Another day

Okay, it is another day without two sisters.  I have made it. It was very hard.  I wanted to just make it without breaking down.  I did that, although I was close to losing it several times.  I’ve sent off some thank yous and put most of the things away from the service, and have put the flowers I saved into a box for preservation.  Now I start another day.

I have piles of messages and work on my desk, and the phone has been ringing in the office.  One of the downsides of working in a home office is that all of the work is there all the time-you never go home.  I am going to try to dig into it today.  I have some deadlines that need to be met or I will be in big trouble.  The fact that I really don’t care about that is new.

My son and daughter-in-law and my two granddaughters will be moving into a new place this next week.  They are in the process of getting ready for the move.  I would have had a hard time adjusting to that in any event, but now it is even more overwhelming.  I know that it is good.  I know that they are excited-they should be.  But the selfish side of me feels that I am being abandoned.  My husband works late, so I will be spending a lot of time alone.  I have been setting up lunch dates with friends-I have several groups that I regularly meet with for lunch or dinner.  I need that even more now.  I know what I need to do.  It will take a while to get it going.  In the meantime, it will be a struggle.

In the back of my mind, I think of the things that I should change in my life now that I realize how quickly things can end.  I talked a lot with Kathleen about going back to school-she really encouraged me to do that.  I think about losing weight.  She had a gastric bypass, and was able to feel good about herself for the last 5 years.  She just blossomed as her weight went down.  She was so happy to feel good about herself again.  I know that would be a big positive for me, as well.  I have new desire to get back to exercise and better eating-I would like to have a few years of feeling good about myself, as well ( As an aside, the minister made a comment at the reception, while watching the DVD of her life, that he hadn’t realized that she had had a “Rosie O’Donnell phase”.  I now think of him as the evil minister.)

I tried to call my mom, just to see how she was doing after her friend left for home.  She had a friend there and was going to play cards.  I am relieved that someone there is watching over her a bit.  I didn’t call my brother-in-law, as I don’t want him to feel that I am hovering.  My sister is in Florida this week on vacation over her birthday, so I didn’t call her.  My brother wrote an email response to me saying that he was feeling “empty”.  It is going to take a while for everyone, but I guess that is just how it all works.

I saw a photo of the earth from a space telescope.  It was the 20th anniversary of this photo.  I had never seen it before.   The earth is just a speck in a wide array of planets, asteroids, etc.  It made me realize the enormity of the universe and the pitifully small world that we call earth.  We are like the small Who villagers  in “Horton Hears a Who”-one of my granddaughter’s favorite books. The insignificance of our lives is amazing to behold.  But it is all I’ve got.

Advertisement