Health & Fitness
End of Summer Blues?
Musings on the passing of another season as our family deals with my husband's heroic battle with cancer.
It's the tail end of summer. Friday before the girlies start school Tues. They're playing in our inflatable pool where they've spent most of their summer. It's been a great summer for swimming- more 90 degree+ days than any summer I can really remember. This year will be the first year Lucy has full day school. Tali will be in 7th grade.
It's the second summer Jaime's fighting cancer.
I'm feeling sort of empty and lost- and for a reason I can't begin to understand it's because of the grass. Yesterday we paid a struggling neighbor to cut the grass and get rid of the massive weeds and bushes that have grown over the summer. I wish we could undo it. I miss the vines and bushes and overgrown grass. I feel robbed- like the lawn was keeping track of the time my husband has been sick. Like tic marks on a prisoner's wall, the wilderness of our yard paid tribute to every day my boo has been in the fight of his life.
And now, instead of the wreck of a yard that mirrors the wreck of my life, I have a normal looking, well kept yard. It's out of sync. It doesn't belong.
How can anything be in order when my life is in such disarray?
And Lucy- she was thrilled at the open-ness of the newly groomed yard. The spaciousness... The possibility. It broke my heart.
Too many contradictions. We're literally drowning in our bills and paying a neighbor more out of compassion than the desire to have a well kept yard. The girls play in the pool because I don't have the money or the energy to do anything else with them. The unruly foliage reinforced that in my mind...
Now it looks like it's any other summer day. A normal yard, normal kids in a pool. It invites me to ignore our reality, tempts me to forget or even pretend all is well.
I don't know why I hold on so hard. I don't want to forget for a second... I'm afraid I'll have to remember again, and it will be like hearing it again for the first time.
Cancer is the new normal. It's not like we don't have amazing moments of near picture perfect joy... But it's in a new frame.
Pushing back anger, pushing back fear... Wanting my overgrown grass back to keep me grounded in my new normal :-/
