People have recently been asking me to continue to publish updates, and I realize that it has been a while since I’ve written. In some ways, I think that’s a good thing; the busyness of life has kept us occupied. In other ways, I see the need for it; the writing was not just a method of keeping friends, family, and well-wishers informed, it was also a way of processing and documenting what I wasn’t always able to say to Kristian -- or what she would not always have understood or remembered.
The brief details of our current life might read as a return to normalcy: Kristian is back home, our boxes are nearly all unpacked from our move, our son is an energetic bundle of babbling, seven-month-old precocious curiosity, I’ve even returned to work. We’re shopping for a replacement car. It almost seems mundane. But it’s still hard for me to feel like life is ‘normal.’ I’m reminded sometimes when I look at Kristian, or when we’re managing medications, doctor visits, home healthcare, and therapy appointments, that there is a tinge of strange surreality to it all; it in some ways feels like living in a version of life that isn’t real, or is at least hopefully temporary. I’ve learned that living in this holding pattern breeds uniquely contradictory demands: it forces you to somehow adjust to a new reality, but rarely affords any opportunity to remain comfortable in it.