2021. I gotta say you were trying. You brought us to our knees. You filled us with so much loss. Spending the first months care-giving and hopeful, we still lost our patriarch in April. If I can say the world isn’t fair, this is an opportunity for me to shout it.
Normalcy shifted a lot. We were still navigating home school and a pandemic. In July, I was presented with an opportunity to move for work. Not an easy decision when life was already off. With family support I took the opportunity. We geared up for leaving our normal and planning for a new life. In a short 5 weeks our lives shifted from being Georgia residents to Texas residents. Our world moved physically, but mentally we weren’t there. The move was fast, the kids had to start new schools and navigate in-school, school. We were far from what we felt was home and we can’t undermine the grief we were working through, especially knowing we were no longer 3 hours away. Lots of comfortable stripped quickly.
In July we lost Luca, John and Andrea’s pup. We got to meet him when we went to house hunt. Before we were able to interact, we heard he ingested something and they had to put him down. Another loss.
Texas is an experience. You either fit right in or you feel like an outsider looking into what should be your normal. We all had the latter experience. Texas wasn’t a warm hug. It was jarring. There was a bit of overall moving remorse. It’s taking more time than we thought to feel at home. I’m sure it’s bigger than Texas, as we have had life happen around us.
In late September, we let go of Charlotte. The decision to allow rest is never easy and considering the year we have had, that was not the decision we wanted to make. But it’s never about us. It’s about her interest. It sucks. It will always suck. The walk to and after the rainbow bridge was a really hard blow.
My cousin, Anabel, her husband Jose, and Uncle Emilio were also hard losses this year. A life lost never feels good, whether it was expected or not. Loss, is loss.
It hasn’t been easy. It hasn’t been an adventure. I think most of this year has been holding on to our normal while we navigate our unfortunate truths. As a family we have have been through a lot of low life moments. We have grieved; over and over again. Hoping to get some deep breaths in-between. Sometimes those don’t come.
The silver lining in all this is that we have persevered. We have grown, been outside of our comfortable and have found pockets to laugh and rejoice. Family. Family has kept us connected and that is the gold thread to every. single. day.
So hoping for a 2022 that allows our deep breaths to happen and give us the space to heal and become whole again with our newly placed puzzle pieces.
Here’s to 2022. Hoping to feel a lot less heavy.
Abuela, John, and I went to buy supplies. She was a bit buried in the balloons for the big day
Bought a puzzle. That was a hit especially with dedicated individuals. We will also have a puzzle moving forward. Talk about commitment, we finished around 2am.
