Two Seconds

I haven't slept well for a while.  I'd say it is a combination of many different things, but it certainly isn't helping that the two littles in our home are getting up in the night, crawling in to bed next to me, and then making me so uncomfortable that I wake up and have to move them back to their bed only to find someone else in their spot or the same thing happening over and over and over and over again.  Of course, I love them and I think about how this won't last forever and how I should cherish it, but it is really making me grumpy.  And I guess that wouldn't be a big deal, except it makes my days incredibly long and difficult and then it makes my evenings stressful and less productive than ever.

There is one other thing.  It's a real thing where you have just a few seconds in the morning (once in a blue moon) when you wake up more refreshed than usual and you forget that your life is different.  You don't remember for just that instant that you are missing a part of yourself.  I remember when grief finally let go just a little, enough for me to sleep a normal number of hours one night and I woke up with that feeling.  It is awful that I am even admitting that I forgot at all, but it is a real thing.  The heavy was gone for a minute and the "old normal" took its place.  Just like a deep breathe you have to hold under water it didn't last forever.  Actually that moment is only a brief moment before you start suffocating and pushing the water out of the way to reach the top.  You breathe the air that now fills your life and remember the "new normal" you have to put on when you step out of bed. 

There are days when I want that feeling of being able to forget to stay with me all day long.  It isn't because I don't want to remember him, but more because I want it to be different.  I want him to be here.  And then there are days when it hurts my heart to think about forgetting anything about Charlie including the painful memory of his life here on earth. 

I'm not sure I want to pray for any specific thing tonight, other than for God to just know my heart and know that I need help through this, all of this yuck, awful, heavy grief stuff.