Defining a New Normal

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June was the weirdest, hardest, most emotional month of my entire life.

My second son, Ethan, was born. I took a week off work to get to know him.

Three days later my mother died from terminal breast cancer. Brain Metastases. After two years of fighting the vile thing, we were all shocked when we found it had spread to her brain. 8 weeks after the diagnosis of “brain mets” she was dead.

A few days after that, my other son caught a very nasty dose of Chicken Pox. As he was getting over that, he was rushed into hospital with suspected meningitis. After blood tests, a terrifying night in hospital, and a chest x-ray, he was diagnosed with pneumonia. Watching my three year old child bleeding out of a cannula in his arm, looking as scared and tiny and confused as I’ve ever seen him is a memory burned into my mind.

It was Mum’s birthday two days before her funeral. She would have been 53. I carried her coffin. I’m quite proud of that. Many of us wore pink. I’m proud of that too.

A few days after that, Ethan got Chicken Pox. Doctors had told us things could be “complicated” if that happened.

At the end of June, I went back to work feeling like I’d lived a lifetime’s worth of emotions in a single month. Joy, sadness, despair, terror, pride, worry, doubt; I’ve run the gamut. It was like the part of me that takes care of emotions had gone into critical meltdown. Engineers are still working to get things back online. Sometimes I think they’re starting to get somewhere, sometimes I don’t.

I miss Mum. We’re over half way through July now, a month and a half after her death, and I miss her terribly. I was tidying up my Gmail contacts the other day, and found her listed. While moving my contacts onto my new iPhone, I saw her number. I haven’t been able to delete them yet, insane as that sounds.

My life can’t stop even though sometimes I just want everything to freeze. I’ve caught myself humming the Dr Horrible Freeze-ray song since Act One. Yes, I am bonkers. I know I have to keep going for my two wonderful boys, my wife, my Dad, my sister, everyone I love: my family.