I love music. I feel that there are many times that a song or a lyric can speak more to what I'm feeling than my own brain can find words for. The past few days I have had this song in my brain. I don't remember when I first heard it - but it's been years ago now. Only now it's really fitting and hits me harder than it did when I first heard it.
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Our oldest son had his 11th birthday this past weekend. This was my first time in a long time flying solo on birthday parties. Kyle was the part decorator guy - he would turn our entire house into Minecraft worlds or Frozen themes. He got such a huge kick out of the challenge of seeing what all he could come up with - and he never disappointed! I, however, am not that creative. So, I gave Jacob options and he chose to have his birthday at the bowling alley and then just invited his two best pals to spend the night that night. It worked out well. The kids had fun. Jake was a little occupied by his thoughts the next day, though, and talked about how much he missed Kyle being at his birthday. Jake got a pretty good amount of birthday money to spend so I let him choose the store to go and spend some of it. Last night, we headed out to Toys 'R Us. He was looking at lego sets and kept asking me which one I thought Kyle would have thought was the coolest since he wasn't there to help Jake choose. I am clueless when it comes to lego. So he did the good old "eenie meenie miney moe" trick. Then in another part of the store he found something NOT lego related - a remote controlled AT-AT from Star Wars. His eyes lit up and he just KNEW that Kyle would have been majorly stoked about it, too.
And then we walked out of the store. All 3 of us pretty well stopped in our tracks. It was the most breathtaking sunset. And both kids nearly simultaneously said "look mom! Kyle painted us a sunset". I got chills. There are no iPhone photos that could come close to doing it justice - but I certainly tried to capture it so I could keep it...the fun part is that we came out of the store at the OPPORTUNE time to see it. By the time we got situated in the car to leave - it didn't look anywhere lose to how it had.
I started my internship today. Kyle would have been so excited (and proud) to hear about my first day. I can just see his face lighting up; not necessarily because it is an internship that is "up his alley" but because he would have been genuinely excited to see me so excited. I even have an official looking badge with my photo on it that I have to wear. That would have thrilled him. The whole thing would have thrilled him to know that I'm interning at a place where they work with the populations of people that interest me the most.
On the way home last night, Jacob was really solemn. He talked about missing Kyle and how he hated that Kyle hadn't been there for his birthday or to go shopping with him. Then he said that he felt really guilty because he was beginning to feel like he was getting used to Kyle not being here. I could tell he genuinely felt bad. But I had to explain to him that when Kyle got his promotion all I knew to pray about is that we would know how to navigate this new normal - and that what we are living now, without Kyle IS our new normal. That getting used to him being gone doesn't mean we don't miss him and that we wouldn't trade anything to have him back with us. It doesn't mean we don't still love him and it certainly doesn't mean that we are forgetting him or that he isn't a part of our lives - it only means that we are coming into our "new normal".
It has been 5 weeks now - and it still doesn't feel real.
One thing that especially gets to me is seeing friends' posts of their husbands with their kids - doing anything! Fishing, rough-housing, cuddling...anything. I realize that our two youngest will never get that experience with their dad. I don't even think I can quite wrap my brain around that.
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