornaments that had adorned our completely normal lives. We would need all of those things again someday, when I could spend whole hours out of bed and could work and take care of us again. We'd decorate new rooms with our old things and have a life lived outside of this house. Someday.  

Vic's things amounted to just five boxes. He'd lived simply, by habit rather than necessity; he had never really adjusted to all the extra space in the house in Florida. I smiled, thinking about how bare that house had felt when we first moved in, until Leah's growing collection of toys and clothes and art supplies had completely taken over all the empty space we had marveled at.  

The first box, marked VIC—CLOTHES, was mostly t-shirts. I could smell his faint, warm smell as soon as the box was opened, soapy and spicy, and my eyes immediately filled with hot, prickly tears.  

"Keep, donate, throw away," I reminded myself. Just three piles. I took a deep breath and began sorting.  

The Guns and Roses t-shirt, his favorite, went into the keep pile. The lesser worn shirts could be donated or thrown out, depending on their condition. But anything he wore often couldn't be parted with. No matter which pile it was destined for, I gently held each shirt, absorbing whatever memories it held, and then neatly folded it and set it aside.  

I repeated this process with dress clothes and socks and pajamas and hats and shoes and office supplies and DVDs and books and papers and baseball cards and concert tickets, all the miscellaneous bric-a-brac of 39 years of life.  

When I was done, I found myself surrounded by piles on all sides, more than I thought had been in the boxes when I had started. Hours had passed, the day had moved so quickly I hadn't noticed how late it had gotten. Leah would be home from school soon. I wanted to be done before then.  

I started repacking everything that was now in the keep pile, mostly shirts and books and anything I thought that Leah might want to have someday, anything she'd be able to remember. 

When everything was in its place, and the room was tidy again, all boxes now fitting neatly inside the closet, I stood and stretched and looked out the window.  

The snow had stopped, and the sun peaked out brightly from the clouds as they cleared. Soon, the snow would melt away, revealing all the green that had been waiting, patiently, for more pleasant weather. The gloomy winter would give way to the brightness of spring. We’d spend the summer in Vermont. At least the summer.  

It wouldn’t be so terrible to stay longer, I thought.  

I could sell the house in Florida and stay up here permanently. Leah and I could get a place of our own, someplace nearby so Jo would always be close. Someplace where we could unpack those final boxes and begin again.  

A fresh start, I thought. That’s exactly what we need.