Night and day

Finally, a day with sun! All day long - a big fat sun accompanied by a sea of robin's egg blue sky.

It's incredible how much seeing the sun changes my mood. Today was a good day. A very good day.

The first few weeks after Thomas died I would start to get a horrible feeling of dread as the afternoon shadows turned into evening darkness. It was March and I knew there was another month and a half before the days would start to get longer. It terrified me. Those first few weeks were awful in so many ways, and the long evenings were like a shroud that came to smother me every night - it felt like I was suffocating. Once darkness fell it wasn't so bad, but the slow death of the day was horrible, and it came to torment me every night without fail.

I can remember laying on the couch feeling dreadful and useless while My Beloved busied himself in the kitchen making dinner. I would stare at the TV, half watching, while he cooked and ran about the house doing whatever he could find to do in a frenetic attempt to keep himself busy - to keep himself from thinking.

Those days were so unspeakably horrible. Even though I know it was me on the couch dreading the darkness and My Beloved running himself ragged in an effort to block the pain - I can't believe it was us. I can't believe we endured it all. And I still can't quite figure out how.

As I was making the bed today I thought, "what would I answer if someone asked me how I am - how I'm doing?" My standard answer has always been, "Oh, there are ups and downs. Good days and bad days." But today I realized that's not exactly true anymore. I do still have the occasional horrible day (like Christmas Eve) but now mostly I just have days. Days without Thomas. Days as a childless mother. Days of happiness and sorrow.

I'm not back to normal, because I'm not that person and that normal is gone. But I think I've settled into my new normal. There aren't ups and downs like those horrific early days, weeks and months. There is just the steady pace of a life tainted by unthinkable sorrow.

I'm not sure if that's bad or good.

I guess it just is.