Continuing...

Of course after the funeral, there were things to be taken care of. Our whole house was filled with people until about eight at night, drinking coffee and talking. Since we were the people who had lost, we were the center of attention and thus, wherever we went, we were followed as though we were the only ones with flashlights in a labyrinth of darkness.

So, people would gravitate toward us until the end of the proceedings. Not that it was unpleasant - in fact, we had a few very nice conversations. But, at the end of it all, I was ready for some alone time, and that's what we got.

I wasn't sure how I'd sleep because I'd had a dream the previous night about a baby, crying in the dark somewhere, and it had frightened me. I took benadryl and slept quite well, to my surprise.

Over the next weeks, it would be a struggle to remain focused on conversations, or on people, for any great length of time. I would get up, and crash out after four hours - exhausted and in need of sleep. My patience was non existent but I tried not to take it out on people, rather, to just sleep when I needed to. I slept an awful lot.

Every day was different. Every day felt a lot like uphill walking through mud with lead boots on at first. Doing normal things had suddenly become exhausting. I couldn't load the washer for a couple of weeks because it seemed like such an impossible task. The same went for the dishwasher, but I did figure that one out sooner because we needed to eat. The children stayed with grandma for the first week. At the end of that first week, my mother came over from England and proceeded to lift me up out of the bog and place me on higher ground, away from the proverbial snakes, while she cleaned house and did a wonderful job making everything flow fairly normally. It was enormous that she'd come. She, having lost a son herself, understood my emotions perfectly well, and having her around was incredible. Emotionally, I had fallen apart into pieces like a broken bowl. She helped me find the glue to mend the most basic parts of myself, and when she left at the beginning of November, I could once again perform menial household chores - nothing to celebrate normally, but after a period of not being able to do anything, these small things became huge things.

I crawled through my life...slowly coming back to reality. At first I couldn't go out of the house. But H put me in the car and would drive me around just to get me out. He nudged me along like a mother horse would with a newborn foal. I'd sit in the car when he went into local stores, to avoid that horrifyingly pitying stare from people. I couldn't bring myself to go into the stores for about two weeks. Then, I braved a local gas station on foot with a good friend of mine, C. We walked in and of course, the cashier came around and gave me a hug and told me how sorry she was. I couldn't take that more than once a day and so I made the decision to visit a new place once every two days.

So there we were....bumbling along emotionally. But physically my recovery was different again...