Baking With a Sweater On

I dislike change.

Changing food labels, different facebook pages, altered Blogger site (I mean really. When did that happen? You don't blog for, like, 6 months and then you're greeted with....well, a new Blogger page. I didn't know what I was doing before. Now all I do know is that I had 119 views from Israel yesterday.  I think I broke my Blogger page because that doesn't seem quite right.)

So. Change. I hate it. I would prefer things stayed the same. Logically I know this is ridiculous but I yam what I yam and change makes my skin crawl.

My life has changed so very much in the past year or so. Job changes, family changes, The Husband having to live away from us for work.  Heck, I even had my abdomen changed, which, don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for the life saving surgery but really really hate the way my abdomen feels now. I have learned to live with the way it looks. I hope I will one day learn to live with how it feels inside.

And now, The Monkey started all day kindergarten and my life has changed yet again.  It's been 9 years since I've been 'child free' for any length of time and I am feeling rather lost.  I drop her off at school.  I walk out the classroom door.  I stand on the sidewalk and feel completely at a loss as to what the heck I'm supposed to do with myself.  It's just me.

Work days are easier.  But today there is no work. There are no parents needing a meal cooked, or taken to a doctor's appointment or to sit with in the hospital. No children holding my hand and asking to go to the park or story time or to play Littlest Pet Shop when we get home. No Husband's underwear to wash or to go and meet for coffee on a work break.

I'm left standing on the sidewalk wondering how the hell I'm going to deal with this latest change in my life. Me. Just me.

So today I went home. And I put on my Mom's sweater.

And I baked with her sweater on.

9 months

My dad died.

There. I said it. I wrote it. Right there in black letters.

My dad died. And I cannot wrap my brain around those 3 words.

9 months to the day that my mom passed away, we said goodbye to Dad. Taken from us after an incredibly short and mind boggling bout with cancer.

In 9 short months, cancer took both my parents and my brain cannot take it in. Grieving is different this time around. Different from grieving The Husband's dad. Different than grieving my mom. It's like my brain has locked the door and won't let me go inside that place. That place where you're sad and angry and missing the person who's gone. My brain won't let me inside there. I wonder if I should knock...ring the doorbell. But, no. I don't think I'm ready to go in to that place anyways, so I'll just sit here down on the corner and wait to get up my courage at some point in the near future.

When my mom died, I wanted to look at pictures of her. See video footage of her. Think of happy memories and was desperate to remember so I wouldn't forget. And now I catch a glimpse of my dad's picture and I have to look away. I have to make myself picture my parents together again and then move on to something else. Anything that is not thinking about the fact that there is only a teaspoon of raspberry jam left in the fridge. A solitary teaspoon of raspberry jam that Dad made with the raspberries Mom picked with my kids in their garden last summer.

I don't want this to be real. How can this be real? No. It's too much.

It's just too much.