I’ve had a birthday. We’ve endured mom’s birthday, dad’s birthday and what would have been mom and dad’s 50th Wedding Anniversary. Hard days all.

The pain is different now. Not as frequent, not as intense. Still here, just different. Like something you learn to live with. Like arthritis. Hurts worse on certain days, always sort of there, but most days you just try to ignore that nagging sensation of pain.

There are other things to contend with. Life. And some things that are just unfair. Dad is raising Haley now. Paula, Aimie, Katie and I try to help. It’s confusing for all of us. Probably mostly Haley. She wants a mom. Her mom chose freedom, her mom chose to run away from it all, her mom chose to leave her entire family at our most needy time ever, her mom chose selfishness, her mom basically left us all for… Drugs? That’s the only thing that helps me understand leaving all of us…and leaving her four kids. She left Haley, (the one she called the ‘most’ trouble) with her 70 year old grieving father. So the other women in the family have stepped in to help dad raise this troubled teen. Not fair. (I can hear mom so clearly say, as she always did, “Who told you life was fair?”) So while Nikki has lived on the street, engaged in deviant social and drug behavior, and God knows what else, we have been trying to hold things together within our family and for her oldest child. Life is not fair.

Did mom know it was this bad? We’d had conversations about it, about her…
I wonder if mom knows now?

So life is for the living. We’ve been going through the motions, living. This last week of August has been a hard one. Why? I keep wondering why? Why are some days/weeks, harder than others?
Don’t know. I just know that this journey we’re on, this journey through grief is not over. not over yet.