~~~

I’ve always loved the quiet.

Maybe it comes from growing up in a house with my parents and eight siblings. It was always so noisy. 🙂

A quick blink and I was a wife and mother chasing my own children around the house, tripping over toys. Why do their favorite toys always make noise???

Den and I would plop on the couch exhausted, grateful for bedtime, and the quiet.

Fisher Price corn poppers and toy drum sets were replaced by stereos, video games and lots of friends as the teen years held us hostage. Den and I would look at each other and sigh, knowing time wasn’t on our side and we’d miss these years all too soon.

When our youngest left home, Den stood in the family room that night, grinning. “Fle,” he said, “hear that?”

“What am I supposed to be hearing?”

“Nothing! Absolutely nothing! It’s quiet!”

Then he ran up and down the hallway whooping and hollering like a mad man. I could only laugh and shake my head at my oldest child. 😀

However, after twenty-seven years of raising a family as Mom and Dad, we only had eight and a half together as Felicia and Dennis before he was taken from me much too soon.

Then I had the quiet forced upon me and it wasn’t always a comfort.

It suffocated and taunted me.

It mocked me. I could almost hear it say, “Be careful what you wish for.”

Sometimes the quiet is just too damn noisy.

 ~~~

On May 30, 2019, I lost Dennis, my husband of over thirty-five years. Ten short weeks later on August 18, 2019, I lost my eighty-four-year-old mother. My grief journey has not been an easy one. While we know grief has five stages, there are many situations and feelings some bereaved never get to express, and I’m using my first AtoZ Challenge to say things I’ve never been able to give voice to. I hope you’ll follow my journey.

~~~

~~~

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

~~~