just an ordinary day….

 It was just an ordinary day. I was sitting in the car waiting for Lauren to finish with a job interview and my phone rang. It was my mother calling to let me know that she had gotten married.  I knew something was going to happen but I had no clue that it would happen so fast or that the family wouldn’t be included.

Lauren lives in mama’s house and has done so for the last couple of years. The first clue she had that something big had indeed happened was when she came home on Friday and mama’s room had been cleaned out, clothes packed and dresser cleared.

My brother came over today and took back the furniture that he had loaned mama and daddy. My sister will be over at some point this week to take the things she had loaned them. Lauren has started putting her things out, arranging things the way she wants. It will be "her" place now.

There is a tiny part of me that aches. I don’t have a "home", a place that just "is" the way it has always been. I feel disjointed, adrift and just sad. I KNOW that my home is wherever my husband is, and it has been so for 30 years. I just miss having a place filled with touchable memories, a connection to my parents and grandparents. Going home for holidays was always like taking in a deep breath and exhaling, letting go of all the silly things that had worried me.  In the space of a few hours, it just stopped "being".

On the rare occasions mama phones she doesn’t really talk to me. It is like trying to talk to someone who is engrossed in a tv show.  I’d rather not waste my breath. She is more concerned with the well being of her new stepchildren. That is what it is and nothing more.

This is HER life. I want her happy and she says this makes her happy. So be it. BUT having said that, if that man (who will forever be "the man mama married" or "mama’s husband") starts in again with "I will be a good step-daddy" or "Don’t the kids want to see their new Pop Paw?" I will literally LOSE IT! I have a daddy. I know where he is. I am not looking for a new one. Do NOT even go there. My kids roll their eyes and tell me they will be polite but that the man can go take a flying leap if he thinks he is their grandpa.

They feel abandoned. I do my best to remind them that she loves them and always will. She is living her life. I guess it just hurts when you are forced to live as if someone you love is "gone" when they are still walking around.  Emotional distance is just as hurtful as an actual separation.

Basically life is a tangled stew of emotions. I am seriously considering getting better acquainted with that bottle of mango vodka in the freezer. Then again, probably not. I will probably just go and try to get lost in a trashy novel.