And just like that, all those months of planning and fighting to get the family here, and now they have been and gone.
As I sit here, I wonder where those 3 months went.
I try hard to keep the memory alive of the little arms that hug me, the joy of seeing those little eyes at 6am beside my bed, the beaming smiles when you call their name. The wonder of falling in love with the beach and the ocean waves. The joy of watching those first tentative steps turn into so much more confident ones. How they called us Memee and Pop and their cute names for their Uncles.
I find myself wandering around the house in a haze. Don’t get me wrong, it’s kind of nice not to trip over toys, the cushions staying put on the couch and to get to the hand basin in my bathroom without having to move all the bath toys out of the way. Yet I miss those things terribly as well.
The evening at the airport when they left, felt like my heart was being torn out of my chest. I wanted to pick the children up and just run away with them.
As they left, as they walked through the doors to head to the other side, it felt as if I had a cloak, a very heavily weighted cloak placed around my shoulders and over my head. It felt as if my head was forced to bow, and I was unable to lift it up. I tried to turn my head into the cloak so that the tears that fell were not visible to the world.
In the days that have passed, that cloak has remained covering me. The weight is still there. The tears flow often, and I am unable to find a way to shed myself of the weight.
For me this is a form of mourning. Mourning the leaving of loved ones. I know with time the weight will lessen and the tears will flow less frequently.
But for now, I need time to work through this despair and loss.