New Normal
- Tara Mielnik
- Jul 30, 2015
- 2 min read
One month ago today, we carried our son Home. That morning began with an anticipated surgery for a tracheotomy. I had dreaded that procedure for a week or more, but it went so quickly, and so well, that we exhaled, and hoped that we were getting ready to turn a corner we had been trying to get to for so very many days. Our relief that morning was short-lived, as other doctors determined that blood clots necessitated a fifth heart surgery in three weeks. The rest, they say, is history. But it isn't history. It is every single moment. It is in lazy summer mornings, every load of laundry, every time I ask a little brother to take out the trash or empty the dishwasher. (They used to argue about "I have to do EVERYTHING" -- now he has no one to blame it on.) It is in unread summer reading, overdue library books, unopened AP scores, a stack of college mail. It is in hockey schedules and school shopping. Grief is sneaky. I never know what will set it off, and sometimes, I can't figure out what "it" was. But sometimes I can. Yesterday, I went to get my hair cut, and five minutes in, the man in the chair next to me started talking to his stylist about how his wife's mom had died a couple of weeks ago, and he kept going on and on about how she was crying every day and the stages of grief. Apparently I had a little bit of a panic attack. We are searching for the new normal. For how to live our lives without Mitchell. For someone so quiet, he certainly was a large personality and presence, and filling the void he leaves will be forever impossible. We can't sit around and cry all the time. As I told C, we are still a family, we can still have good times and we can still have fun. But every smile and laugh makes me feel guilty, makes me think how much he would enjoy that moment, too. I am so thankful for the sixteen years we got. But selfishly, I don't think it was enough.
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