Bad Day

Today is an astonomically bad day. There are those days where you are tired or things are just not going your way and then there are days where no matter what happens to you, you are still going to be miserable. Today is one of those days. Luckily I dont get these days that often any longer. Happily I usually waltz through life, my job, the kids, my routine. Today I cannot get out of my own way. Today I woke  up after having been awake most of the night waiting for Gary to come home from a show and resenting every second of it, tired with Jonah screaming demands at me.......... right from the get go.

Gary had a wedding to go to so for day 2 I was in charge of kids solo, with no plan, in the hottest muggiest most disgusting weather while also being on call for work. This means I can't go anywhere. Normally I would get everyone out, go to the beach, the pool, anywhere but here in this house stuck with three cranky hot kids. Not today.

Today not only the three kids fought all day. I fought with them all day. Which is not typical of us as of late. But this is just how our day went today. I got called out to see a pt and family in the afternoon which was a huge blessing and secretely I wished I would just get called out for the rest of the day too and leave the kids with my mom. I hate being like this with them.

But I am human.

I took a nap while Jonah played quietly with some new toy I had dug up while cleaning (cleaning always helps, especially when it is 100 degrees in this house). I slept so hard I did not know where I was when I woke up.

Gary didn't call me when he got to his wedding (another reason for me to resent him today) and the only thing I was really focused on today turned out to be a bomb as the Red Sox are losing miserably to the Yanks.

There is a favorite book I read to the kids sometimes called "Alexander and the very horrible terribly no good day." In the end Alexander still has a family that loves him and I am sure the next day is better than the one in the book. It is hard to believe I will move through days like today.

But I will.

Dreaming of you

Last night I had a dream about John. It's not the first time I have dreamt about him but it was the most profound dream I have had, one where you wake up and cant remember was that real, are they alive?
In the dream John had come back for a holiday. It was a universally recognized holiday that everyone celebrates and it felt completely normal ........ in the dream.
In the dream it was the holiday that marks the return of a lost loved one. John was there, healthy (he has never been sick in one of my dreams, always without oxygen, always smiling). We were all eating at a nice restaurant and we were happy to be spending this time with him, to celebrate that John had come back, how Christ like, especially for someone who didn't particularly subscribe to the whole son of God thing. And yet, there he was breaking his bread, laughing with us and telling us stories. We were elated and of course because it was a dream most of the people in the dream were not familiar to me, but I knew John, and I knew my mother.
At the end of our dinner I went to take a nap, knowing full well that this was only a temporary thing, that John would need to go at the end of this day, this holiday. Still sleep was somehow more important to me in the dream.
As I drifted off, John called me to tell me to come. That this was important. That I was supposed to be doing this thing, dealing, facing this hard deep profound sadness and longing. That I could not run away from it. That as many miles as I ran or laps that I swam or books that I read or naps that I took, I could not escape the truth that John was gone, that John died and he will continue to be dead, to die again and again in my dreams and in my days.
I woke up wanting to stay in the dream. I tried to put myself back to sleep, to place myself back in the dream, back there holding John's big bear hands or hugging his broad shoulders.
But I couldn't.
I realized that in that dream John was my father.
He is my father.
He is the man who tells me to do things and steers me in the right direction
and saved me when I was falling off of a cliff
and there he was again
in my dream
holding out his hand to me
pulling me to do the next right thing.