Back to Normal

Today I am pondering. Am I back to normal? I had a very normal weekned. I spent the weekend with friends. I enjoyed conversation, shopping, and going out to eat. These are some of my very favorite normal things to do. I don't get to do them often so it was nice to get away. I think the "getting away" is what got me to thinking about normal once again.

And I guess most people in my life would like to hear me say I am experiencing normal again. It sounds confusing to me. It is like things have gotten back to "normal" as if any "non normal" never really existed. I am looking at the calendar and feeling the heat of summer and I remember. It was about a year ago that I learned that I was pregnant with Seth. Yet now in "normal" I feel like I am trying to convince myself that he even existed at all. It feels strange as if I made the whole experience up. I know I have lived through a whole year since last summer. I know my children had birthdays and went to school. Yet, it was as if I was never really pregnant. I have nothing to show of it. I am not holding a baby and my body does not look it remembers a baby had grown inside recently.

So I ponder normal. Does being back to normal mean I am moving beyond the grief? I can agree that "normal" feels less sad and less dramatic. But I am not sure where Seth fits into normal. He is becoming the son I once knew, but my memories of him just stop. I was sharing pictures of him this weekend. And I was caught off guard by my own reaction to the pictures. I don't spend everday studying the pictures like I did in the beginning. I looked at them with with fresh eyes, normal eyes. He didn't look the same to me. I realized as I was staring at the pictures that I do not know anything NEW about him. Everything I will ever know about my son I already know. There will never be a new memory of him.

How I do I carry him forward with me?  I know he is gone and there is something about letting go that brings some sort of freedom. Yet, I also want a part of him to always be with me. Something that fills in the void in my mind and heart that only the memory of him can alter.

I can't just move forward without bringing him with me. He is my son.  My heart heard his heartbeat and can remember the precious sound. My body felt his movements and my mind can recall the motion. Yet, when people look at me both those who know me and those who don't they don't see him anymore. He isn't physically available to them. He isn't physically available to me. Seth is still my son. He is one of my children. I hate this thought of feeling like he didn't exist. I lived an entire year and one of the greater highlights of the year seems like a figment of my imagination. 

Can I really go back to normal? Or is it that normal is coming back to me? Giving me the permission to live as I continue to adjust to what really happened. I was pregnant with a baby. He was my son.  I named him Seth. He died. It made me really sad. And getting back to normal is perhaps learning to live with "only a memory" of something incredible that really happened and choosing to look for more joy again.