I'm still finding it shocking every day that other people could have possibly had a "normal" week last week. I was thinking this morning how the last time(s) that I remember feeling this way was after my family would take long trips together. we would have these long days spent driving across the country, spending every night in a different city, taking photos with both big sites and local landmarks, working together to make sure that we were almost always near a swimming pool. since we were all together, there weren't any "check-in" calls to make or things back home to think about - especially for someone under 10 years of age. i remember getting back and hearing about things that people did: softball games, afternoons at the swimming pool, birthday treats at sunday school, sometimes even trips of their own. it was so hard to reconcile with my own reality. how could life have continued to exist, presumably just as it would have if i had been there, when my life had been so different?
The last week has been no vacation, but the sentiment is much the same. A whole week of April passed, presumably unnoticed, and people continued on in their usual ways. I found myself starting a new week, feeling very much different, while everyone else appeared to feel the same monotony as they did in the first half of the month. I can't blame them, I suppose. It's hard not to be deceived by the surroundings: same people, same offices, same appointments, same bus routes. Some people are still eating the same things every day for lunch. But I feel it so strongly that I need to keep reminding myself that they cannot.
When I cope at all (which I typically do, assuming I am not having to make any decisions about big life changes), I am an internal coper. And I think that love and loss is so intensely personal that I could not imagine sharing it with too many others. So this is not an introduction to a larger essay about my thoughts and feelings and experiences over the last week. But I do owe many, many thanks to many, many people. I have been told on more than one occasion that I am a difficult person to reach out to. I am fairly private about personal matters, I am fiercely independent, I am wildly sensitive about feeling overly vulnerable. I imagine that this is largely expounded by the fact that so many of my relationships are maintained via the internet these days. So lest my other actions not adequately convey it, I just wanted to say that I am incredibly grateful to everyone who has reached out to my family and to me over the last week. Believe it or not, I am still receiving cards and e-mails. Whatever luck I had that placed me amidst such a caring group of hearts, I am intensely grateful.
Thank you.
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