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Thursday
Mar172011

Air Piano

This 20 seconds captures one of the best moments of my life. It's Christmas Eve of 2008 and Grace was too excited to go to bed, so she provided some light entertainment instead. In the background is my mother's voice. I haven't been able to stop watching this for days. It's comforting and painful all at once. 

I miss you mommy :( 

Wednesday
Mar162011

75 days. 

The following was written on Monday. I didn't have the strength to finish. I thought I could finish it yesterday and then today. But I can't. I can't because this isn't going to end. I feel like i will feel this way forever.

I'm sitting here in my office that will only be mine for another two and a half weeks; sobbing. 

I should probably go home, but that would involve talking to someone and quite frankly, I just want to crawl under my desk. 

I'm not coping well. 

I really thought I was. Right up until the precise moment that I realized I'm not.

And I have no clue what to do. 

Worse is that I don't have the energy to care. 

Save for my beautiful child, my days are dark and lonely and impossibly hard. 

I try desperately to make Grace's life normal and routine. But I'm failing miserably because I'm in a constant state of flux - a state of moving from one responsibility to the next without joy or relief. I force myself to prepare meals and do the laundry. It seems that anything I clean is almost instantaneously cluttered and the sprawl of stuff creeps into other rooms I'm trying not to use in an effort to contain the chaos. I haven't kept after Grace to tidy either. I can barely keep after myself. So, toys don't get put away and there is a never ending stream of size 5 skirts, poorly matched tops and too small (but out of the question to part with) tights littering the house from the countless wardrobe and mood changes of the spritely little diva I live with.

She's doing what she should be doing; creating and immersing herself in happy, elaborate and fantastical worlds. However, I know that she's also hiding from me. Her playing is rescuing her from the sullen and "fighting to exist" state that her mother is in.

And I hate that I've done that to her. I hate that the death of her grandmother has to strip her of her innocence. I hate that play has become an escape.