What is Normal Now?

How many times since my children have died, have I thought to myself “normal” what is that? Doesn’t anyone understand that I will never be who I was before my children died, my “normal” will never be the same again…  After the deaths of each of my three children (Robin in 1971, RandeeMarie the following year in 1972 and then Bobby in 2009) I returned to a very different normal – because I was very different and the world around me was different.  Yes they are gone, and although I'm so grateful to have 2 wonderful sons, 2 great step-sons, 5 fabulous daughter-in-laws and been blessed with 9 incredible grandchildren, that doesn't erase the fact that I have 3 children who are not here and at times that in itself seems overwhelmingly painful to accept..  Time softens the pain, but out of the blue there are moments, that even though it's been more than 40 years since RandeeMarie died in 1971 and Robin died in 1972 and within a few months it will be 3 years since my 36 year old son Bobby died - it still takes my breath away...   My “normal” at times seem to change like the winds…  I found this article the other day when I was going through some papers Joyce Floyd had sent me shortly after Bobby died and I was amazed at how accurate it was about “my new & ever changing normal”.  I hope you will take some comfort in it also…  For me, articles such as these always help to remind me that I am okay, that I’m not crazy – that I’m simply a mom, who is missing my children… Cherie Houston

WHAT IS NORMAL NOW?  ~ by Vicki Windham, Platte, NE, BP/USA chapter~ 

• Normal is trying to decide what to take to the cemetery for Christmas, birthdays, Valentine’s Day, Easter. 
• Normal is feeling like you know how to act and are more comfortable with a funeral than a wedding or a birthday party.  Yet, feeling a stab of pain in your heart when you smell the flowers, see the casket, and all the crying people.
• Normal is feeling like you can’t sit through another minute without screaming because you just don’t like to sit through church anymore.  And yet at the same time feeling like you have more faith in God than you ever had before.
• Normal is having tears waiting behind every smile when you realize someone important is missing from all the events in your family’s life.
• Normal is not sleeping because a thousand “what ifs” go through your head constantly.
• Normal is having the TV on the minute you walk into the house to have some ‘noise’ because the silence is deafening.
• Normal is telling the story of your child’s death as if it were an everyday common event and then gasping in horror at how awful it sounds.  And yet realizing it has become part of normal conversation.
• Normal is each year coming up with the difficult task of how to honor your child’s memory and birthday, and surviving those days.
• Normal is a new friendship with another bereaved Mother and meeting over coffee and talking and crying together over your children.
• Normal is being too tired to care if you paid your bills, cleaned your house, did the laundry, or shopped for groceries.
• Normal is hiding all the things that have become “normal” for you to feel, so that everyone around you will think you are “normal.”