today was hard

Today was a hard day.  Today was the day that made the past month become a reality.  I haven’t really shared much of the real life that happens behind the scenes of the fun things my kids participate in and do that make me smile.  The things I don’t want to forget.  And – it’s not that I want to forget anything that has happened, I just wish it wasn’t so.  My mother lost  her only brother to a nine month long battle with cancer in february.  Less than thirty days later she lost her only sister to a two month battle with cancer.  The only word I can use to describe is devastating.  It is devastating.

This was Thanksgiving.  What a gift it was to be able to spend time with them together.  This was the last time the three of them were able to visit with their mother together.  (My Grannie will be 96 in May!  96!)  This will be one of my most favorite photos for as long as I live.  I see photos of them throughout their lives and I laugh at how they look alike sometimes and not at all alike other times.  I see my cousins, my sisters, my mother, myself in all of them.   I look at each of their faces and see the same face and I see their uniqueness at the same time.  I see their faces in my children.  It doesn’t seem fair that this happened.  I’m not angry.  I am still a little in shock, but mostly disbelief.  I just don’t want to believe it. 

My sister and I were making the long drive back home and talking.  All of our cousins have lost a parent.  I have lived my whole life thinking these things only happened to other people.  I am never growing old, therefore – neither is my family.  I still feel like I am a teenager half the time.  It shocks me sometimes to realize that I am very close to forty.  Maybe this is the circle of life.  I just didn’t want it to be here so soon.  My heart breaks for my mother.  For my cousins.  For my Aunt Jean and Uncle Dan.  I can’t even imagine.

A