So many transitions all around me. Kimberly selling her house, her and Paul's house. Paul gone for almost three years now. Not just my own child, but all the high school seniors in town, these beautiful, vibrant young people, are getting ready to take flight, and this place will be emptier and quieter and a little bleak without them. I do not know if I can stay here. And then my small heart trying to figure out if it has a home inside me or anywhere else.
The wind howls, vents rattle, garbage cans blow over. Coffee is not enough. Every surface in the house covered in papers, books, napkins, electronica, pens, crumbs, lists of things to do, old water glasses. My mother is losing words, not just names, but objects, sometimes whole conversations. My sister, scared and sad, lashes out at me for not doing enough. Then she flies away to her home across the country. She won't be back for months. My dad unstable, falls down hard enough to need his scalp stapled back together, but has no concussion. His systems are all go.
The thing that wasn't supposed to happen, that seemed ridiculous and impossible, has happened. Nobody knows where we are going to end up. But everybody agrees we are going somewhere new and dark. I realize how wholly unprepared I am and how little it matters. My small heart hasn't stopped beating.
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