When you lose a loved one, life has that awful tendency to just keep on going as if nothing ever happened. And it somehow expects you to keep up...to continue functioning as you have done "before". What is it with that?

The sun rises (for Ireland read: it gets brighter-ish), the sun sets (it gets dark-er). The bills keep coming in. Events and holidays come and go......Just like nothing ever happened.

Your own body's even in on this and betrays you in the most subtle ways:
Your stomach keeps rumbling when you are hungry.
You catch yourself laughing at something funny...though you wonder how just a split second later.

So, life just pulls you along. You continue to get up, go to work, do the jobs around the house, go shopping, go out. And over time, you get pretty good at keeping up with it. You get good at pretending life is "normal" when it is anything but. Sometimes, you need that...this make-belief that everything is grand.

Sometimes though, there are times when life potters on ahead and you (allow yourself to?) get left behind. Those are the times when you realise yes, this actually did happen. You do not want to have to pretend to care about the shopping, the bills, the daily grind...
The sense of loss, sadness and despair seem to overwhelm to the extent that you just want to hide yourself away from the world.

Those times are tough because eventually you realise that you do have to try and catch up with your life which just seems to carry on at lightening speed. And sometimes, you are not sure you want to. You wonder what is the point of it all when so much of what was good about your life just vanished within a heartbeat.

Can we take for granted that we will get to see Eoghan reach his milestones? Will we get this graduation from Montessori? The first day of school? Leaving Cert, College all those things that we should have had with Patrick?

I guess we can only wait and see and take each day at a time. Some days, that is harder than other days though.