Date 3. New new normal.

There are 5 kids at my house right now. Only two are mine. Emerson has friends who are triplets and I'm over here striving for some normal for my kids so we are in the 'taking calculated risks' category of quarantine life. I made lunch, got sunscreen on them and sent them out to play. And it hit me. My Mom is dead. 

I lived it. Got the call from Dad, 'This is it, you need to come today'. Flew in. Moved her from hospital to hospice. I sat by her hospice bed for 5 days. I talked to her while she slept. I saw her after her spirit left her physical self. I know my Mom is dead. But, like, do you think she's ever coming back? I mean how is it even possible that she's just gone? It doesn't even make sense. She has been here my whole life and now I'm supposed to do life without her?

Hello, Denial. Nice to meet you. I haven't read a lot about Grief or the stages of it but I know Denial is one of them. I'm not sure how much reading about it will help me. I'm living it. Grief looks different to everyone so I am following my own lead. I'm doing what feels right for me when I have time to feel. Today's moment was brief and fleeting but no less gut wrenching than any longer dates with Grief. 

I wonder when it will stop feeling so weird. When it will feel normal for her to be gone. I am pretty sure the answer to that is never. It will never feel normal to get in the car to run errands and not call her. It will never feel normal to find something wonderful at Homegoods or Marshall's and not send her a picture. It will never feel normal to get my kids report cards and not call her to tell her so she can gush over how amazing they are doing. It will never feel normal to eat a holiday feast. It will never feel normal to make decision, big or small, without consulting her. I'm talking everything from picking paint colors to deciding when to have that hysterectomy I will need to have to keep me from following her same fate. She was my barometer. Her answers weren't always the ones I wanted and they weren't always right (usually they were...) but I so valued her input and opinion. And it's gone. Poof. Just like that. 

Normal is new now. New normal is a bit lonely and scary. New normal finds me looking inside myself for answers and trusting myself more. I read (Glennon Doyle is my go to author for things brave, vulnerable, ugly and messy) that being brave isn't having fear and doing something anyway. Brave is looking inside yourself, listening to your gut and then speaking it out loud. New normal requires more bravery than I am used to displaying without first bouncing a decision off of Mom. 

It's not lost on me that the entire world is now looking for a new normal. It's not lost on me that everyone is now unsure of what step comes next. We find ourselves somewhere we have never been and it's scary and uncertain and there is no real end in sight. And here I am, without someone I've never been without and it's scary and uncertain and there is no real end in sight. I am here searching for the next right thing for me, for my family. The next right thing in a new new normal. 

But really, are you sure she's not coming back? 

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