The Remaking of Life

I've tried updating this blog several times now.  I always have these great epiphanies when running and then I sit to type... and I don't want to type.

Sometimes it's because I know the thoughts aren't allowed.  It's not always okay to say what's on our mind.  I've struggled with that my entire life.  Biting my tongue.  In this instance, it's not so hard... except sometimes it is.

We are still trying to figure out how to navigate this...  and by we, I mean me.

It seems so long ago and yet it doesn't all at once.  Sometimes I'm still really angry.  Like the time I was driving home from work.  It was late.  The roads were empty and my van was climbing this massive hill lined with southern trees and all I could think was:  How the Hell did I end up here?!  Oh, I know...  you brought me here...

and then you left us here...

and then...  you left us here.

And I get mad.  I get mad because I'm surrounded by a culture that isn't mine and people I barely know, in a place that constantly seems foreign and the distance has created a distance in the friendships formed before we ended up here.  And I think about that...  And I get mad.

And then I park my car, walk into my home, and I see Dale talking quietly to Mitch about cars, or engineering, or furniture...  and I think...  How could I not be here.  How was this not always our life.  And the kids all laugh, or they don't listen, and they eat, or they forget to feed the dogs, and they do homework, or they don't.  And we go on living.  Like it never happened.  Like everything is as it was.
As it should be.

And then I tuck them in.  And sometimes they cry.  And sometimes they don't.  And I worry both times.  Sometimes they talk about him.  Sometimes they don't.  And again, I worry both of those times.

I recently updated my facebook status saying:  I'm not a single mother.

I am an only parent.

Even I can't wrap my head around the magnitude of that.

I'm torn between forgetting to remember...  and forcing the remembering.  I'm explaining that the Uniform that the Army brought to our house may smell like Daddy, but I promise you, he's still wearing the one we buried him in.

Now look at your 7 year old and say that.

How in the world do those words even manage to form.  And how can his beautiful tiny little head make sense of that.

Now when I go to work, the night before, my Mickey begs me not to.  BEGS.

I'm torn between a profession I love and Children I love more.  At a time when they need me more than they ever will...  coupled with a tragedy that I don't know how to normalize.

I've not buried a parent.  How can I help them cope with burying theirs.

So we go to specialists and we make jokes and we laugh or we cry...  or we get mad...  or sometimes...  sometimes we just exist...  as if it never happened.  full well knowing that it did... and questioning reality.

One thing is certain:  Anne Roiphe was right...

"Grief is in two parts.  The first is loss.  The second is the remaking of life."