Last night as I reached out to pay the cashier, he commented on my tattoo. Without hesitation I said, "it's my mom's handwriting". I didn't add, "and she died", I kept that part to myself, and, it was weird.
Weird that my new normal is this. That I had to think for a minute, wondering if she ever saw Danny with glasses or, did she meet our dog, or did Quinn have her top teeth when she was alive?
Weird that my new normal means I call my grandma at every little thing, instead of her. And weird that imagining her in my life at this phase feels all sorts of strange.
Simply because two years is a long time. It's a lot of time and space and life is lived, because, there's really no other choice.
Weird that I'm entering the third holiday season without her and I still can't say I've cooked a turkey or gotten all my ducks in a row.
I don't know. The whole lot of it is strange and yet it just, is what it is. Because being left behind doesn't mean you get to just quit. It means instead you become stronger in a way not everyone else is, and you're all the better for it.