Summer is here

As with so many things since losing the boys, I am filled with conflicting emotions today.  Another school year has come to an end.  The kids were definitely ready for summer, and I think the teachers were even more ready.  So today, the last day of school, should be filled with excitement for all of the freedom I will have for the next few months.  Every year since I've started teaching (or, since I've started school) I have loved the last day of school.  When the last bell rings (or the song "School's Out" comes over the intercom), I feel almost a sense of euphoria...of freedom.  This year, although I am glad that the year has come to an end, that excitement was missing.  I am walking out of that building a completely different person than the one that entered in August.

I woke up this morning feeling lost.  Losing a child comes with lost hopes and dreams.  As I went back to work last August, I was already making plans for how Henry and I would spend this summer...how we would spend time at the park, the zoo, the library...how we would take "field trips" to see Daddy at work, and Grandpa and Taz...how he would still go to Carrie's a couple days a week so he could keep in some sort of routine, and so Mommy could run errands and schedule appointments.  I was sad to have to drop Henry off at Carrie's and go to work, but I knew that summer would come again and that we would have all of that time.

Those dreams have been shattered.  Instead, I am facing a summer of spending my days alone, although I will have my fur babies for company.  I have made a list of projects and crafts that I want to do, so that I have some sort of purpose to get myself up each day.  I am redecorating my library, decorating our house, and maybe even making some of the ideas that I've pinned on Pinterest over the years.  Perhaps I'll even read a few books, catch up on some TV shows.  It will be nice to have down time, and time to do these things.  But it's not at all how I had planned to spend my summer.

It may take a few days, but I will find my routine.  I will spend time in my sunroom, relax with my puppies...maybe even take them for walks.  I will visit Tim at work...bring him a little treat now and then (like he does for me all through the school year!)  Maybe my dad might want to meet for lunch now and then...or help me hang pictures in the house.  I will get out to California and visit my sister and brother-in-law, and get some quality sunshine therapy (unless it rains...which it tends to do when I visit!)  But then I still get quality sister time.  Perhaps my sister-in-law and I can do some crafty projects together.  So it may not be the summer I had planned, hoped for, or dreamed about, but it will still, I hope, be a nice summer.