Today and yesterday have just been hard. Really freaking hard. Yesterday, my daughter started soccer and I must say she did pretty freaking well. She was a little apprehensive but as soon as the coach got her to start kicking the ball around she dove right in – she could have paid attention better and I am hoping that she becomes better at that by playing this sport. She never stops moving and really, she’s at the age that she has to start learning how to stand still/sit still when asked to do so. There were grandparents at the field, which I didn’t expect but once I saw it I immediately put my blinders on so I didn’t have to see it. As much as I tried, I still saw them though, and it hurt to know that if he was here my Dad would have been at that field yesterday morning. After that we did a few things but ultimately ended up at my parents’ house; there’s a bunch of work that needs to be done so Rob cleaned off the roof, looked at the sidewalk that needs to be fixed, I cleaned out more stuff from the garage, I went through pictures – my daughter watched movies and created a dance floor with wrapping paper on the living room floor. Yesterday was Grandparent’s Day so I guess it’s fitting that we spent the afternoon there.
Last night was the Giants vs. Cowboys football game; a night when you either a)sat on the couch and watched the insanity between my parents first-hand or b)called the next day to hear reports of the insanity. My Dad – a big Giants fan; my Mom – a HUGE Cowboys fan. They weren’t allowed to watch the game on the same TV because they would just trash-talk through the entire game. As it was, they would get out of their seats whenever their team made a great play against the other’s team (I distinctly remember my Dad standing on the steps to the Living Room, smirking, after his team had a touch-down and my Mom telling him to go sit down it was only one play). It was always fun to watch, at least for us on the side-lines. Last year was hard, I don’t know if my Dad watched that game or not but I couldn’t do it and I thought that the next time they played, maybe we would all get together to watch. But then, he died. So this year was even harder; I saw that it was on and when I was asked if I wanted to watch it, I struggled to get out the word “no” without crying. He should still be here for this and for so much more.
I just miss them so very much and today, it isn’t any easier. There’s so much that they are missing and now that my daughter is getting older, she’s asking questions about where is Grandpa and she’s confused a bit because she has Grandparents in Florida, and Grandparents “in the sky” - which is where we told her heaven is. I’m not sure that I’m doing it right, I’m not sure that it’s making any sense at all to her but I’m doing the best that I can. I don’t fully understand why they’re gone, and there are days when it doesn’t seem real; how can I explain it to her when I don’t really understand it myself. Being in this situation – an adult who is now an orphan – makes life difficult to navigate at times; I now have a new perspective on that movie Frozen, for example. When Anna sits at Elsa’s door and tells her that ‘we’re all we have left now’ or something like that after their parents die, I get it. It is incredibly lonely and scary knowing that all you have left is one other person who may remember the same things – or hopefully more than you; there’s one person left who is the same as you and who maybe gets why you feel so lonely and scared. There is only one person in your family now – we used to be a family of five and now, there are two of us. It’s incredibly sad and lonely sometimes when you think of it that way.
