One step

In one and a half hours, I lost my best friend, my partner in parenting, my great love, my support, my greatest fan, and my lover and companion. All gone in one day. The person who knows me best. The one who loves me unconditionally. I appear like I am handling things well, but every once in a while, I will suddenly get the sucker punch remembrance that he is gone, and my reaction is, "Oh, my god!" Then I experience the "now what?," the panic, the great unfairness of it all once again. Over and over again.

Yesterday I took the kids to the science center because, first, they needed a distraction, and second, the membership was expiring at the end of the month. Each of the kids is handling it differently, Kiki apparently the best, but I wonder if she simply appears to be doing better than the rest of us. Rocky hasn't begun to verbalize this whole thing, and Nita has regressed a little, and is a little less fearless. She is like I am in that she will be blindsided and then cry a bit, and she is cranky, but at least she is showing some reaction.

Anyway, on the way to the science center, we were on the expressway, and I suddenly, for a brief instant, thought I could simply go into the path of a truck and end it for all of us. However, good sense (or at least social expectations) prevailed, and I recollected that we had purchased one of the highest safety ratings vehicles (a lot of good it did EG), and I realized that I could fail in my intent and survive but lose my children, too, and probably end up incarcerated and a paraplegic with no van left to adapt for hand controls. Or, worse yet, become one of those poster children for women driven over the edge (pardon the pun) by the hormonal roller coaster of menopause.

People ask, "How are you doing," but I don't know if they REALLY want to know, to listen to me rail about how much I hate this and how unfair it is, to hear about the pain and loss, or if they really care that I am having trouble breathing, thinking, eating, and making decisions. If it weren't for the kids and their schedules, and the dogs with their immediate needs, I don't know if I could or more accurately, would want to, function.

But I do.

Shortly after EG died, my sister gave me a ring which she purchased for herself. It is a simple silver band, but the shape is a mobius, so the ring draws attention to itself both from the wearer and the observer. The ring has the quote, "A journey of one thousand miles begins with a single step." And so, every day, sometimes every hour or every minute, I take one more step on the journey.