A SADwich

Here is a recent picture of Luki:

Hopefully the overwhelming cuteness will counteract the rest of this post, because I pretty much only feel like writing about depressing stuff. And I can't even figure out how to get all the sadness into one coherent message, so I'm just going to type up random bullets of despair. (Random Bullets of Despair, that'd make a good name for a rock band, eh?)

• On my way to work every morning I often find it surprising that NPR makes no mention of my father's death in their morning newscast. How can the senate debate healthcare and snow be in the forecast for this weekend if my dad's not around? I realize this is completely irrational -- my dad was not a politician, a meteorologist, or a journalist for that matter, but it's so strange that the rest of the world is still spinning without him. Or maybe what's strange is that other people aren't aware of this immeasurable loss -- to me, it's so big, so overwhelming, that sometimes I just assume everyone else, even strangers, can sense it too. And so, every morning, as I listen to the news, I give myself the latest update on my father. The headline is always the same: No new developments, daddy's still dead.
  
  
• Take my sadness, my devastating, sometimes paralyzing sadness, multiply it by 1000 decibels of grief, and you will still not understand how afflicted my mother is. One of my best friends said to me the other day that I may have lost my father, but that my mother lost her future. She was absolutely right. All of her plans and dreams of growing old together, of retiring and traveling the world, of having sleepovers with their grandkids, they were all thwarted on November 28. And my funny, intelligent, outspoken mother is disappearing behind a boulder of melancholy. I know she is doing the best she can. The fact that she gets out of bed and showers in the morning is a huge accomplishment. But I can't help but feel like I'm losing her, or at least pieces of her, as well.
  
  
• I went to the doctor this week and found out I'm back below my pre-pregnancy weight. The grief diet. I would take the 45 pounds, swollen feet, and insatiable 4 a.m. appetite any day, over feeling like this. Hell, I would rather have Pitocin induced contractions and push out ten thousand babies with no drugs than be this heartbroken.
  
  
• I am trying to keep my shit together for Luki. I don't want him to spend the first year of his life around a loser mom who cries every time she sees a Starbucks (my dad's only vice). It's hard, but this helps:

So there you have it. A bunch of sadness sandwiched in between the thing that has brought the most joy to my life. Right now the grief makes up the entire sandwich. Hopefully in time, it'll just be a condiment you can ask for on the side, like a pickle or some mayonnaise.