Ambivalence

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm really struggling with our imminent departure from the Boston area. We've found a place in New Jersey that we like quite a bit and are looking forward to rounding out its rough edges (read a wood-paneled kitchen!), and we're all but packed and ready to go. But there's a very powerful part of me that is crying out for us to stay put...and I don't know what to make of it.

I think it's because, no matter how I slice it, my baby is still here. He was born here. He died here. And while we will always have the gift of being able to take him with us wherever we go, we are leaving a piece of him behind. And that's very painful to consider.

Not to mention that we've faced some difficult issues with our housing situation, put it all together, and it's a right mess of quicksand and questions.

It's really causing me to doubt my ability to make good decisions. Money's going to be tight. I'm walking back into a situation I haven't found myself in in years...a teacher with no classroom, until December anyway. And I don't really know who I am anymore.

What do you make of being a childless mother? A teacher with no students? Both of these slices of who I am have always been such a source of comfort and peace--even before Rafa was born I was everyone's mother, and I've been teaching long before I had the degree.

But this shiftlessness feels different, more defeating.

Maybe I just have to wait to feel some kind of normal again, the kind I learned how to feel when we lived our life in the hospital, or even the normal that followed immediately after Rafa's death.

Right now, we've landed ourselves back in the waiting place.

Keep praying for us. Life is still hard, even after the flowers and cards have all dried up. It means the world to us to know you're out there.