That’s the phase I’m in, I suppose. The phase where the waves of grief are fewer and farther between. I don’t feel as compelled to write as often. I wish I could say I’ve found a new groove, a place of peace. Right now, at least, it feels more like a place of complacency and exhaustion. My head has been spinning, helping one kid move across her state from the other side of the country, one kid move into his first dorm as a college freshman, and four kids start school at three different schools. It’s the last time we’ll finagle three schools for kids who live at home. Next year, it’s just the high school and elementary until it’s just one. It would be three still. Three for two more years. But it’s not.
I’ve been in a funk. Low energy, irritable, forcing myself to make the brownies for after school, get up and make breakfast each morning, and trying to get my brain to focus on the post school chatter I initiate about school days and evening plans. It hit me today. I finally found the name for the pain in the middle of my chest that makes it hurt to breath each morning by the time I’m walking Alice to first grade. Caleb.
We had six kids in nine years. Crazy, I know. Those kiddos walked to school together. They played outside everyday together. They rode bikes, made messes, helped me can, cook, bake, fought, and cuddled…together. Alice walks along, holding my hand, just the two of us on her way to first grade each day. She’s completely oblivious to the fact that she was born nearly two years after what our plan had been, a plan turned on it’s head when her brother died. She’s unaware he’d be walking with us to and from school each day, on his last trip through an elementary school classroom as a big sixth grader. We’re both clueless as to how tall he’d be, who his teacher would be, and if his hair would have stayed so pale blonde. His would be classmates are clueless, too. Most people around me are. We moved away from everyone who knew him and no one knows who they’re missing.
Today, and lately, that’s heavy and I miss my village.
Caleb's Alive In Me 