Difficult roads...

Dear Sonzee, 

Another 31 days is wrapping up meaning another month is coming to an end.  This one, in particular, was our most eventful since you left us. We finally closed on the house 9 days ago, Bear Pines is slowly coming together.  The most incredible part is seeing my vision become reality.  Aba and I joked last night this is a place we would love to airbnb, and we hope all who visit here will feel the same way.  I added touches inspired by you all throughout.  Currently, I am upstairs on the outside porch writing this letter while sitting at a bistro set placed on top of a rug that is beige with a red design all over it, and drinking my coffee from the ceramic cup that has the red ring around the top.  They are honestly pretty crummy substitutes for you, but since they are the best I get, they are absolutely perfect.

This past week finished off multiple meetings for the new school year at FBC.  I am going back to West Valley for the 3rd year and took the two classrooms at East Valley.  The decision was made for me to not go back into central, and it was the correct one confirmed the second I looked at classroom assignments and didn't realize I was holding my breath until I saw Ms. Susan and Ms. Erin in the classrooms that were once mine.  I know I will miss seeing the faces of everyone who works on that campus, but I don't think I could walk the same halls you once did in your gait trainer, or have the constant reminder of your absence seeing the classroom you most probably would have been in.  I know the staff misses you greatly, they check in with me often and have made that very clear.  They always have been the best.

Yesterday we saw the initial mockup of your headstone, it turned out beautiful, but needs a couple of small fixes.  I am excited to see the final draft and then one day in the next few months it'll just show up.  I anticipate that day will be filled with mixed emotions.  Tomorrow begins a new month that will present us with some firsts. On Monday it is going to be a double whammy as it would have been your first day of school, Kindergarten no less, and it also marks 6 months since you have been gone.  Tuesday I am slated to do a live zoom as a Chabad FSU alumnus about your story, and I am really nervous about that.  

While today marks the final day of another month of 2020 you missed out on, it was also filled with new beginnings.  It breaks my heart that you aren't here to share them with us, but I know wherever you are, it is better for you.  So like this quote that now hangs in the coffee nook of Bear Pines says, 

Love always, 

Ema

25 Weeks

Dear Sonzee,

I simply cannot believe we are just one week away from you being gone for 6 full months.  It seems as if an entire lifetime has occurred during that time, one where you aren't physically present in but yet you somehow manage to fill all the space around me. 

During this last week, we finally closed and moved into Bear Pines.  We took a family picture on the front porch and we held your place with one of your Sonzee Bears.  It isn't the same, but at least there is a place holder.  The house is slowly coming together, but I feel like it will never be complete.  It took me two full days before we got the front porch set up perfectly with patio furniture, the new address sign, and your windchime.  I finally drank my first cup of coffee sitting outside on Saturday morning.  My heart misses you terribly, but when I am outside I just think of that quote from "A walk to remember"; "our love is like the wind, I can't see it, but I know it's there" and every time, I start to hear the rustling of the leaves in the tall trees and there is an extra gust of wind that surrounds me. 

This whole moving forward thing isn't getting any easier, but it is definitely getting different.  We celebrated Tzviki's birthday yesterday.  I made him a hockey cake and aba and I continued to build furniture and organize.  Your siblings spent the day both inside and outside.  Noam is roaming around like the king that he is, and getting bossier if you can even imagine that.  I want to do something special to honor your 6 months, and while talking to Auntie A today, she helped me figure it out, so now I just hope it gets delivered in time for me to bring it to you next week.

Today begins on-line meetings for the new school year at FBC.  My mind is still a mess about everything.  Right now it is scheduled to start virtually in a week, but if it changes to in-person in 3 weeks I cannot figure out if I would want to go in?  Your siblings' school has yet to determine their course of action either, and I am also torn on whether to send them.  Everyone likes to point out children dying from covid19 is rare, to which I reply that you were rare and statistically about .002%.  Someone has to be the statistic and you were one, so they really mean nothing to me.  I am really just hoping everything stays virtual, but that is selfish ema talking.

I hope you are continuing to play with your friends and make new ones and do whatever it is that you want.  Remember you are loved and missed greatly!  Stay healthy and be well.

Love always,
Ema

Control

The last few days I have felt similar to a prepubescent hormonal girl who feels like her world is falling apart and that no one understands her.  While she has no idea why she is feeling the way she is, I know for me, the culprit is grief, which is now the replacement for the previous 5 letter string of characters that wrecked so much havoc on our lives.  Unfortunately, and similar to CDKL5, knowing that my grief is "the why" doesn't at all help with gaining any sort of reprieve from it or any control over it. It is so hard.

I have read enough books about grief and talked to enough fellow grievers to know the best course of action is to just sit with the grief, but honestly, it isn't as easy as it sounds.  Sitting with grief means there has to be a relinquishing of what little control I have fooled myself into thinking I have left. It means allowing myself to feel these tumultuous waves of pain, of anger, of sadness, of I don't even know what.  It means I have to allow myself to realize all of my feelings are normal, even the ones that I am deeming irrational because they all do have a purpose and because they are my feelings, they are all valid. 

