December 13

In the past week, basically on parallel hospice timelines, I have had two people I care about die. One was unexpected and someone my age. Another was a family member who lived a wonderful, long life. I’ve been thinking a lot about life and death and how we move through life and emotions. I didn’t have many moments of deep sadness but I had moments of just feeling like I didn’t have energy to do a lot and just wanted to sit. I decided that was ok and just to go with it. I have been gentle with myself and also had times of feeling like I should use every minute to the utmost and always be loving and patient because you never know when a moment is your last. True. And yet, that was a lot of pressure to feel like I should be perfect all the time. Then I returned to being ok with it all, or trying to be ok with it all. 

I had a wonderful and helpful talk with M. She helped me see how I was holding myself and our SR program to such high standards that I was being immobilized due to the pressure I was putting on myself. I also realized that it is ok that I don’t really do time in the SR room anymore because one goal of the room was to help Sarah not need the room. So if our time now looks more like playing a game with Amy a few times a week and knowing what a big deal that is, then that is amazing and it still certainly counts.

After much thinking I decided to write an email back to the school that had broken up with us over email. I said I didn’t want Sarah in a place where we had to fight to get her in so I’m not pushing back against their decision but I did have some questions. I asked my questions. I just want to understand more of what happened. They would have gotten the email Wednesday morning. I have not heard anything back. That rankles almost more and I have been crafting imaginary next steps, but perhaps my energy would be best spent by letting it go fully. I have considered writing back again saying, “here is the email you could send me…I’m very sorry if it felt abrupt and I don’t have answers for your questions. I still wish you well.” Even if they don’t have answers that they want to share it would be nice to get a response rather than being ignored. I just don’t understand ignoring me. It may be uncomfortable for them but it doesn’t take much effort to write back and it is a pretty loud response to ignore my email.

Thanks to one of you lovely readers I found out about another private school in the area that I am going to investigate. It is very non-standard so I think it will either be perfect or not at all a good fit. I will visit on Tuesday.

One of the best parts of the week was when Sarah’s card arrived in the mail. For kindergarten, each student got to write a card to someone of their choosing and it got mailed from school. Sarah chose Amy. I believe she wrote it all herself with maybe the tiniest bit of help. I think it says “My dear Sii [sister] Amy Merry Christmas Love, Sarah.” Oh my goodness!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Love, love, love, love, love!