Confusion

I’m confused.  I’m needy.  I’m conflicted.  I’m Whiny! I’m trying the best I can.

Starting the year Tyler became a Junior in high school we developed our 2 year, 4 year and 6 year plan.  It was like a running joke in our house but with truth in the plan.  In 2 years tyler would be graduating, I was turning his room when he left for college into an office/tanning/workout room.  I love my children to death, but they are adults once they are 18.  If they choose to stay in school we will continue to help support them until such time that they graduate school or leave school.  Should they choose to leave school then they have made a conscious decision to become a full fledged adult.  that means they need a place to live, and a way of supporting themselves.  We will not pay their phone bills, car tags, car insurance and things like that any longer.  So making it so that it wasn’t “tyler’s” bedroom anymore wasn’t because I don’t love my son, it was a mechanism to help him understand, he is a grown up.  He is free to visit our home and spend breaks there but if he wanted to “move home” and “quit school” there would be grown up things involved such as rent and such.

Our 4 year plan was then to trade my SUV for something smaller because by then 2 of the boys would be driving and I’d only be chauffeuring one around.  I wouldn’t need an SUV.   We debated splitting up the office/tanning room/workout room, but instead we left a spare bedroom intact so the boys always had a bedroom to come stay in.  Yes we left a twin bed in Tyler’s room but there wasn’t a lot of other room for stuff. So we left Ryan’s room as a spare bedroom and we bought my jeep.  I love my jeep.  Kaleb hated my jeep because it didn’t have enough leg room for him.  That was part of my incentive for him to get his grades up high enough to test for his drivers license.  Because once he could drive on his own, he’d never have to ride in my jeep again.

Our 6 year plan was to sell the house in the “city” and work on moving to the country.  We’d already bought the land and have a travel trailer on it that we use during hunting season and for weekend retreats.  We wanted all the kids out of high school and on their own before moving a fair ways out of town.  That way they weren’t always having to drive curving dirt/country roads into school.  We are stuck somewhere on our 6 year plan.  It started a year early.  Things didn’t fall into place like they did for the 2 and 4 year plans.  I never put in my 6 year plan that we’d bury our son at year 5. That we’d move abruptly from our home because we couldn’t handle being in it.  That we’d be trying to sell an empty house with a sad story behind it.

Life doesn’t always work out  like  you plan.  That’s a given.  There is a bigger plan in place.  But I get lost if I don’t have a plan.  Curve balls throw me for a loop.  Seeing people I love hurting with nothing I can do to fix it is hard.  Learning to handle different emotions is hard. Trying to find our new way in life is difficult.  Becoming empty nesters a year early, in a different house, in a different neighborhood wasn’t the plan.  Spring is coming, it makes me happy.  It means winter is almost over.  The sun is on it’s way back.  Now I realize how much I miss my flowerbeds.  Our entire backyard was landscaped.  We’d put flowerbeds all around the fences, we had small ones in the front also.  And I always kept potted tropical plants.  I don’t have those anymore.  I don’t have my small garden with my tomatoes and onions.  I can’t look at the beautiful sunsets off our back porch.  We had the best view for sunsets at the old house.  The rent house has a sucky view, there are no mountains for the sun to set behind, just rooftops.  We had the best area for walking/jogging and bike riding.  Little traffic, a good size “loop” through the neighborhood.  Now it’s less than a 1/2 mile loop all the way around our neighborhood.  That makes for a lot of circles to walk in or bike in.   I know these things seem insignificant, but when you add up the loss of our son and the sadness that brings and top it off with a loss of so many things that were familiar and normal it’s like the opposite of adding toppings to a sundae.  Toppings make the sundae a little better.  Losing these other things make dealing with the loss a little harder.

I feel bad for those around me that have to deal with my emotional swings.  I can go sometimes days at a time now where I’m “OK”.  Then when the tide shifts sometimes it’s just for a few minutes, or a few hours, but occasionally it’s still for a few days at a time.  I still see visual reminders all the time of Kaleb.  Whether it’s the truck that was parked a few houses down from our house that still had “RIP Kaleb” all over it.  Or seeing the boy at the auction wearing the black and yellow “K” shirts they made and so many wore to his funeral, I know people still remember him.  I don’t want his memory to fade.  My co-workers are awesome, they help keep me on track.  Jimmie helps keep me focused and doesn’t let me dwell to long in one place.  The kids still text me and talk a lot.  Our friends still check on us regularly.  Without everyone helping us and being there for us, I don’t know how we’d handle it.  So even though I may struggle at times, I still have the best support group a person could be surrounded by.  I’m beyond thankful for each and everyone of you.  We may not talk regularly, or not even “talk” at all but each phone call, text message and IM helps me a lot.  It reminds me of all the good in the world and helps me get back on track.