The World Keeps Spinning

While my reality seems to have stopped in its tracks, the world keeps spinning.  The laundry still piles up, the dishes haven't started washing themselves, and the socks still refuse to be matched.  The world keeps moving, and I waffle between wanting to beg it to speed up or plead for it to slow down.

Each day that passes is one further from the memories of my mom.  I want to hold on desperately to my last conversations with her.  I want to remember Grayson at this stage, when he was last in her arms.

At the same time I desperately want this season of heartache and grief to be over.  I want to stop crying.  I want my house to no longer be littered with Kleenex.

Today we started cleaning out my mom's bedroom.  Luckily my mom doesn't own a ton of stuff.  I am normally someone who throws out everything.  No need to hang onto crap.  But today, today I hung on to stupid stuff. I hung on to dumb candles and vases.  I didn't want to give up one memory or tangible reference to my mom's place in this world.  I know it will get easier, I know time will heal.  I know my memories are more important than her sweatshirt, but today I couldn't part with that damn holey sweatshirt...even though I had another one of hers.  New profession: hoarding.

Today Grayson rolled over for the first time.  So I stopped in my tracks and cried because I couldn't text that milestone to my mom.  Who else would really care if my son rolled over?  Big deal, it's what babies do.  So instead I slowly collected myself and texted my sisters.  They would care.  Slowly my go-to people will change.  Slowly I won't reach for the phone to tell my mom something dumb.  Some other sucker in my life will be blessed with those little tidbits of knowledge.

Please pray as I drag my feet through this week.  One in front of the other, one in front of the other.  Tomorrow we meet with the funeral director and pastor to discuss the service, then I get to meet with the funeral home to discuss those details.  Awesome.

There will be a service to honor my mom's life this Friday at Willow Creek Community Church in Barrington in the chapel. Visitation will be at 6.  The service will be at 7.

I don't want to go.  I pretty much had a panic attack about trying to organize pictures for a slide show and not wanting to hurt anyone's feelings if I couldn't find a photo of them, but I can't find pictures with my mom and everyone she loved, because the woman hated the camera.  It seems slightly inappropriate to show a slide show of images where she is giving me the hand, but we have slim pickings.  Slim unorganized pickings at that.

This is just hard.  Today was just hard.  Tomorrow will be hard.  I guess I am grateful that the world keeps spinning so that I am no longer stuck in this week.