The passage of time is an obscure thing.
In the early days I was counting hours and days.
Then it became weeks and months.
Weirdly the 6 month mark has always been there.
An odd mark on the milestone calendar - but as I found with raising babies - a seemingly important one.
Knowing I’d got through 1/2 a year was a big milestone to reach when, 6 days in, I wasn’t sure I’d survive 6 weeks, let alone 6 months.
Then 18 months seemed as noteworthy as it was another half a year that had passed without Pete.
Today is 2.5 years.
The half a year milestone falls the day after a child’s birthday. It also sort of marks the end of one year’s worth of celebrating birthdays and anniversaries and milestone things for the year.
The way in which the kids are birthed means that they all become odd numbers and then they all become even numbers over the course of 12 months.
The birthday on July 19 marks the end of that cycle. All the children are now aged in odd numbers: 15, 13, 11 and 9.
It stays that way until October. When the process of them all ticking over to even number begins.
So the July 20, 6-month milestone kind of signals the beginning of a new passage of our lives in a weird way.
I have no new learnings having done this for 2.5yrs.
I just know we are still here.
Pete is still not.
Covid is playing havoc with our ability to consistently manage our new normal.
We can go days and days and days without tears about Pete.
We can be completely sideswiped by our reality and miss him as desperately as we did in those first few weeks.
*case in point was dealing with the teenage birthday yesterday. I tried to write a card and despite being in a much better headspace than I have been for a month or more, absolutely cried and cried when I was thinking about her actual birth, and that there is no one on this Earth who knew what I was doing 15 years ago that night before she was born. It’s so weird knowing that you had a shared experience, but now not a single person knows about it. Except you. It was an utterly devastating realisation and one I really hadn’t had so profoundly before.
Also I fucking hate writing ‘love from Mum’ on the bottom cards. So I cried about that, too.
But now I’m also feeling much more: Big deep breath… keep going.
Because in the last 2.5 years I’ve also learned I don’t realistically have a choice of anything else if I really and truly want to honour what we had set out to do as parents: raise good people; surround them with good people; be good people.
So - here’s cheers to 2 and a half years.
A milestone I never wanted.
But one I have got to.
With so many tears. So much desperation and determination to not let it beat me. To show the kids that hard things can make you stronger. But they can also cripple you. And both is ok. That good friends and strangers can be the greatest gift you can have in your lives for so many different reasons. And both can show up at exactly the time you need them.
That despite doing this for 2.5yrs I still have no real idea of how I am doing what I’m doing. But some days I can now think: Oh wait, I know how to manage this
(other days I yell at my children yelling at me because neither of us are coping…)
And life is absolutely too short for shit champagne and bad wine.
So when it’s on sale (and even when it’s not) just enjoy it.
If, for no other reason, than there are people who no longer can.
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