Keep Swimming

It is really hard for me to write anything right now, so I am grateful that you are still around to read what I am able to put out.

Anyway, two weekends ago, the youngest of our kiddos took us to the aquarium, a special treat which she planned with her birthday money.  We had a great time, and at one point we were standing at a tank and she was pointing out what she called a Dory fish, and she started singing “just keep swimming, just keep swimming.”

Girl, I am TRYING.

Every day I wake up, and I am sad. That is the baseline now, a mundane sadness that just lives inside me, just as much a part of me now as my hands or my hair or my feet. Just the hole where my mother was, filled now with the unbearable grief of losing her. My friend Carey lost her dad a little over a month ago, and while I can say that it is tragic, I am also finding a silver lining in the ability to have a friend who truly understands what it is like to lose a parent. My father has already lost his father, but he managed to make it to almost 70 with the man. His mother is still alive…how lucky! I would be lying to you if I said I didn’t feel cheated- Carey thinks we are too young for this shit. I have to agree, and then I think of my sister at only 26 when she lost my mother- it’s fucking unbearable.

So, I wake up each day with the sadness and I know that I have to keep going in spite of it. If it is a good day, I stay at baseline. Perhaps even feel a little bit happy for a moment or two when I forget the tragedy that lives in my heart. On a bad day, I dip below baseline and slide into depression, which is harder to get out of and deal with than just the sadness that I have on the regular basis.
Carey said something to me about how other people’s problems no longer mean anything to her- she does not say it to be cruel, she does not say it to be dismissive, she does not say it because she does not love her friends- it is because nothing compares. When someone this close to you dies, everything else seems menial…until it doesn’t. Until the world gets on top of you with all of its circumstance and all of a sudden you are drowning in your grief, with your daily life holding your head under the water.

So be a fish, and swim. Do I have any other choice? I am drowning, there is water everywhere, I may as well turn into a little fishy and swim away.

My mother always told me to take it one day at a time, one minute at a time if I have to. Some days, I am taking it one second at a time. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming.