Normal in an Abnormal Way

Today marks the second anniversary of the death of my sister-in-law, Joan.  I called four of her and my brother's six kids to tell them I was thinking of them; I didn't call the other two for my own reasons.

My brother has since moved on and remarried, and I'm feeling a moving on from the kids, particularly the three girls who live locally.  By the way, the "kids" are in their 30s and 40s and have children of their own.  I am glad that my nieces are doing better because they were their mother's primary caregivers during her short and lethal illness.  I helped them by staying with them, and I got to know the strength of these young women that they probably never realized they had until they had to give their wonderful mother her meds and clean up after her.  We never know our own strength until we have to push something away or hold up something or someone.

The youngest daughter (and child) would -- over these two years -- bemoan the fact that her life "would never be the same" since her mother's death.  I would listen to her and think about my own trip to a new normal when I lost both of my parents within six weeks of each other while I was pregnant with my first child.  I realized that I have now lived my life longer without my parents than I lived with them...life never the same, right?

So, whenever we experience a change in our life, whatever we've considered "normal" is irrevocably altered.  So, what was normal is gone, and a new normal takes its place.  What my life would have been with my parents in it to meet their granddaughter and grandson is something that I could not know and have tried to imagine over these 29 years.  I have lived my life and watched life without them, and it's been a fairly normal life, more or less.

And, my nieces and nephews, and even my brother have been enveloped by a new normal in their lives.  It is not that we forget those who have passed or disrespect them with our lives without them, it is because of them that we need to succeed in the new normal that they've provided us.

I miss my parents and what they have missed in not knowing my children and seeing that my husband and I are still together, but would things have gone as they have with them here?  Wouldn't my brother's and his kids' lives have gone on with their wife and mother?  But, what life would have been with them and my parents is something we can only imagine.