We've had a rough year so far.
My dad was diagnosed with cancer in December of last year and he passed away at home in early January. We barely had a month to fully understand the cancer before it had already destroyed him. Looking back at photos, it's clear it was eating at him for a long time. An earlier diagnosis would have been nice, would have probably prevented some of his unbearable pain, but I appreciate that we got to enjoy fun times without the inevitable looming over us. Christmas was hard knowing it was his last. We got to enjoy his last summer, birthday, grandchildren's birthdays, Halloween, and Thanksgiving with the freedom of thinking he would live forever.
My mom was, yes was, capable of caring for herself but not her house. So that was a problem we needed to fix once my dad passed. My husband and I have been wanting a bigger yard so we put one of the craziest plans I have ever come up with into motion. Sell my mom's house, sell our house, and we will all move in together! Flawless. It would have actually worked, though, except my mom died a week after we moved into our new house together in the end of May.
My dad's illness blindsided us; I don't even know what word to use for mom's illness and death. I took her to the doctor for shortness of breath on a Wednesday ("exhaustion" they said) and she died the following Tuesday. Her decline from Monday night, no Tuesday morning, to Tuesday around noon was insane, even the doctors didn't see it coming. We barely got the dreaded "you should come visit, she maybe has a few days left" calls done when she died. It was horrible. Beyond horrible. But I didn't fully comprehend the horrible until, well, I guess the horrible is still washing over me.
So the house fiasco. Selling her house was the easy part--except for the fact that we had to clear out 40 years of memories. Buying a house also turned out fairly easy. I'm not sure how we have even made it happen so far. We made enough on my mom's house to wipe out some of our debt and be able to have a pretty good down payment so we could buy before selling our own place. But now we have two houses and are having trouble getting our old one on the market. Finding the balance between making it look good enough to sell and not sinking tons of money into it is tricky, to say the least. But it should be on the market soon. Unless something comes up. Something always comes up.
Anyway, that all sucked. Except getting a new house, that totally rocks.
We love our new home. The kids love the new home. They love the yard (did I mention our new yard is easily 4 times the size of our old one? And half the old one was covered in concrete?) They love the clean basement. We are really happy here.
But there is always a tinge of sadness. My son asked why we still have 6 chairs at the table. We were supposed to be 6 and now we're 5. I don't even know what to call my mom's old room. Ever since we found the house it was "her room." I'm slowly going through her stuff that's here, but I'm not even done processing going through my dad's stuff. I can't just let it sit, we need to move forward. So I do a tiny bit every day. Or maybe every other day. Or more like once a week. I've incorporated the pictures she had at her house into our own collection. I love them and hate them. I don't know that they'll ever be my pictures. Even the kids refer to them as "things from papa and ba's house." And when there isn't sadness, I feel guilty for not being sad. And I feel guilty that I got out of a depressing house (that wasn't really so bad) because my dad died and I have more room in my new house because my mom died.
The summer has been pretty good. It wasn't too bad planning the funeral, she was cremated so we didn't have to rush into anything. And, honestly, it's a relief I don't have to plan any more funerals for my parents. I'm fresh out of those and they were a limited edition! Actually, planning the funeral was horrible too. Picking out songs, readings, readers, preventing drama (why do people have to bring drama into everything? My mom's funeral is not the time for you to realize you were a total ass for decades. Clear your conscience on your own time.) But that is over.
The kids and I have found some fun local parks. We are getting into a daily rhythm, our new normal without their favorite people. And since I have no backup, I just do things. Take all the kids with me, on my own, whatever, wherever. I can't wait for help (not that people haven't offered, I am surrounded by amazing people--they just happen to be people who have jobs) or do everything on the weekends. So we just do things. And that's actually kind of fun. And freeing.
My parents were great, but being parents they always were worried about me. They had a hard time seeing me as an adult, and I get that. I have kids of my own and they will always be my babies. So now that they are gone, I have no one to justify any of my decisions to. But also I have no one to confirm that, yes, those are the cutest dresses of all time and I should get matching ones for the girls. Or no one to tell me I am being ridiculous (except my husband, which isn't helpful when he's the one I'm mad at) and that I need to chill out a bit. I feel alone. Not lonely, I have people I love around me all the time, but alone. I'm on my own. It's weird. I'm an adult orphan much earlier than I thought I would be and it's hard.
Even though I need 2016 to be over, I'm dreading the fall and holidays a bit. I have my littlest's 1st birthday in September. Then more birthdays in November, along with Thanksgiving. Then Christmas. That was always our favorite. Easter this year was hard without my dad. But Christmas is going to be a mess. But it will be in our new house, so maybe since everything will be new the loss of two important people won't be felt as strongly. Or maybe not. I will probably switch between laughing and crying the whole time.
After my mom died she said that the chapter of our lives that my dad was in is over and it was time to start a new one. She didn't realize she wasn't going to get another chapter, she just got a kind of okay epilogue. And the chapter that ended for me wasn't the one that had my dad, it was the one that included my mom and the house I grew up in and the house my kids were babies in and the city I lived in for the first 32 years of my life. It's like I'm in an entirely different book now. Fan fiction, made with beloved characters in a different setting just to mix things up.
Anyway, so that's my long ramble about why 2016 can just be over and we can start fresh in 2017. Next year can't possibly have as many sad firsts as this one. Except for my oldest starting kindergarten, but that's exciting and sad.
