If you haven’t been watching the news or following the Twitstagrambook feeds of your friends and loved ones in New England, we’ve been effectively hobbled by repeated “significant weather events” for several weeks now. We have been buried under many feet of filthy, dog-pee-and-car-exhaust-riddled snow. It’s not Currier & Ives; it’s the Apocalypse. Roofs have collapsed, snow emergencies and parking bans are everywhere, and public transportation has become a terrible, terrible joke.

Because of what I’ve learned in recovery, I am grasping onto a precious few straws of gratitude in the midst of all of this. One is that we have not lost power during any of the meteorological pummelings we’ve received. Another is that my mother-in-law is snug and warm in the memory unit of the assisted living facility she’s been in since late June. I cannot even fathom how awful all of this would have been had we still been in daily, on-the-premises charge of her care. I frequently have to stop and remind myself of this as I start to complain about the 10’ piles of snow outside our house which are obstructing our view of the 10’ piles of snow across the street.

But in the midst of all of this, we’re trying to move. Granted, we’re just moving from our downstairs apartment into the upstairs apartment formerly occupied by my mother-in-law. But this has required Herculean amounts of organizational skills which I do not possess. Purging a three-bedroom apartment of possessions and clutter acquired over a period of decades, when the former occupant is still among the living, is emotionally trying and just plain shittyawfulhorrid. It is constantly second-guessing and attempting to determine value, both sentimental and monetary, of these things. What goes to charity? What gets saved for the grandchildren? What gets thrown out? I try to be efficient, and wind up wandering weepily from room to room, overwhelmed to the point of distraction.

I have, however, managed to get most of this packed up. There are boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff that can go to charity at any time, except that it can’t really, because of the aforementioned piles of snow. They have turned our fairly wide street into a barely-plowed-out path flanked on both sides by pee-stained, icy behemoths. No truck could idle there for even 10 minutes without drawing the ire of our neighbors and those who use our street as a throughway to get onto Route 1 more quickly.

I am beyond stressed about this. We have to be completely moved upstairs in a matter of weeks; our friends are moving into the downstairs apartment and must do so by the end of March. The whole shebang requires trucks. Big trucks. If I think about it too much I start getting wheezy and unhinged. I mean, more so than usual.

So I’ll talk about one thing I managed to do which I’d been putting off for a long time, and that’s empty out the cabinet under the bathroom sink. Most people would think, “What’s terrible about that? You toss a couple of bottles of Drano and a few old hairbrushes, right?”

No, friends – that cabinet was filled not only with the things you’d expect to find in a bathroom cabinet, but a whopping load of real bad mojo.

As some of you know, the final year of in-home caregiving for us was pretty bad. My mother-in-law’s mental state had deteriorated to the point where she could not/would not care for herself in the most basic ways. Brushing her teeth. Bathing. Properly disposing of toilet paper. Her Alzheimer’s had also ramped up her pre-existing OCD, causing her to scratch and pick at her skin, leading to a constant threat of cellulitis and other infections. Mornings and evenings were spent donning latex gloves and coating her hands, arms, and ankles with both prescription and over-the-counter antibiotic ointment. Because she would slap at me and yell if I tried to get her to take a bath, many times I had to give up that particular battle and use pre-moistened washing mitts, which she would permit, up to a point, when she would then threaten to scream if I came near her with them. And when incontinence became an issue, the cabinet was then the home of the flushable wipes and Depends.

So this cabinet was something I’d been trying to avoid, even with the knowledge that I no longer was responsible for any of these things on any significant level. I just didn’t want to go there. I didn’t want to open the scary bathroom cabinet and deal with the physical and symbolic throwing away of these things. I felt guilt, remorse, sorrow, fear, and resentment, in varying order and degree. It felt very much like avoiding looking under the bed, or into my psyche, really the same thing if you think about it.

But one afternoon about 2 weeks ago, I grabbed a trash bag and did it. Out went the prescription ointment, the latex gloves, the Depends. What I could handle saving, I saved (boxes of gauze pads and BandAids, hand sanitizing wipes). I tied up the bag when I was done and brought it into the room where we’re storing all the stuff that needs to be thrown out/trucked away.

Here’s where I’d like to say that I felt as though a great weight was lifted, that I was washed clean in the light of my bravery or some such bullshit. It didn’t feel great. It felt sad. It felt crappy. I have to do this. When faced with any seemingly insurmountable obstacle, my mantra has always been “It’ll get done because it HAS to get done.” You’d be surprised how calming this actually is. It’s much more of a soul balm than “You don’t have to do it alone!” or “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle!” Because I’ve found that neither of those things are necessarily true. Sometimes you do have to do it alone. You have to go to the places that scare you, even when it’s just under the sink, and you have to do it alone. Because you HAVE been given more than you can handle, and this is one less thing you have to worry about.