weep

When I let myself think that summer is over I want to cry. No, I want to weep is more like it. I think I might drop to the floor, sob until my face swells and my lungs burn and the world begins to spin around me.

I want to be here, in utopia, near my unfinished home away from (stress) home waiting for the last nail, the last lumber truck, the last worker guy, to walk out of the front door (which I haven’t even seen yet) and announce that the house is complete so I can rush in and sleep in every room, lounge in every corner and begin discovering it’s nuances and tendencies. I want to discover exactly what I’ll gaze upon through the window when I awake each day or relax into a bath each evening. I want to bask in a warm cup of tea and sit in my screened in cocoon of a porch, safe from all things biting and watch the sun go down, just like I used to each evening from the linen closet outside Matt’s old room. I want to smell wood burning in the fireplace. I want to infuse the house with the aroma of the grand feast I’ll cook in my new kitchen. Linger with good friends at the kitchen table. Get sleepy on good wine. Spy on the frolicking kids from the front porch. Be home. I just want to be home. This place feels like home.

Fall being right in my face, days away gnaws at me in so many ways. The kids have to go back to school. We all have to live on a schedule again, which will somehow include Matt getting to school at the ungodly (to a teenager) hour of 7AM. Last night I dreamed that it was the first day of school and I was trying to get it together from this rental place to get the kids out of the door and on their way. I had no lunch packing supplies, didn’t know what Josh would eat for a packed lunch, and couldn’t remember what time the school bell was going to ring. No one had any clothes to wear and I didn’t know how to get from here to their schools.

We’ll go home and go back to visiting grandma, which is a sadness that stabs at my core. Grandma is sad, the people around her are sad, how they have to live, dependent on strangers, not entirely understanding what is going on around them and where they are in this world is heart breaking, no matter how clean and cheerful the OFH appears. And then there is mom, fighting this losing battle, not really knowing if her brave fight is going to get her anywhere at all. One of the specialists she saw gave her 18 months to live. That number haunts me. She had to miss two scheduled chemo appointments because of her extremely rare complications and right now it isn’t clear that they will ever be able to successfully administer the chemo, which is what we are counting on to get rid of, or at least minimize the part of the cancer that the surgeon couldn’t remove. Without the chemo, it seems to me, that everything else up until now was all for nothing and maybe she should have been on a trip around the world or something. She always said she wanted to go to Hong Kong.

I wish I could enjoy our last few days here. It is quiet. The other kids are gone. Their schools start tomorrow. I am overwhelmed with leaving our island grief, leaving utopia grief, reentering my reality life anxiety, and even the previously relaxed kids are feeling anxious about what changes the next week or so will bring. They keep asking me when we are leaving and how many days until school starts. I don’t think it shows on my face right now, but inside I am already starting that weep.

Comments

[Jen - Lance's Wife]

I just want to send a big *hug*. I am so sorry about all of the things that are happening to your family.