A New Normal...

We buried my mother Monday morning.

I haven't been able to post about it yet because, quite honestly, my thoughts and emotions have been rather scattered lately.

My mind has resembled nothing so much as the air over a field of dandelions after a strong wind has blown through; thousands of tiny-yet-important fluffs filling the air in every direction, scattering where they will, sometimes colliding with one another before drifting away to meet with other stray thoughts or perhaps fly away, never to return.

All of this is accompanied by a silence so profound that it is deafening.

But on this Wednesday morning, one week after her death, those seeds are beginning to take root.

Today, things are calming down, and now comes the truly difficult part, in many ways the most difficult part of dealing with any death.  Today, I have to begin--as my brother put it--trying to find a "new normal".

In many ways, my mother's declining health has been part of my life for years.  Those who know me well know that I had been worried about her for a very long time.

After being so concerned for so long, the astounding speed with which everything has happened (she was diagnosed with cancer just a bit over a month ago, and now she's gone) has been dizzying.

But now that's not part of my life anymore.  It can't be, because she's gone.

This morning, my brother and his wife and son left for their home in Alabama.  All of the other family and seldom-seen old friends have already gone home; my brother leaving this morning means that it is now time for things to get back to normal.

The bills still need to be paid, the kids still need to eat and play and be kids, and the dishes still need to be washed.

The day-to-day trivialities and routines come back, with one major exception: my mother is no longer a part of them.

Her memory is, certainly.  But her reality is gone.

Especially with the routine being cast aside for the past month in the all-consuming whirlwind of my mother's rapid decline, I'm finding it difficult to move back into the routine.

My path is broken, and now I have to find a way to either repair it or find a new path.

This is the hardest part, the part that truly drives home the fact that my mother is gone.

I know I'll find that path again, but it's going to take time.

Things will never get back to normal.

But they'll get back to a "new normal".

Eventually.

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Thanks for reading my ranting,

Brad