A new journey, a new normal?

I love traveling.  I love the planning before hand and obsessive googling.  The packing of my bag, desperately trying to pack light but never quite managing it.  The trip to the airport or the roadtrip and the actual flying or driving bit.  And then the new experiences and people we meet and memories made when time has a different quality and just seven days can bring profound change.

Life is one long journey but within the one from birth to death, we take many smaller ones.  Some last for years and years and others are shorter.  We have defining moments and experiences that provide a before me and an after me.   We have all sorts of firsts in our lives too, both good ones and bad ones.  I have just completed a really really tough journey and embarked on another and I feel like I am inside out completely raw with no protection against the elements.

My last post was about 3 weeks ago and since then most of you know we lost our father on the 1st of January.  We had been waiting for his actual passing for over 2 months and dubbed him Laz as he kept on making a come back.  The emotional toll was enormous, especially for my mother.  Now that I have gone through it I understand the real end, when you truly know its close now.  I won't go write about the last 36 hours expect to say it was incredibly tough and traumatic and I begged God to take him home on the 31st.  In hindsight it had to be the 1st of January.  In 2017 it was the day I found out about Natey and my world stood still and a new journey began.  In keeping with my synchronicity theme, this life changing date was the day my dad made his exit.

A family is like a puzzle.  Each member is a piece and has a slot and a place.  We have lost a major piece of our puzzle and the picture will never look the same again.  We are floundering around trying to keep our shape but the puzzle is broken, our family is broken and our hearts are broken.  It feels literal, this brokeness.  The anxiety is off the charts, my dystonia is awful and my speech is bad.  I feel weirdly pregnant.  (So not!)   Emotional, nauseous, fragile, achey boobs.  I am not sure if it's the worry about my mother or the absolute tenderness I had towards my father at the end of his life. 

I miss my dad.  I miss Mimi&Pops, one unit.  I miss our boring phone chats:  "Hey Dad. Hello my girl." And then talking about the kids and dogs and my mom and camping or whatever it was.  The absolute relief of the end of suffering and the shock are a buffer and then reality hits 2 weeks in and the person is not away on a trip somewhere.  They are gone, forever.  I want to make it better for my mom and my siblings and the grandkids and Uncle B and Uncle Ralph.  But I can't and we all grieve alone at the end of the day. 

So what do I do?  How do I find my new normal?   How do I get my heart to stop racing?  Its achey this grief thing.  Just so fucking painful.   And everyone has to die.  And this grief truck will hit me again as it has in the past and even though I saw it coming and longed for the end, the force of that truck has literally knocked my breath away.  I miss my dad.  I miss our family.