Life has changed.
The changes are subtle and they are glaring.
Change is meant to happen- it's the proof of life that things change. Yes, change is inevitable- maybe just not in the way it has marched into our world of recent times.
I think back to a time when the most pressing matter that faced me was something that I now consider a triviality..
I have endured the erosion of normal.
Layer by layer my normal has disappeared.
Cancer diagnosis erodes at normal.
Chemotherapy rounds erode at normal.
Death and grief erode at normal.
Watching my family deal with the hand of loss that we have been dealt has eaten into the normality that I prided myself in maintaining.
It's nice to be normal.
Normal is safe and secure.
Normal is bland and unassuming.
Normal was ringing my mum to complain about my husband and his tendency to work late.
That was then.
This is now.
And as much as I would like to revisit 'then' sometimes, I have to learn how to be here in now.
My fear is that I will spend all my time and energy wanting my previous normality that I will miss the new normal that I wake up to every day.
I can't be that person who allowed grief and tragedy to eat away at me until there is merely a shell left..
I am trying to learn how to live this new normal.
How to accept the pace of our days as we cycle through rounds of chemo, walking towards a surgery.
How to accept that I don't get another phone call to mum, another leisurely coffee catchup.
I was talking to my sons today about needing to borrow Grannies car while mine is in the fix-it shop.
And Lukas (7 year old) said, "how can you even talk about her, even say her name, without crying? My throat hurts so much right now because I want to cry whenever I hear someone say Granny."
It made me want to pull over and howl. I told him to cry whenever he needed to. That it's ok to cry.
And I asked him what his favorite memory of Granny is. His reply was going to the beach with her.
And then he said "...but now that's your job. To take me to the beach. I love it there..."
So this is the new normal.
I'm finding little snippets of it everyday.
Its all around me, I just need to see it.
The thing I have realised is that simply because my normal has changed, good times and beauty and peace are still available.
They are all there... In this new normal.
