Tonight as I was rocking Theodore to sleep and singing songs, I felt grief move in and settle around me. It’s been a good day – we didn’t do too much because I needed a rest after getting some vaccines yesterday and a long week of work this past week. Something similar happened last Sunday after a day of Jurassic Park movies and playing with Theodore – this grief rolling in like a heavy, damp fog.
Weekends feel like they’ve gotten harder again as a general pattern more recently. After reflecting for a little bit and sitting with my grief tonight, I think it’s related to my having gone back to work 3 weeks ago. My weekends have suddenly become “family time” in a way that they haven’t been since Sara was alive. I have someone at home who I love to spend time with; now that I’m back at work I have to treasure my weekends because I really only get 3-4 awake hours with Theodore each weekday.
After Sara died, weekends were hard because I missed our time together and there wasn’t as much difference for me as a single person between weekdays and weekends. But now weekends feel special again with Theodore, and with that comes a heightened reminder of Sara’s absence from this picture.
I’m starting to learn that any big change in my life – positive or negative, is likely to stir up my grief somehow. I’m not sure why I wasn’t expecting this particular iteration of it, but I wasn’t – it took me by surprise. Going back to work after having a baby and spending 16 weeks off work is certainly a BIG change. I don’t really know what to do with this new understanding of my fresh grief other than to sit with it, and welcome the grief back in. I have faith that it will eventually settle again in a new way, as Theodore and I get used to our new routines and this life that just keeps moving and changing (and in other ways not changing).