Remember that budget conversation not long ago in “Spoons”? Yeah, well, I’m not the only one. Poor Brad too is operating in the red these days. (Actually, alot of my friends are feeling challenged lately, I found out after sending out an SOS email earlier this week. It’s like a light to medium weight blanket of suffering over the nation!) It’s not good when neither of us has the reserves to support the other. Lately if we can get some food in us that’s not fast or frozen or processed - or eat at all sometimes - that’s about as good as we get. Brad said in support group this last Monday that you don’t realize how little you have to give or how close it all is to the surface until you’re challenged just that little bit, when the things that may have stressed you some before now knock you flat. Really flat. For him, that means not being able to get out of bed. Maybe eating some chicken noodle soup. In bed.
Anna would have been 6 months old last Tuesday. Brad recently said he’s just beginning to realize what we’ve lost. They say grief in infant loss often hits men later, when the child would be reaching the age where their own personal dreams for moments and memories would have occurred. At 6 months, she would be starting to interact more, motor skills starting to take off, language coming pretty soon, able to play and respond to him in important, newly satisfying ways.
Father’s Day this weekend.
His Dad is back in the hospital this week, with 2 ambulance rides in the space of 24 hours and a very very late night/early morning on Monday/Tuesday - yes, after the support group meeting where he already said he was running on empty emotionally and psychologically. Without crossing privacy boundaries (hopefully), Brad is incredibly afraid that his Dad will be unhappy and uncomfortable as he continues to age and it literally torments him. He’s a sensitive guy who would take this aspect of life hard anyway, but right now with everything else... it’s unmanageable. Being the one ‘on duty’ with his Dad stresses him out beyond what I think even he considers normal...but again, he just doesn’t have the reserves from which to pull perspective. He cried with a depth I haven’t seen since the first month Anna died the other night, and he said it was a combination of his Dad and upcoming Father’s Day. There is nothing that breaks my own heart as much as seeing him that way.
Still dealing with the weight of needing to find a job.
Dealing with me, who’s had quite a week too between all the above and some interaction with my ex-husband, a huge disappointment already as we begin to even consider the adoption prospect again (the nationwide agency I was feeling really good about very recently stopped working with MN), working alot at the hospital lately, same old same old from the June 12th post.
Seriously, “too much” comes so fast. When you’re floating along the raft in calm waters, you don’t realize how fragile - or small - the raft is until you hit a few rapids.
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