Jack's blog

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Warning: This post is normal, mundane and boring

It's hard to believe that so much time has passed since my last post. I remember days when Paul was still alive where some days held two or three posts. I guess you could say that our days and weeks now are normal, mundane, even boring... at least by appearance. We have daily and weekly routines that entail going to school, work, after school activities, exercise, lunch and dinner with friends, church and a variety of other things - normal things. All the apparent normalcy belies reality, however; we really aren't normal. A part of us still lives in that other world of treatment, hospitalizations, travel to other states for treatment, administering meds, etc. We are also not normal because we miss Paul as much today as in the days just after his death. In fact, I miss him more. All that we do contains an element of "missing Paul." I think it might be a bit like coming home from fighting a war in another country. You were made into a different person under extreme conditions, then you come home to a normal world. But, you aren't normal anymore; you'll never be "normal." One interesting thing I have thought about recently is that Paul has now been gone long enough that most people I meet for the first time now have no idea what we went through. They don't know Paul ever lived. I really don't like that; I want to tell them..."Hey, I'm different. I had a son named Paul that changed our lives with all that he went through; I'm not normal even though it looks like it on the outside." But, I spare them...usually.

Anyhow, the picture above was from a Halloween in the past. Paul was particularly proud to be Jeff Gordon that year. This week we went out to shop for costumes, and I found myself drifting over to the NASCAR and Hot Wheels toy section. I looked at all the new cars and thought, "Paul would have all these new ones by now." I also thought that Paul would have made short order of the costume shopping and would have been standing right where I was at that moment. I left with more of a smile than a frown. But I still missed him.

Details Wanted

Time can be a greedy thing-sometimes it steals the details for itself.
— Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner)

I just finished reading this novel, which I thought brilliant for many reasons, but mostly because of humanly insightful quotes like the one of above. I have thought about that passage a lot. What struck me about it was how it describes particularly well the battle that those with great loss, like bereaved parents, must fight. Time has already eroded so many of the details of our time with Paul. It is a constant fight to keep time from robbing us of these wonderful details. So, we vigilantly keep our memories alive by repeating Paul stories all the time, saying what he would say, pointing out what he would have done, what he would be doing, what he did, and on and on it goes. Lately, we have brought his name up more and more in these contexts. That tells me that we are mindful of the robber - time - trying to steal our details. So, that is why it is so important for us to see his pictures, talk about him, and to hear stories and memories that you have of Paul. Feel free to join the ranks of the detailed memory soldiers. (-: