thank you

Thank you for any thoughts and prayers you have sent our way.

Anthony's mom passed away a few days after my last post, on Sunday, May 4th and her memorial service was a week ago yesterday.

People keep asking how I'm doing, how Anthony is doing, how Randall (A's step-dad) is doing. All I can tell them is we're making it. I think for Randall his loss is very real since he has to go home to an empty house every night, but for the rest of us, it hasn't quite sunk in & sort of hits us in waves. The other day I was in the drive thru at McDonald's and the thought of chicken tenders almost made me burst into tears (she worked at Tyson - which is the supplier for all of McDonald's chicken items). Or, when they play the song on the radio that the preacher read at her memorial service (usually on my way to work) & I have to fight back the tears so I can see the road. I've never lost anyone so close to me. Right now I feel sort of numb, like I've got to keep fighting back the emotion or it will overtake me. I think we're all using the same strategy of trying to keep ourselves busy.

You know how when you or someone you know is expecting a child & even though you see her belly growing & you look at ultrasound pictures (and as a mom you dream about your child), it just isn't real until you see the baby for the first time, hold her in your arms, hear her little noises & smell that sweet new baby smell. Well, this is sort of the opposite. One day you're cooking dinner & running around your house trying to straighten up before your in-laws get there & life is very real & a little tedious. You're chatting with your mother-in-law while she holds her granddaughter (but you don't realize it's the last time she'll ever hold her). Then, just two weeks later you wake up to the news that she has passed on. And you feel like you're reaching out into an empty space trying to find her again, trying to recount & store up every memory you have of her, afraid you'll lose them, afraid you'll lose her. And you begin to realize how precious time is, how you took her for granted a little bit and how much you long for your children to have her in their lives. And it's all so very unreal.