When Mom was pregnant with Lexi, her and Dad I guess (I don’t remember this at all) sat me down to explain that I was going to have a little brother or sister in a few months. After her little speech she asked me what I thought of that? I said “well, that’s wonderful Mommy, but I don’t think we need more children’s around here”.

A few months later when she was born what I do remember is that she was such a little pudge-muffin I couldn’t pick her up. THAT was very disappointing. I remember that very clearly.

My birthday that year Mom for some insane reason decided to invite every child I had ever met over for my birthday party. I remember it was a zoo. Kids and adults everywhere. Mom was at the sink washing dishes and talking to a couple of the other Mom’s. I had been doing who knows what, but one of my baby teeth came loose and I swallowed it.

Wweelllll…..I had probably consumed 40 cups of sugar by then and proceeded to go all hysterical, jumping up and down in sheer panic crying “am I going to die Mommy? am I going to die?” over and over. I remember her finally turning to me, look in her eye like steel, and saying so very quietly but with a menace I had never heard from her before….”YES, in about 5 minutes … {pause}  because I’m going to kill you”. {gulp}. All of a sudden I was not so concerned about the tooth so much. :)

This year for my birthday Lex and her crew decided to test out the new pop-up trailer, so they came up for the whole weekend — thursday night right through till Sunday. This was the second visit; they had been up earlier in the summer in June. In June we hadn’t known Tim’s cancer had returned. Now we knew, and this was the last time they saw Tim alive.

We knew, we all knew. We had a campfire, the girls fished and swam every day, all day. Our neighbor had guests up that weekend too; with 2 little boys who thought my nieces where “taking all the fish”.  So my brother-in-law went over and shared some of the bait they were using, worms from my compost pile. ;-)

My favourite memory is so simple. It’s of us all in the Living Room around the TV watching this neat show on Animal Planet on this bear whisperer. We sat there and all discussed it, told stories and laughed. Tim was propped up in bed with pillows, I was sitting crossed legged on the bed beside him and they each had one of the girls on their lap in chairs. It was just a normal family sitting around watching something on TV. With everything going on, bed-rails, portable commode and such … it  just for once felt like a living room. A normal family sharing time and making memories and all the other paraphernalia just disappeared.

August 21, 2012

Lexi understands completely. She knows Tim doesn’t want everyone treating him any differently just because he’s dying. That while no one can ignore it, you still can’t live everyday with it in your face. After all, he’s alive now and lets celebrate that. She gets that instinctively, and I see that the girls do as well.

Though, after they left I felt so empty. Even while they were here I often felt like I was on automatic pilot.  I am tired, but that’s not it really. Empty is I suppose the best word. My emotions are there, but they are so intense, it’s chaos, and I couldn’t really say that there is one dominate emotion. There just can’t be just one so so very much has happened. SO many things. So I don’t even have a clear picture past the end of the day anymore.

next entry: The Truth Shall Set me Free | September 29 2012