Letting Go

2010, my mom and me,  working on our matching computers~
 
To those of you who have questioned my extended absence, it has become impossible to avoid this moment any longer, so with a very heavy heart,  the reason for my absence is now confessed.
As you may know, we went to Indiana at the beginning of last month for an annual family reunion.
What happened there, was an unexpected cruelty that crushed my spirit and ended all reason for doing anything related to writing since.
Within 13 minutes of checking into the Drury Hotel in Castleton, a beautiful place, in what we thought was the safest part of town, where  we had loved staying for the past two years, our gorgeous rented car was smashed into and we lost  nearly every nice thing that we owned,  in a violent, violating, senseless robbery.
The car  was parked right  in front of the side door of the Hotel, in broad daylight, at five-thirty in the afternoon,  in a crowded parking lot, directly across the street from  the Hilton.
We had gone up to the room first to check it out and then went down to retrieve our luggage, only to discover that our laptop computers,  clothes, personal family jewelry, and so many bags of beautiful things that had been so carefully chosen and packed for a glorious two-week holiday, were all  gone.
Thirteen minutes!
Unknown to us, there have apparently been a recent rash of these smash and grabs to cars in the Indianapolis Metro area, all pretty much just like ours.
Also unknown to us,  this Drury Hotel,  has had multiple car burglaries to their guests vehicles over the past few months.
The  policeman who filed our report, after viewing  the Hotels’ security cameras, was claimed to have said, that he had arrested  this same man, doing the very same thing, only a month earlier.
Women among  you will understand this, perhaps men may as well, only our very nicest things had been brought, because we were going to be making numerous trips to places  with family and staying at such a gorgeous Hotel, the everyday things were left at home.
This proved to be a most regretful, egotistical mistake on my part.
Yes, we were not harmed and our beautiful Breanna was safely with us when this happened, so there were blessings.
Yes, much of what was taken was just stuff, but not all,
Some things that were taken, can never be replaced and it is for those things,  that my heart  has been grieving all day, every day,  since.
I had to tearfully convey to my quite elderly mother,  that the gold watch and ring that her father had given to her in the 1940′s and  that she had so generously given to me,  to also pass on, was now  gone.
These were the only material things that either of us had left of him.
Having never been robbed before in such a wholesale manner and admittedly leaning heavily towards being anal retentive, this has all  been a shock to the senses.
There was one particularly good thing that happened during this terrible week.
We met the most wonderful woman at a nearby Thrift Store who helped us try to replace enough of the stolen things to get us back home. She went out of her way to make sure that we were taken care of, even though she was the Manager of this very large store and  had so many other things to do there. Her name and the store are deliberately kept private,  as she knows nothing of this posting and I would prefer to have her blessing before sharing  either here.
So today, my mourning ends officially and on this new computer, ( with Windows 8 and touch screen, yikes! ) minus the thousands of written words, treasured emails, pictures and memories, all gone with my beautiful white Vaio, I am  beginning anew and am finally, letting go.