Frozen

Therapy was cancelled yesterday, along with the rest of the world. I hear the collective sigh and oh no from all my friends as I write this. But I am relieved. I didn’t want to listen to the sad stories that await me and didn’t feel like telling my own. Trust me; they will be readily available next month.

I am fine.

I have trained myself not to look at the photos on the walls which cause me sadness and grief. My car is buried under a mountain of ice and snow so I can’t go to the cemetery any time soon. I am fine.

Though I still wake everyday making too much coffee – I just drink more of it now. I still wake each morning looking for you to help me with the morning routine. Looking for you has just become part of the routine and I guess I have grown accustomed to the looking and not seeing you.

The days and nights drag on and on through this awful winter. I stopped counting the weeks, but I suspect four months is soon approaching. I don’t care about Valentine’s Day. I never have and won’t feel sorry for myself on Sunday. All I ever cared about concerning Valentine’s Day was the 50% off candy on the 15th.

I have lost some enthusiasm for this blog. I can’t deal with writing every night about nothing. My children and I haven’t talked about daddy for a few days. I have just pushed him back inside my head, far away so that I don’t cry. It is hard to accomplish anything with the frustration I feel – so I have pushed it away for now. I am just on auto-pilot these days. I just go and do and try not to cry. This is it.

My children are growing and learning and thriving. I am eating but still not sleeping. A pattern of normalcy has taken over our lives and I am just going with it. Our lives are littered with good moments and those that are terrifyingly awful. This is life now – we must make the most of it.

I am trying to read these grief books with an open mind. They are chock full of advice. One book said that people fall into two categories. One group that has experienced the pain and sorrow that I have and one group that has not. I am extremely enlightened by books like this; they seem to tell me that which I did not know. Sigh, I have got to get to the library and get some new vampire books. Maybe they have a book called “death for dummies” – anything but what is on my nightstand.

The books about G-d and death do cause me to think deeper than most. I have evaluated my relationship with G-d many times over the past few months. I am not angry with G-d and I don’t blame G-d. But when the books tell me that all death is G-d’s plan – I don’t believe it for a moment. Not this death, not this way. I guess I have more thinking to do – but not now.

I feel like I am living in the Arctic. Everywhere I look there is ice and snow. Everything outside is dead and cold and the world just reflects exactly how I feel inside. I find that I care about very little these days. My only concern is for my children – everything else – I feel nothing. The goings on in the world, the dishes in the sink – I just don’t care.

The children are off from school next week. I wish I could stay in bed and hide from everything. I have no enthusiasm for anything. But I can’t hide. I must go out and face the day, like I do each and every morning. Sometimes I am overwhelmed with being a single mom – sometimes I am thankful for being a single mom, because it is the one and only thing that keeps me going. Being a mom is the most important thing in my life – it really seems at times to be the only thing in my life.

Even on the bad days, when there are lots of tantrums and crying and complaining and homework and dinner and drama; when I wake up exhausted and spend the day dragging and then lie awake at night worrying – it could always be worse I think. It could always be much, much worse.

Tomorrow is Friday and I will wake up tired from today. I will not sleep well again tonight. I will lie in bed and worry about everything. Eventually my children will crawl into my bed in the wee hours and I will awaken with them kicking me, grinding their teeth and stealing the blankets. But I will wake up next to two beautiful children who are my very own and in the end that is all that matters.

I will be just fine.