I’ve been going through the boxes at lunch and doing an ok job. It hasn’t been as hard as I thought, until today. I decided to start going through his clothes. We’re going to have a blanket made out of some of this favorite Tshirts and stuff. Thought I’d start going through those and pick out the shirts we’d be using or would like to use. I was prepared to see his clothes and to feel them but I wasn’t prepared for his scent. I opened the box and was surrounded by him. Not every shirt brought back strong memories. Those were moved into the “we’ll do something with them” stack. But the shirts that I picked up that I could picture him wearing are in the keep pile. Kaleb was a creature of habit who didn’t like to “organize” his room so he always wore the same clothes over and over again because they were in the top of his drawers, or still out in a stack on his dresser. The child had more clothes than most kids I know, but he only wore a select few. I found his youth group shirt, and his “Beast Feast’ shirt he got with Jimmie that he loved. His fluorescent shirts that he loved. He’ll have fluorescent shorts and shoes in different boxes I’m sure. It was a mixture of seeing his stuff and smelling him. The power of scent is an amazing thing. One scent can bring back so many memories. I keep a tub of his hair gel in my bathroom that I occasionally open so I don’t forget what he smelled like before he’d go out. Whenever I take that out and smell it, I picture him coming out of the bathroom with his hair freshly spiked of doing some kind of funny modeling move.
I ran across his toothbrush after we moved and I am a practical person, I had thrown away all our old toothbrushes I used for scrubbing in tight spots when we moved. I needed a new jewelry cleaner brush. So Kaleb’s toothbrush is now my ring cleaner. So when I forget and put lotion on with my wedding ring on, I pull out his toothbrush and scrub away at my ring. I’m sure the jewelry cleaner killed any mouth germs and I get to think about him every time I clean my jewelry.
So normally at lunch I finish a box a day, today I had to call Jimmie and warn him I was leaving Kaleb’s clothes on the dining room table because I didn’t want him to walk in and be taken by surprise. The surprise moments get you. I might or might not finish them tonight, it might wait for tomorrow at lunch. Then I can prepare myself for both the sight and the smell. I’ll also go through and pull out some of the shirts we received that were made in his honor for us. We have the suicide prevention ribbon shirts Melinda’s softball team wore, the K shirts his friends and JROTC people made and a shirt from his youth group that they gave us, I’ve just had those put away with a lot of the funeral stuff trying to figure out what to do with them. I learn more and more each day what my triggers are and how to learn to handle them. I’m not always successful. Sometimes the tears roll freely, other times it’s just one here and there and sometimes I have full conversations and keep a positive happy attitude.
I’ll end this with telling one of the funniest stories I can remember him telling me. It is completely inappropriate and off color. If you will be offended stop reading now. I’ll try and recount this as accurately as I can. I wasn’t there and I’m going off what Kaleb told me. They were in class right after all this stuff went down with Jared the Subway spokesman. He said his teacher was reading on the news that he’d been convicted or plead guilty or something to the charges against him. Kaleb pipes up “Talk about eating fresh”. He said the whole class broke out in laughter. So he tells me this story and I have to find a way to keep a straight face and tell him how inappropriate of a comment that was and how he can’t say stuff like that in school. And he really has to think about what is about to come out of his mouth. That even though it might be funny in some surroundings, like if you were a comedian or something, there are some places that we have to watch how we word things. Then I turned around and bust out laughing. These are the things I miss. His puns, and quick comebacks. He was the King of sarcasm. People say that was a cover for his true struggles. I think the kid was actually just a funny person, with no filter and he did enjoy making people laugh. Yes I believe he struggled with not always fitting in but we’ll never know what was an act and what was the real Kaleb. But even if it was an act he portrayed doesn’t that still make him Kaleb. That’s really who he was.
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