Dreaming

You know that sleepy state, where you think you are awake, but really you are still dreaming?  Everything feels so real that when you wake up you question what really happened.  That happened the other day.  I woke up after going downtown with Jon for our anniversary and this whole last year hadn't happened.  I hadn't had this sweet baby boy.  I hadn't carried him for nine months.  My mom wasn't dying and life still made more sense.

I miss that dreamy state sometimes.  I think it was just a culmination of feeling like that for the whole previous night out with Jon.  My sister had watched Grayson, and for the first time in a long time Jon and I had some alone time.  It felt like we had been transported back to last year, most likely because we ate at the same awesome restaurant and I found the ticket stubs to our adventures of last year still in my nice coat pocket.  I obviously don't wear my nice coat enough, but that is O.K. since it was $5 at a garage sale and I found $5 in the pocket after buying it.  Win.  We do however need to do more things that demand a nice coat here and there.  I don't see too much of that in my future since nice coats no longer look nice covered in baby barf, but I digress.

At times I feel like it is next to impossible to integrate this last year of our lives into the previous ones.  This new normal feels anything but that.  It feels foreign and like it is dragging on forever.  How long do we have to pray for the peace of death?    How long can you slowly grieve someone while they are still alive, and what will it look like when she is actually gone?

New years was wonderful.  Jon and I spent the night with my mom so that my sister could go out with friends.  Grayson, the sleepless wonder, didn't disappoint and I spent a great deal of the night up with him and my mom.  My mom has really struggled being able to sleep lately and she gushed about how much she loved the night and not being awake alone.  I would doze here and there with my babe in my arms, but it was a wonderfully restless night.  Never thought those words would have come out of my mouth.

So we will keep living in this limbo land, this dreamy state that I wish I could wake up from and make go away.

I go back to work next week.  I'm petrified and ecstatic.  I'm so pumped to see all my friends, but I am so nervous about working a night shift when I feel like I barely function during the day.  I'm also scared that I won't be able to help with my mom as much.  I am just going to plan on these next two weeks being a challenging transition, but we will once again reach a new normal as we always do.

While I feel like I have more to say and process, I am being summoned by the hungry beast, so I must go.  Happy Sunday.