I am self-assessing that I am in the beginning stage of working through my grief.

The fog.

The midbrain.

The haze.

The denial.

I grieve my mom, our move, our old neighbours, our best friend’s move, our loss of friends. Grief is a pervasive theme right now, layer over layer.

I’m in a place where I’m constantly late. This mama, who was “teacher trained” to be on time and to follow a schedule, can’t get her child to school before the bell rings.

I can’t read. This ferocious reader can barely read a paragraph. I haven’t picked up a book in months.

Form filling has now been passed over to Sexy Neck. I used to get a rush from filling out forms. The completion. The finality. The knowing of all the answers. Now, I could care less.

I used to love to organize: people, events and thinking about special gifts to buy. Now I have no energy or need or want to organize anything or anyone or to buy a single thing.

We are living with the bare necessities and having great conversations talking about needs and wants.

Every day I wake up and wonder, What the hell happened?

It’s like a tsunami has ravaged my expectations, the sense of control and my relationship with my mom. There is debris everywhere containing everything she did with us, for us and just the huge ways she was a part of our everyday life. There are also huge chunks of debris involving my dad’s life, his retirement and their plans together. We get to see, move, feel and touch these pieces of debris every day.

It is exhausting.

Mind blowing.

Devastating.

I know that I am in denial as I can’t even talk with my mom, ponder where she is or even contemplate that I, Steve nor my children will have my mom in our lives again.

I sit in this beginning stage rowing through the waves of grief. I am going to give myself this time to do my ‘work’! As my counsellor tells me, I can do my work now or later, but I will have to go through it one day.

I am choosing each day to sit.

To ponder.

To wonder.

To cry.

To be.

Just enough, each day!