It’s true, the holidays can be tough for everyone, especially those who grieve. In my mind I’ve kind of pooh-poohed this idea, but today after a family gathering where I couldn’t stop thinking about things in reference to Mike (“Mike would have thought that was funny,” “it would be so much easier if Mike were here to help with the kids”, “Mike had a grin similar to Alex’s” and on and on and on ad nauseum).
It was almost all I could do to continue to have a somewhat normal conversation without breaking down in sorrow.
Maybe I have low self esteem or maybe I’m too much of a realist, but part of what was bothering me is that it just occurred to me that the dynamics of my extended family are forever altered. I didn’t ask for this. And I don’t want the dynamics to change; I was perfectly happy the way they were.
Marley and Avery and I have spent the evening with my inlaws; Mike’s mom and her husband, Mike’s brother, his wife and their two girls as well as Mike’s maternal grandmother. We had dinner and a fine evening. The kids (especially the two oldest girls) had a blast together. But somehow by the end of the night, I felt like I really didn’t belong. Or perhaps it was more of a premonition or view of things to come, a haunting knowledge that extended family gatherings will never feel the same.
I know that Marley and Avery will always fit in here. I, however, could conceivably become more and more of a third wheel; a tangiential sidekick.
This is not to say at all that I wasn’t welcomed or anything else negative about tonight’s visit. But imagine, in the unlikely possibility that I were ever to start dating someone seriously, how that would fit into the dynamics of this part of the family that I love. I just see more and more fracture, more and more complication coming down the road.
It seems somehow that over time the deep bonds we shared will slowly dissolve. Somehow, it seems the unpleasantt natural order of things.
And this whole train of thought just sneaked up on me tonight, causing a huge wave of pain and sorrow down to my bones.
But the kids will always continue to have a good strong connection; it is their blood. This is good. But I know I’m losing something else deep and special. Maybe not in an “all at once” way, but slowly, surely,almost imperceptibly (quite the opposite of how I lost Mike). I’m tired of losing.
Its a lonely, unmoored and drifting kind of feeling. And it pierces my heart.