I feel like I have been reluctantly dragged to a get-together and now I have to make the best of it by striking up a conversation with someone in the room.  It is awkward, the desire to be there is null and there is the now added component of pretending to be interested in small talk.  The difference between grief and attending the get together is that more often than not, you can look back on attending the event and realize it wasn't so bad after all.  When it comes to grief, there is no looking back on it, there is no escape from it, and there is no excitement over allowing it into your life.  The only positive that comes from sitting with grief is that each time you sit with it, you have managed to successfully survive another tsunami, but that is hardly a consolation when you know the cycle is neverending. 

24 weeks

Dear Sonzee,

24 weeks. I don't get it.  Time has never appeared to pass by so quickly, even your time here on earth seems like it went by not as fast.  It is just the time with you actually here seems to be getting harder and harder to see.  I feel as if I am sitting on a plane and watching you shrink as the plane moves higher and higher...I fear that you will soon be completely out of my sight.  That thought is scary and suffocating and yet in some ways, it is unavoidable.

Last Wednesday night we went to a drive-in movie event put on by Hospice of the Valley, they played the Disney movie, Onward.  We already watched that accidentally near the beginning of quarantine when Disney did an early release.  I had heard people say it was amazing, so I just pressed play without even reading the synopsis.  It was a parenting fail in terms of Laeya, and I definitely was not prepared for it.  This round, it was aba who had not seen it, but he at least knew what it was about.  I think it was toughest for him due to Saba.  Overall, despite it not being one of my favorite Disney movies, I think it provided a good storyline for us.  Your sisters brought their Sonzee bears all dressed up in your newborn outfits along with your feeding bags and Laeya even threw in your phone (that we haven't turned on since it died). 

As a whole, I am still feeling lost.  I know it has become apparent to your siblings because Laeya mentioned how I don't spend all my time giving you meds, taking care of you, or working on something related to your care and I just sit at my desk "bored".  It is an accurate statement.  I have all this time, and I don't know what to really do with it.  I try filling the void with different things every day, but everything pales in comparison to just having you here.  Yet, as much as this is horribly painful, I wouldn't even ask you to come back so you could be the one having to suffer.

The one thing everyone seems in agreement with here is they are loving my "grief directed cooking".  I have been doing my best to make different "fancy" dinners, and since I do have the time now, I find easy recipes and just dive right in.  The majority of them have been huge hits, the ones that weren't I knew I was gambling on from the start, but I made them eat it anyway and just bribed them with some dessert.

This week is already the last week of the extended school year, I can't believe it was four weeks long.  FBC's school year is planning on virtually starting two weeks from today.  I feel like summer shouldn't be over yet, without being in NY it doesn't even seem like it ever began.  I hope wherever you are, you are having fun dancing around and doing everything to your heart's content. You are greatly missed and always loved.

Love always,
Ema

"Normal"

When Sonzee died covid19 was just beginning to infiltrate the United States.  Besides my mother mentioning in passing there was a bad virus in China, I honestly didn't give it a second thought.  By the time we celebrated her 30 days after she passed, restrictions were beginning to be put in place.  I never officially went back to work in the true sense of the word, because by the time I decided I might give it a try, schools closed and life went virtual (inner sigh of relief).  It was an adjustment on many levels being home with the kids and them being in school online, but ultimately, it allowed for a complete change of pace, so it removed a lot of the new I would have had to face post-Sonzee.

In April I couldn't even imagine that summer camps would not open and that we would not be returning to NY like we typically have.  I was a little skeptical about us going away for 3 months, but Sam and I always said after Sonzee died we would need a complete change, so I was looking forward to it nonetheless.  By early May it was clear that our trip to Israel was not going to be happening and by the 2nd week of June, we knew our summer was going to take place in Arizona.  As disappointing as that initially sounded, I felt another sigh of relief.  Life has essentially morphed its way into this entirely new adventure.  One filled with being with my children 24/7, working off a computer in Sonzee's bedroom, trying to keep the kids from fighting all day, and swimming in this vast ocean of grief.  While there is a part of me that wants my children's lives to return to normal, that would also mean my life would have to resemble some sort of normal as well. 

Normal would now involve a school pick-up and drop-off at only one school.  Normal would now mean that I return to work in a school where I will no longer also be a parent of a child who attends.  Normal would now mean that I will be driving around multiple times a day without Nurse Paige in the passenger seat.  Normal means no random hospitalizations or doctors' appointments occurring that cause scheduling conflicts or interfere with playdates.  Normal means life would actually be moving forward.  For my work, the tentative anticipatory date of normal is August 17, which is a month from today.  There is something so terrifying, painful, and sad about a countdown that would officially represent the beginning of life without Sonzee, and from where I am sitting, I am just not ready.