A Piece of "Old Normal"

With all things Melvin, I've mentioned more than once this idea of finding a "new normal," even specifically to highlight that trying to find a sense of normal is a moving target.  This is something that is applicable to any grieving process, that the event or loss itself is never erased from that person, but instead that they find ways to adjust and continue living with that event or loss as a part of their lives forward.  

I'm sure these have a more proper name than "Chinese Star."

The Fourth of July rolled around again this year, as time does, and I rode down to the park in Hopedale where all of the carnival rides were set up.  I wandered around with my cousins and uncles and aunts, the air heavy from the smell of corndogs and mustard and the humidity of a hot July night.  My cousins were sorting out which ride to go on first, eyeing the line for the Chinese Star and noticing that another one was loading exactly at that moment with no line.  I went on one ride, curious to test how it might be different with an ostomy--as expected, I felt the same kind of dizzy and nausea that I normally do with that particular ride, but it was still good to feel I'd had a safe, small kind of test.  While my cousins were already in line or boarding another ride, I stood talking to members of my family I don't have the opportunity to see very often, catching up a bit.  

And I wasn't running mental calculations for when I needed to sit down again.  I wasn't scanning the area for the nearest bathroom.  I wasn't checking in with my energy with that particular exasperated sadness, already knowing it was close to spent but that I desperately wanted to still be a part of things.  I was able to be present with my family, my needs and concerns present but less urgent.  Relative, internal quiet amongst the happy/terrified screams of the Tilt-O-Whirl.  

That was one hell of an affirming realization--this is a small litmus test, supporting that I truly am getting better.  I have tangible, real progress, marked through the memories I have of coming down to the park for years and years.  

Here's where we connect back to those beginning thoughts:  when I told Andy about that revelation later, he said, "Sometimes the New Normal can be the Old Normal."  I have some mixed feelings about this thought.  This goes against the grain in my understanding of grief, that I want to affirm that going back to "the way things were" as a nostalgic, shining beacon isn't the right kind of goal in grieving.  However, there was definitely a warm familiarity about this kind of normal that was vastly comforting, like a pair of broken-in shoes.  When we drove home from Hopedale, a tiny town in the Midwest of less than 1,000 people, there was a kind of calm I felt this year that had been missing previous years, where I had felt that I had somehow failed to complete family traditions because I was too distracted or wiped out to enjoy them.  It was some level of my old life that I needed, even though my life now is vastly different.  In other words, I'll accept Andy's statement with a slight amendment:  "Sometimes the New Normal can be familiar."  It's not exactly the same--there are different worries and different situations--but there is enough tradition that it doesn't feel like we're fully rewriting it.  Truly, everyone has always brought new stories and experiences from the year to these events anyway, meaning that Melvin almost seemed like a rather large bullet point on that "How was your year?" conversation.  

Soon, I'll be heading to Family Camp for a chunk of the week where I fully intend to take a Sunfish out and play Spoons, Pinochle, and other board games with my family.  I'll have an ostomy to maintain, but I think I'll have great deal more energy to actually enjoy the traditions as they have grown and as they are also familiar.  I'm hoping to find that my old activities that used to bring me peace can do so again, with maybe a little less of that  drowning background noise of my anxiety and depression around my disease.  

I can't wait.