I love the passing of time

Before I go to bed, I usually do a little mental inventory of the house. Are the doors locked? Fish fed? Maggie in her crate? Has Charlie gone out? Bird covered?

Then, I check the kids.

Usually, at that point, I think about how I’m alone in the house with just me & the kids. And, I always ask myself if Allison is there, that night.

Used to be, most nights, I’d have a little sad moment, where I’d remember that she wasn’t there.

Summers, I’d have little happy moments, thinking how she was there, but they would be tinged with a melancholy reminder of how many more days were left.

Now, every night when I hit that part of the evening, I have a happy moment where I remember she’s here and she’s here all of the time.

(followed by just the tiniest sad moment thinking how fragmented & disjointed the whole situation is that brought her here)

But, it’s nice all the same. It feels whole and right.

DH tells a story about how when SD was little, she used to like playing with the dimmer switch on the lights at his parent’s house (where he lived after the lease ended, after the divorce).

One night, when she was 2 or 3, he was cajoling her to finish her dinner. He said “If you finish your green beans, then you can turn off the lights!”

He thought, at the time, that there was no way he would ever have imagined himself or anyone else ever using that particular combination of words. He imagined that he was the first person ever to say that, and might, very well, be the last.

Just this morning, I was laying in bed, thinking about the day ahead of me and, at one point, the words ‘Litterbox Festival’ put themselves together in my head.

I’ll be no one’s ever thought of those words in that way before, either