You see, I moved his bed today. It was the first time I moved it since we put it in his bedroom nine years ago. And I had not vacuumed underneath it since then. For the last three-and-a-half years, he has been sharing a room with his baby sister. She’s running out of room in her crib at the end of his bed, and soon she’ll be using his bed with the duvet patterned with green circles. In preparation for the change, the room needed cleaning. HIs backpack is still under his desk. His water bottle is still tucked inside with the remains of the water he took to school on his last day of school. His daily calendar on his side table still says October 8, 2014.
After he died, I left everything in its place, yet over the years, his room has also become a dumping ground for all of the things that I have collected, for all of the things people have given us. There is a giant green paper lantern from his memorial at the elementary school he attended for five years. There is a jar of post-it notes with words of kindness written on them from his classmates from the first anniversary of his death. There are rolled up banners in the closet and t-shirts hanging on the walls from the charity runs that his classmates organized each year until they graduated from high school.
His bed still has the sheets that he slept on the last night he slept in this house. His pillow case has not been washed. His beloved stuffed penguins wait for his return, their black heads resting on his pillow.
As I moved the bed frame, I was confronted with the piles of his art from school that I’d hoarded over the years, yet never hung on the walls to enjoy. Each precious piece made during school art classes encased in folders made from large pieces of construction paper. They are all priceless, irreplaceable. Part of me doesn’t want to open those folders because once I do, I will have seen every last piece of art that he made. It’s possible that there won’t be any other opportunities to see things he’s made that I’ve never seen before.
The room was left in disarray when I went to pick the three year old up from preschool. Seeing all of Riley’s stuffed animals in a big pile on the floor, she said, “Move all of this stuff out of here.” I hadn’t expected that request. “No, I’m just cleaning. They will go back on the bed once it’s made again.” She asked why. “Because you’re still sharing a room with Riley and these are his things.”
She was satisfied with my reply as I closed the door for her nap time. The Dyson is still full of dust, though, and I like imagining the physicalness of Riley. His hand in mine. His arms around me and mine around his torso. His weight in my lap. The shape of his ears, the boney boy knees, his nibbled cuticles. Along with a few hair clippings, some baby teeth, and his ashes, there isn’t anything else. LIke the art that I’m apprehensive about looking at, knowing there won’t be more in the future, I’m apprehensive about emptying the dust into the trash. It feels like a last gift. Or an unexpected hello from my boy.
I will empty the canister when she wakes. In the meantime, I will open the pouch with his hair in it, brush it against my cheek, and try to remember how it felt all those years ago when I hugged him, his mop in my face and in my eyes. Exactly where it should be, even though if he were still alive today, it would likely be my hair in his face and my cheek on his chest as the boy would have grown into a man.
