People deal with bereavement in different ways. I keep sadness private and gallows humour public. So just a warning that you’re going to get a bit of that. It’s an appropriate healing method.
You also probably know that rearranging the living space helps, as it swaps memories for potential (you know, living space). And one does tend to want to remove the spot-where-it-happened.
It also matters when somebody suffering a mental illness has occupied a section of the house, which they have slowly turned into an impenetrable twilight zone. It became a protective fort, filled to overflowing with clothing, bags, shoes, and Unknown Feminine Objects. The windows blocked off and lit by candles all day. Everything glued with dust and candle wax. I have spent days on end clearing it out. The main feature was bags. Under several layers of clothing there’ll be a big duffel bag marked PRADA in which there’s a outer bag marked PRADA, inside that will be the PRADA hand bag, inside that will be a PRADA purse and then inside that the sort of treasures they list in JRPG’s – golden coins? used tissues? strange doctor’s letter?
It’s about three weeks now and I’ve reached the bare floorboards. So what to do with this space? Once upon a time it was my studio, back before I had to sell all the gear. Seeing as I’ve started to re-acquire all this music junk I am set on building TERSE TAPES – MAN CAVE EDITION.
Some people take the man cave too far. No, I just want to have something that is utterly different to what was there before. Besides, everyone else at my work gets to have an artist studio. In this space I will conduct an investigation into the nexus between musical interfaces and beer, in view of the paradoxical relationship between alcohol consumption, muscle memory and inspiration. I’ll need volunteers. And a cat.