What a busy couple of months I’ve had! It feels like I haven’t had time to do much of anything, and I know I have been remiss about keeping up with the blog.
As you know, we said “Goodbye” to my father recently, and that was such a difficult time for me. I talk to him all the time, and I am keeping his stories alive as I transcribe them into a book of sorts.
One thing that has been really interesting about this is that I sometimes feel like the “Mom”. No child ever expects to have to walk their parent through the loss of a spouse, because that just isn’t the natural order of things. But, in our case, I am that person who has been there, done that so I am walking Mom through her new journey. It’s surreal in the sense that we always had our parents to guide us, and now, I am the guide for Mom. What is okay? What should I expect? What do I do now with all this free time? Who will be there when I come home from a trip, or who will even care if I come home? Where are my friends?
Those were all questions that I had throughout the first few months of life after I lost Grubby. Unfortunately, there is no right or wrong answer to any of them. In fact, there is no answer at all. You just try to figure things out as you go, and hope to keep the house from burning down or hope to keep the kids alive while you do. I was fortunate to have my First H.E.L.P. group on Zoom for those firsts, and it was nice to know that I wasn’t alone. All I can do now is try to help Mom find her answers too as she navigates a new course.
She came up last month and spent a week with us so she could go see Abby perform her last field shows with the Trojan Vanguard and be here for Senior Night. After doing all those things, I took her to see Air Supply again, this time at our local Caesars Palace Casino, where we were in the front row again, of course! As always, it was a fantastic show.
This course is a course that neither of us wanted to have to chart, but we are charting it, and I am just grateful that I can hopefully provide some comfort to her along the way.
