Written three years ago. 17 days after Jeff died…

I have been sitting in the rocking chair in my room for a period of time each day staring at our bed and crying. I am trying to muster up the courage to wash the sheets. I tell myself, “Jeff would laugh at this. He’d think I was being silly and sentimental. They are just sheets. They aren’t him.” But he slept there. There are ‘Jeff germs’ on them. 

I ‘saved’ the sheets from the bed in the spare room because of the same reason. They are folded neatly, with his towel he used that morning, the clothes he passed in and the clothes I was wearing that day in my closet. Do I need to add the sheets from every bed in the house? No, but it is hard to do. 

He slept with Olivia for a time the night before as well because she was crying. I’m having a hard time washing her sheets too. 

I sit in the chair and tell myself, “You can do it. They should be washed. You have other things that Jeff touched too.” Then I sit there and sob. 

I usually wash the sheets once a week. It’s driving me nuts….But I don’t want to wash him away. 

Everything that changes in the house takes me farther away from him. I have a hard time dusting because I heard that dust is made up of 85% skin cells….some of those cells are Jeff’s. 

I have a box of hair in my closet along with the clothes and sheets that I’m hoarding. The day he died, my sister and I scoured the house looking for hairs in the bed, the bathtub and on the floor. I didn’t want to lose anymore of him. 

Am I crazy? Please tell me that I should wash the sheets. Tell me it’s okay. He would want me and the kids to be on clean sheets, right? I’m just being silly and sentimental, right? 
I think I’ve lost it.