My room of requirement

The paint turned out okay, and the guys had to fix it....4 coats later to cover the messy edges, I think they learned their lesson...I made my kids clean up some of the dust and junk they left behind. I'll post some pictures tomorrow or maybe the next day. The master bedroom ended up grey, with white trim, specifically a trendy new shade from Benjamin Moore called Escarpment, with Cloud White trim and ceilings.

The baby room has ended up a bright sunny yellow called Golden Crust from Para. (No longer made, had to be custom mixed.) The trim, door, and chair rail is a bright blue, a blue very similar to Thomas the Tank's engine. I got it from a movie poster of a movie called Thomas and the Magic Railroad. (First one pictured at the top of the link) The movie was filmed here in TO and I knew some of the people who worked on it. We had the movie poster mounted on a wooden backing, and it was always meant to go either in the playroom, or in the room of the new baby.

You know, the room that never got to be---until now.

We bought this house in 2003 when I was pregnant with Miranda. It had 4 bedrooms, perfect for us, including a lovely little room that was perfect for a baby. We knew we would have to renovate the house at some point, but for now, it was just what we needed. We got into a bidding war, paid over asking price, and won the right to mortgage ourselves to the hilt.

All for that room. Our boys could've kept sharing their one bedroom at the old house, and we could've stayed there for a few more years. But the fact that I stayed pregnant past 6 weeks, then made it to 12 weeks, all meant that we could no longer put it off. The spring market was the best way to sell our house, and find another one.

By the time we moved in, the baby was dead, and every time I looked at that room, I felt sick. It was covered in an animal print border, but I did not have the mental energy to rip it off. We put our computer there, and our files and papers and junk. Mostly, I just closed the door, and tried not to think about what should be there instead.

I muddled through that year, and in 2004, we were going to use it for the next baby we were expecting, but as you know, that ended at 16 weeks....I'd finally got the energy to start ripping off the wall border, since I wanted to decorate differently, but I never got any further, and I closed the door and walked away again.

When my husband started his new business, he needed a home office, and we couldn't ignore the room, but I could not do it alone either, and my husband and I could only argue over the room. We'd be getting along just fine---and we walked in that room and tensed up. It was like a poison place to us. So I hired my organizer and she and I, over two days, rearranged the room, purged the papers, put up shelves and a desk, and made it into a workspace for him. Nothing like an impersonal third party to help carry you through the painful parts of life when you can't walk that walk.....

Since then, he worked in the room, but I couldn't. I just closed the door and walked away.

This is why the last week has been so stressful for me. The room that has never properly fit in our house, will finally have it's purpose fulfilled, I hope. Just seeing it empty and painted and starting to be furnished is......

I can't finish that sentence.

I want to write "healing", but every step is so painful, how can this be it? I want this sore spot to be gone. If I can't change the memories, then I know we'll either have to sell the house, or tear it down with a wrecking ball. I can't just sit here, year after year, with it left hanging like this.

My friend Warren Kinsella has a post about the kind of time that grief takes. He normally writes political or punk rock posts, but every once in a while, he writes about his family and his grief over the loss of his father, and then, he writes such breathtakingly beautiful things, I wonder why he ever writes about any other subject. To quote him,"I cannot tell this friend that the world ever seems the same, afterwards. It doesn't. If you are fortunate, however, it starts to feel less sad. It takes a long time."

He's right. It has taken a long time, too long. Five years is enough. I don't want to keep closing doors and walking away. It's time to feel less sad now.