Friday, January 25, 2013

Baby steps....

On a personal note...  I am back.  I took a brief hiatus from posting my blogs because frankly they were not all sunshine and butterflies.  I know the heaviness of some of my recent posts were not choice reading for some people...as indicated by a sweet family member who shared that they could no longer read my blog because it brought tears and sadness.  I understand.  Really I do.  I often fight through the tears and sadness to get the words out.  Writing is my personal form of 'therapy' and helps to process my feelings....so with this blog, just as in life, expect to find both the good and the bad here.  Hopefully, with time, the good will outweigh the bad...

When I went to review the last post from my blog I noticed it was dated 12/19.  For now the 19th is a representation of the date dad died.  For the better part of my earlier blog postings I dated events based on the date of dad's diagnosis and now I find myself with dating them from the date of his death.  A distinct 'before' and 'after' has now defined my relationship with time and life in general.  Oh how I wish to re-visit those 'before' days. 

The holidays have since come and gone and as imagined it was a quieter and more surreal 'celebration' for our family this year.  I think we were champions in our efforts to keep most of our traditions alive while keeping the tears and sadness at bay, but that was mostly a public facade.  Privately we all dealt with our own grief and mourned the loss of dad realizing the reality of our first Christmas and New Year's without him.  I have my doubts that holidays will ever be the same for our family but I am hopeful that with time and healing the joy will be restored. 

For now everything is baby steps for me.  Starting over in a new, yet definitley not improved, life is where I find myself.  Realizing this is final, his death is final.  There is no going back....only moving foward.  Stumbling through the grief and wondering not if, but when the next pang of heartache will present itself.  Will it be when I wake in the morning and realize my dad is gone?  Will it be when I see his picture or hear an old country song? 

 So many times it is in the little everyday things that I find my throat constricting, chest tightening and the tears threatening to flow.  The heartache comes when I pick up the phone to call dad to see how he is, when I pull up to the house and see his truck sitting in the driveway and when his chair is empty at the dinner table.  When I can't dial the phone I try to imagine what dad would say if I could vent to him about the horrible traffic or fill him in on what the boys were up to.   I see his truck and I think of the last trip to we took to Arkansas.  He tossed his truck keys to me and told me to drive and we chatted almost the entire way.  I sit at the dinner table and have to make myself focus on the people that are there and not that his chair is empty or is now taken by someone else.

I am still sad, I am still hurting but I am also trying my best not to stay wrapped up in a blanket of grief. Admittedly there have been days I would prefer to stay mired down in my own self-pity and ignore the rest of the world but I have chosen not to wallow in my sadness. 

Staying busy and keeping distracted have proven to be my allies when it comes to navigating the challenging days.  The quiet and alone times that I once yearned for only yield time for my mind to wander and think and question all that has happened so busy equals sanity for the time being.
I am sure I could probably pay a professional to tell me that I am in denial (or some other stage of grief)  but I have managed this journey on my own with the love and support of my family and my faith thus far and I plan to finish it that way.

It won't be a race, it will be a long journey to be certain.  It will be filled with hills and valleys, good times and not-so-good times, and most importantly with my family.

So a day at a time, a step at a time, here we go.....



My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.    
Psalm 121:2

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