I've Been Away

They say everyone grieves in their own way.  I believe it.  I don't expect anyone to udnerstand it.  I surely did not, until I was faced with real, personal, life altering grief.  It's something so personal that I can never find the words to make anyone understand what my world has been like for the past 14+ months.  So for the most part, I haven't tried.

I will say that it's sort of true, what I've herad about time.  Not  that time can heal all wounds.  The wound I have won't be healed until resurrection day.  But I do think that time teaches us how to walk a new normal.  My new normal entails missing my child, every day.  Every day.  This is my normal.  I'm learning how to walk it.

For almost a year I couldn't answer the front door or pick up the phone.  I did a good job of pushing most everyone to a safe distance so I could cocoon myself in what felt like the safest place and way to grieve.  I'm still cocooning to a large degree.  I don't feel bad about it.  I know that somehow, somewhere I'll emerge a changed creature.

To the rest of the world, the life I shed when Hazel died, it must appear that I've simply gone away.  It must seem that I ceased living, believing and loving.  It's true. I've been away.  But not to a place they know.  And so I couldn't take any of them there with me.

I've been away.  I'm trying to walk a new normal.  And so, my little blog, here I am.  Feeling strong enough to at least take to the keyboard again.  I won't speak of my cocooned life often here.  Here, I will try to piece together some parts of the new normal that is my homeschool  My homeschool without little Hazel, where I will never smooth her hair during stories or introduce her to numbers.  But my homeschool, where my remaining four still learn *something* each day.  My every day homeschool.  Where every day I am home without her.

Well then.  Shall we proceed?