In the last 8 1/2 months I've experienced every emotion known to man. The highs, the lows and everything in between. By the end of this month I will have had a child die, a child move out of state, and a child get married all in the last 9 months. We've moved twice. Went from homeowners to renters. Went from a house full of kids to empty nesters. My perception of what is normal has changed completely.
There have been 2 major "traumas" in my life that have truly affected who I have become today. 1. My dad dying. That shook my foundation to the core. I talked over every decision with him prior to making it. We didn't always agree but he always listened and gave me his opinion. I became more independent then, less naive and hardened a little bit. 2. Kaleb's death. I just thought I had experienced pain before in my life going through the first "trauma". Until that day I truly didn't know what pain was. There is a pain that is almost greater than you can endure. And in some cases it is greater than people can endure. This one had almost the opposite impact of the first one. I learned it's ok to cry. It's ok to accept help. It's ok to not always be the strong one. From this I became softer and more compassionate.
From Kaleb's death I've also learned that there are times I'm not going to be ok. Sometimes it's just for a few minutes, or a couple of hours. Other times it might be for the whole day. There are specific days I know will always be rough. Then there are things that happen out of the blue that just hit you and there is nothing you can do to keep the emotion from overtaking you.
As we've learned to accept our new normal and function from day to day, the everyday things have gotten a little easier. But the ache of missing him has got a little worse. I guess because more and more time has gone by without seeing him. My mind knows he isn't coming back and I'm sure there will be a turning point with this also where you finally reach the point where you can't miss someone anymore than you do and it will set in that it's a forever feeling. Maybe then it will start easing up a little bit.
We watch some show about people living in the wilderness in Alaska. One couple, lost one of their young daughters to drowning. They are much older now and their other daughters are grown and they talk about her on the show. You can see the pain they still go through even now. I know that is my future, to always speak of Kaleb in the past tense. Even knowing these things and accepting them, you can't control how you react to situations. Whether it's the truck that is always in our neighborhood 6 houses down with RIP Kaleb 9/15 permanently on the tailgate, a song on the radio, or something as simple as picking up dog poop. Kaleb hated that chore and probably put up the biggest arguments about doing it. I don't think he ever understood that it wasn't a punishment, it was a chore that someone had to do. Now that he's gone it's my chore. So while I clean up the backyard a lot of times I think of Kaleb and the many arguments we had about poop. Probably some of our most heated discussions came about this chore. Was it wrong of me to give him a chore he hated? I still stand behind my decision to not cave and swap the chore with another. Sometimes life isn't fair and you have to do things you hate. You can't pick and choose what you deal with in life. Trust me, if you could we wouldn't be dealing with this trauma because we'd have switched it out with one that doesn't hurt as much.
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