The animals have handled this last move with stoicism. They have been through three big moves in just over two years and I’m sure are as tired of watching me pack and unpack as I am of doing it. They have had to learn new houses, new yards, new walks, new people. They mourned the loss of their boy with me that first year. They greeted him with joy after his long absence, and then said goodbye again. They watched their girl move out recently, loading her car with boxes and bags, leaving her newly occupied room bare, bereft. They stick close by me when I’m home, as if afraid I will disappear too.
There is relief in having our own house again. We can exhale. But we shrank in size from five humans to three and it feels strange, at least to the dogs and I. We have been so busy that the quiet hasn’t really crept up on us yet. We have had workmen in and out since we moved, there is a garage full of boxes to unpack, and a household still to run. But I notice when I cook too much food. And when the dirty clothes aren’t enough to do a load. When I stop “doing” and absorb the reality of the moment. Grief squeezes my whole body, wringing sobs and tears out of me like a wet towel. Hank can’t stand my crying, slinking off to lie in the other room, man that he is. Charlie can handle it. She stays loyally at my feet. I swear there is compassion in her eyes when she looks up at me.
I’m not used to the calm. There have been so many storms for so many years that I feel like I have been on disaster relief and I don’t know how to be off duty. The hard work, the herculean multi tasking required of managing a modern family; cook, cleaner, driver, laundress, tutor, travel agent, decorator, admin, gardener, animal caregiver, hostess, event planner, tech person, navigator, general contractor, nurse, coach, mother, wife, bottomless pit of everything… all that I can do blindfolded and with one hand tied behind my back, imperfectly of course. But who am I when I stop doing those things? When there is no longer a need for that particular skill set? I have been craving rest for years, snatching moments when I can, longing for this day to come, to have time to fulfill my own dreams. But now that it’s here I’m having trouble stepping off the track. The space between is foreign. It’s like changing trains between Grief and Fear via a spur line to Immediate Relief. I know there are stations of Possibility and Opportunity and New Chapters, hopefully to something I will write one day. But right now I’m stuck at Loss.
Hank has returned to his bed near me. Charlie is snoring softly under my chair. Sugar is upstairs, only comforting me when it’s really tragic. Tomasa waits for me at the barn. Without them I think I would be Lost.
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