Day 1 - Time

I bought a few new calendars for the new year. Half off at Barnes & Noble. Gotta love that!

I'm the type that likes a clean slate. A blank canvas. Fresh start. It makes it seem like so much is possible and creates anticipation of what's to come. Knowing that life can turn on a dime is what makes it exciting.

But....

It also makes it really, REALLY scary. One of the calendars I bought was a no fuss, no muss type of calendar. No cutesy pictures of kittens or flowers. Just a red, black and white thing with large spaces for each day so you can write lots of stuff in it. Good for busy people.

It also has something I've never seen in a regular wall calendar before. The last two pages comprise "year-at-a-glance" layout which makes it possible to look at all the days of the year at once. I thought it might come in handy for Greg to be able to map out his current and upcoming jobs with different color markers for the various types of work. We're! Getting! Organized!

After looking at if for a few minutes though I started to get that familiar, nagging anxiety again. I was looking at all of those days and months ahead for 2011 and it was completely freaking me out. How will I know if I'll even be around on March 4th or August 2nd or next Christmas? Maybe I'll DIE tomorrow and not get those days with my daughter or my friends or other family. Maybe Emma will die. Or Greg. Or someone else I love.

It's happened before.

Someone I love is here and I have plans to go to the movies with them the next day and then...they're gone. Not here. Life can change on a dime alright and suddenly you're in more pain that you knew existed just a few minutes earlier.

IT MESSES WITH YOUR MIND.

It's been a long time since that first loss. The first one that messed me up so bad. I imagine that most people think I should be over it by now. But the changes are forever and it's part of who I am now no matter how much counseling I get or how much I try to reason with myself or how frustrated those around me might get about it. It just....IS.

In 2011 I'm going to try to post every day. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. How many bloggers say that and it never happens? ALL OF THEM at one point or another. But it's just a soft goal. If I don't one day, or two or many more, I'll forgive myself. It's just a blog entry. It's not a tragedy. But I would like to write more. To explore what can be tapped out on the keys of my laptop - what I might discover about myself or others or life.

So, here we are. Day 1. Let's see what happens!

Still Hurts

Nine years. Feels like yesterday. Like any kind of grieving, it never stops hurting, you just find a way to move forward with the grief as your uninvited companion.

Many blessings to those families who lost loved ones on this day nine years ago. Their heroism is beyond measure and I am forever grateful.

Just Don't Look At It

Greg got a new haircut. It's a buzz cut from the nape of his neck to about halfway up his head and then it's his regular length. I was proud of him for doing that. He knows I get bored with the usual "look". You know what I mean - the uniform that men of his age wear - khaki pants, polo shirt, some sort of brown leather shoe, hair cut short and parted on the side or slicked back. YAWN.

The three of us were riding in the car last night and Greg asked Emma what she thought of his hair and she's like, "EH."

EH???

He questioned her about her response, "You don't like it? I wanted to try something different." She replied, "Welllll....it's not terrible. I mean, it's okay - you know - if you're not LOOKING at it or anything."

I swear, that kid....so damn funny!

The Big L

Every time I sign onto AOL and don't hear, "You've got mail!" because I don't have any new e-mails, I always imagine it saying, in that same peppy voice, "You're a big LOSER!"

Hahahahahaha!!!!

My Two Selves

A while back I wrote this post:

http://laughingeden.blogspot.com/2009_05_01_archive.html

It's about how hard it is to try to be okay for everyone else in your life but inside you know that you'll never be okay again - not really - not in the way that you were before whatever it was that changed you forever happened. Changed you in a way that wasn't all that great.

I just finished reading Every Last One by Anne Quindlen and she seems to have nailed it in her writing much better than I did in mine.....

"I have two selves now, the one that goes out in the world and says what sound like the right things and nods and listens and even sometimes smiles, and the real woman, who watches her in wonder, who is nothing but a wound, a wound that will not stop throbbing except when it is anesthetized. I know what the world wants: It wants me to heal. But to heal I would have to forget, and if I forget, my family truly dies."

So you see? There's no way to ever be what you were before. The you that everyone wants back so they can be more comfortable around you again. So that they can be comfortable with what's happened in your life.

There are days that I'm really bitter about that. Bitter about others being inconvenienced by the tragedies in my life. I often want to scream at them, What's happened to me is hard on YOU??? Walk one day in my life, with the burden of grief I carry. ONE DAY!! I dare you.

But, then, there are days that I totally get it. I get the instincts within all of us to get things back to normal and be okay. Because when things are okay and normal, it means you're safe. All of the upheaval of tragedy makes you feel really unsafe and scared. It shakes the firm foundations you've based your life on - turns them to dust and you're slipping and falling and grabbing at something - anything - to anchor yourself. To steady yourself again.

I remember when my sister, Joanne, was killed. I left the hospital and went to my friend T's house. I stayed there for days. I finally had to go home to get ready for the funeral and I desperately didn't want to. I knew instinctively that once I went home, to the home that Joanne had been a part of, it would all be real. She would really be dead. Gone forever. Never to walk in that door again. Never to sit in the living room watching a movie with me again. Never in the kitchen baking with me again.

I knew that as long as I stayed at T's, as if it were just another of the hundreds of sleepovers I'd had with her, then Joanne's death could just be a bad dream I'd had. Everything could be normal and okay.

My instincts were spot on: going home was hideously painful. Gutted me. Forever changed me.

But here I am, many years later, changed but surviving. Laughing as often as I can and loving in a way that maybe only someone that's been through what I've been through knows how to love - fiercely and striving towards the unconditional.

I'm living my life as best I can.

I think Joanne would be proud of me for that.

Another Day

I'm tired. But still thankful.

~A new friendship with a neighbor

~Polka-dot pajamas

~Baking

~Thunderstorms

~Water

Faith

"I've ceased to believe."

"Believe in what?"

"In sense, in justice. In life."

~Philippa, Heaven


It wasn't so long ago that I was at a place in my life where I realized I believed in nothing anymore - God, marriage, friendship, family, the church, health, joy, life, myself....

It was an awfully scary place to be and I'm so thankful that I've clawed my way back to believing in a few things again. I still struggle on some fronts but I'm working on it.