Monday, April 16, 2007
The Academy needs a new award…
“The Oscar For Best Attempt At Appearing Like A Normal Family When Everything Is On It’s Head“….
I guess I’m breathing a sigh of relief this week. We did it. We got through Easter. We bought the eggs, we hid the eggs, we even wrote letters to the Easter Bunny and put munch marks in carrots at 1am. We squealed along with the kids in the morning and traded chocolate with the grownups…all the while thinking “But where is Ava?”
I kept thinking back to the year before, I have photos of her, all sleepy eyed and a bit confused at the chocolate booty with her name on it. We took eggs out to the cemetary and I found it really hard to leave. It is the most surreal, abnormal, wrong thing to do. To deliver your childs eggs to a cemetary. To sit talking to the grass and wondering, wishing, refusing to believe. It’s just not right.
On Tuesday we went away for a mini holiday – our first one with everyone, well almost..you know what I mean. The first day was great, I really thought it was lovely and relaxing and the boys were having such a fantastic time…It felt so nice to do something “normal”.
Then for whatever reason, I came crashing down and the next few days were like so many days at home..just going through the motions and lost in sadness. We still did nice things, the boys still had a ball and I kept my promise to do lots of things with them but I felt a bit fake…like a big pretender…riding bikes around, eating brekky, going on a champagne cruise. All very nice. But, just like Easter, I was really thinking the whole time “Why isn’t Ava here”?
I will say something though, I’m getting used to the roller coaster. I don’t fear it as terribly as I did..I’m starting to realise there are bad days and there are better days. That the pain isn’t constantly unbearable…it wavers and it’s just too terrible sometimes and it’s a little okay sometimes. Luckily my “too terrible” hours usually seem to land on Crayte’s “little bit okay” hours and vice versa so we pull each other out of the hole most of the time.
But there are still so many moments where I think I’m doing a bit better and I think of her and that she’s not here and she’s not coming back and that it happened to us and I suck my breath in and my tummy does a flip.
Anyway, I took photos while away – here are a few. How adorable is Ivy in her swim skirt? I’m not sure I’d carry it off.
