The Cousin George Construct

So, this is another of the things that have helped...

In the week following Michael's service, we moved out of the house we've lived in for over twenty-three years. As we packed, I heard from the other room, "Moooom?" The voice of distress.

I was in one storage room facing a box of Michael's Christmas ornaments. Our daughter was in the next room, facing a box of his childhood treasures.  We had both been punched in the chest, stopped in our tracks by the sight of these boxes.. We knew that this would continue to happen as we packed.

I really feel that this was a God thing, that He gave me this idea in the midst of that difficult moment.

"Okay," I said, "we need to reframe this so we can survive packing. Let's say this: we have this weird cousin George who left a whole bunch of his stuff in our house. Because he is so weird, he wrote someone else's name on everything."

We had so much to do, and we did not have the physical or emotional energy to have our hearts broken every time we came across something of Michael's. We needed a way to just keep going, to move past those moments without falling apart.

Curiously, the Cousin George idea really helped us! We have used it often.

Any time something is a little too close to the bone, a little too close to the deep pain, we "Cousin George" the moment. If we need to talk about something revolving around his death, and it's a moment when it just hurts too much to say his name, we say George instead. We talk about George's clothes, George's birthday, and so on.

There are still some things that are just too deep and too raw, that you just can't "Cousin George" your way out of, but in many moments this past four months, this way of reframing the situation has proven truly helpful.