A New Kind of Normal

And so it begins: the process of adjusting to a new kind of normal. I have lost so much this month that I don't really know which way to turn.

Losing my Mom was/is such a huge thing to deal with that even if it were the only adjustment it would still be difficult. I nearly lost it the first time I walked into a craft store and realized that I would never again be calling her for advice or to ask a question. I always viewed my Mom as a wealth of knowledge and a valuable sounding board, and somehow I'll have to learn to live without that assest. I have not even begin to comprehend the loss of my friendship with her... I was able to find a few gifts that she had ordered or completed for me and Joy for Christmas, so we were able to open those today. It really bothered me that I couldn't find what she was planning for Dad. I know she had things in mind for him, but she had been feeling so poorly that she never had a chance to start his gifts. It's hard for me to believe that she is really gone. Gone.

Losing Jen was a blow of another kind. She was my childhood friend, my partner in crime. In many ways she was like a sister to me, except we were together by choice, not genetics. I have more fond memories of her parent's house than I do of just about any place I've actually lived. Her memorial was difficult, humbling, and uplifting. It was so hard to just show up because it felt like it was making her loss real. I was humbled by how included I was in the stories of Jen's life. I felt like it validated my claim to feeling like part of the family (a hard thing to accept after just suffering such a loss to my own family). But, I think most importantly, it was uplifting to see just how many lives Jen touched. I always knew she was an amazing person. But to see so many people from so many different aspects of her life reaffirmed that belief.

In the middle of all these personal struggles is the loss of my job. My contract expired and was not renewed, so I am now unemployed. It's not as traumatic as some of the other things I'm dealing with, but it is still discomforting. Not that I am the kind of person that defines myself by my job, but it did give me a sense of purpose and direction. I have no idea what the new year will hold for me in the way of work, but I can't seem to care too much about that at the moment.

Perhaps most disappointing of all is the end of my relationship with my boyfriend. I say "most disappointing" because it carries with it the loss of so many intangible possibilities: a new type of life, marriage, a family. I feel like I made every effort to make "us" work, being as patient and understanding as possible. And, in all fairness, Ian gave it a pretty fair shot, too (or, in his words, he "gave all he could"). But I finally had to realize that if he could not be 100% supportive of me during the most difficult month of my life then I could not continue to fight for us.

I don't really know how my life will shape up in the new year. There are many sorrows to be reconciled, but hopefully there will be more opportunities to be pursued. Only time will tell.

When it rains, it pours

I'm not quite sure how to start. We buried my Mom this week, and I know my life will never be the same as it was before I had to go through this. There really is no adequate way to say good-bye to someone who you have known and loved your entire life.

And before I could really start to process this fact, there came another blow to my equilibrium: my best friend from high school was killed in a car accident.

Jen was like a sister to me. We took the same classes, went to each other's houses on a weekly basis, listened religiously to the same bands, talked for hours on the phone, flew to visit each other when I moved to GA, wrote long, detailed notes to each other about everything and anything. She was such a vital part of my childhood. I even stayed close to her parents, who are like surrogate parents to me.

We drifted apart some over the last few years, as people are prone to do when their lives take different paths. She studied science and fell in love. I studied theatre and clung to my independence. But we were still connected. I was at her wedding and saw how blessedly happy she was with Travis. She emailed me photos from her ultrasounds. We were going to meet for coffee soon.

I don't know if it's because the news of her death came when I was still trying to grasp the loss of my Mom, but I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it all. How can I lose two people who were so involved in making me into the person I am today? How do you reconcile yourself to that? My heart goes out to her family, but in many ways I feel like I am a part of the family and their loss is mine to share. Somehow we all just keep taking life one tenuous step at a time. The hurt will never really go away, but I think we'll learn to live with it eventually.

Spoiler Warning: this is a very sad post

I had barely completed my last post when I got a call from my dad: come home now.

Within 9 hours I was walking off a plane in Florida into the arms of my dad and sister. As we hugged in the airport they told me the sad news: my mom had passed away.

The small blessing is that this all happened so fast that she didn't really suffer. When she drove into the hospital on Wednesday, she thought she would be coming home once they fixed her breathing. She was sedated when her heart stopped, so for all intents and purposes, she died in her sleep.

I admit, it hasn't really sunk in yet. When we were driving today around making funeral arrangements, I kept forgetting that she wasn't at home waiting for us. When we were filling in the details for the obituary and I thought "my children will never know their grandmother" it was still an abstract kind of thought.

I don't know when it will fully hit me. This isn't really something you can study and prepare for. But I do know that I am grateful for the relationship that I had with her, and for all the wonderful and loving people who will help support me through this. My mom was a loving, creative, strong woman and I will miss her for the rest of my life.

Rebecca Jane Cantwell
March 25, 1953 - December 3, 2008
Wake: Sunday, December 7, 2008 from 6PM to 8PM
Funeral Service: Monday, December 8, 2008 at 10:30am

Thanksgiving update: delayed.

So, I had hoped that the next entry I wrote would be all about wonderful Thanksgiving vacation. While visiting Alana and Xander in Montreal was great, it is not the thing foremost in my mind and I'd be hard pressed to gush about it at the moment. I will post pictures and gush at a later date...

Right now, I'm very, very anxious. My mom went into the hospital last week. The doctors originally thought she might have a blocked artery and she was going to have a heart catheter. However, when she had a seizure on the way to her appointment it prompted a CAT scan that revealed lots of blood clots in her lungs. She spent almost a week in the hospital and was slowly recovering when she was discharged on Monday. Her positive progress took a bit of a turn when her blood oxygen levels dropped on Tuesday (apparently she was sent home without any oxygen, which she still needs until the remnants of the clots are completely out of her lungs).

It has been a stressful and tense week for the whole family. My dad and sister are doing their best to take care of mom, but there are going to have to be a LOT of changes and I don't think they will happen easily. I've been on edge because I'm so far away that getting home quickly isn't really an option. Also, being a bit of a control freak, it's hard for me to deal with getting all my information second hand. I want to be in the office asking the doctors questions in person. I don't know if it would make any difference in the outcome, but it would make me feel more useful. Instead, I nag over the phone.

On top of all that, I will probably be unemployed by the end of the month. For most of 2008 the department has been in flux and no one seems to know where I'm going to fit in the new structure. Now I have about 21 days left until my contract expires and I still have no idea what is going to happen. This has been incredibly frustrating for me because I really do enjoy what I do, I am kinda limited in other possible technical job opportunities because many of my technical skills are specific to this one system, and I seem to have noticed that the economy is not in the best of shape and there are not a whole lot of great jobs floating around out there.

While my general outlook about being unemployed has been fairly negative up till now, I'm trying to see one silver lining: I can go home for a few weeks to help my mom. But even that is a tarnished lining because it will make searching/interviewing for new jobs difficult, I'll be away from Ian and my friends in CT and will miss my Pumpkin. Ian says I've been focusing too much on the negative things in my life, but it feels like there are very few positive things to distract me right now. It's hard to stop and smell the roses when the garden is heaped with manure...

Enough whining, stay tuned for Thanksgiving photos!