THE NEW NORMAL
~anonymous

It is amazing what can become "normal" to us . . .

Normal for me is trying to decide what to take to the cemetery for Christmas, birthday, Valentine’s day, and Easter.

Normal is sitting at the computer crying, sharing how you feel with chat buddies who have also lost a child.

Normal is feeling like you know how to act and are more comfortable with a funeral and being at the cemetery. Yet, feeling a stab of pain in your heart when you smell the flowers, see that casket, and all the crying people.

Normal is feeling like you can't sit another minute without getting up and screaming because you just don't like to sit through church anymore. And yet feeling like you have more faith and belief in God than you ever have had before.

Normal is having tears waiting behind every smile when you realize someone important is missing from all the important events in your families' life.

Normal is not sleeping very well because a thousand 'what if's' and 'why didn't I's' go through your head constantly.

Normal is having the TV on the minute you wake up and the last thing as you go to sleep at night. . .feeling the desperate need for noise because the silence is deafening.

Normal is every happy event in your life always being backed up with sadness lurking close behind because of the hole in your heart.

Normal is telling the story of your baby’s death as if it were an everyday common place activity and then gasping in horror at how awful it sounds.

And yet realizing it has become part of our normal.

Normal is each year coming up with the difficult task of how to honor your child's memory and their birthday and survive those days. And trying to find the balloon or flag that fits the occasion.

Normal is feeling a common bond with friends in England, Australia, Netherlands, Canada, and all over the USA, yet never having met any of them face to face.

Normal is a new friendship with another grieving mother and meeting for coffee and talking and crying together over our children and our new lives.

Normal is being too tired to care if you paid the bills, cleaned house or did laundry or if there is any food in the house.

Normal is wondering this time whether you are going to say you have children because it is not worth explaining that they are in Heaven. And yet when you avoid that problem you feel horrible as if you have betrayed your children.

And last of all normal is hiding all the things that have become normal for you to feel, so that everyone around you will think that you are "normal".