Life Stopped

If I were going to parody the LMFAO song, "Party Rock Anthem," I'd change the line, "Everyday I'm shufflin'," to "Every day I'm strugglin'."  This week has been tough.

I have a project I'm working on that I'd really like to succeed.

I have advising and curriculum changes at the college where I teach.

My two year old has boycotted bedtime, and she and her brother make the relationship between our two presidential candidates look like kittens snuggling in a basket.

I am spearheading the Halloween party at the kids' school, which at this point is going to look like it was planned by a meth addict.

One of my favorite moms in my neighborhood just moved halfway across the country.  We shared a tearful good-bye like five year olds.

And there's teaching, my weeds growing on it blog, childcare and my minimal self care and housework.

Even though my dance card is full, I feel like life is blah.  A few high notes, some low notes, but mostly, as a good friend said, "wash, rinse, repeat."

Do you hear the violins playing?

Earlier, I told a friend that the only way I could keep on top of it all would be if life would stop for a little while. Stop like a Ferris Wheel - you climb down, wait for it to go around a few times, and then you hop back on. 

Then I got on the Blogging While Mom page, the page of the mom bloggers' group I belong to, and saw that a blogger some of the women knew had lost her daughter suddenly in a car accident.

Life stopped.

I began sobbing instantly.  Since I've had my own children the thought of a mother losing her child has become the thing that pierces my heart the most.  My greatest fear come true.

I sobbed for this mother, who will never again hold her sweet little girl.  Never watch her grow up - graduate, start and progress through a career, get married and start a family of her own.  Not to mention the day-to-day.  The ordinary, the wondrous, the triumphs and the struggles.  I cried for the hole she must have in her heart. 

And of course, sadly, selfishly, I cried for myself.  For punishment I suppose.  For taking myself too seriously, for being consumed by minutiae and for needing the specter of death to give me perspective on inconvenience, slights from acquaintances and strangers, and challenging children. Is death the only slap in the face that works for me?

To Stumbling Toward Perfect, please know you are in my thoughts and prayers.  I cannot even begin to know what you must be feeling, and for me, on the outside looking in, there are no words.  I imagine that for you there are millions of words -- too many -- to say what you are feeling, to say to your beautiful little girl, to the universe, and to mothers like me who don't know how blessedly fortunate every pain-in-the ass moment really is.