In our world, in order to fit in, one has to be normal. But, what is normal? According to the Random House Dictionary: nor-mal means: not abnormal, regular, natural, serving to fix a standard, approximately average in every psychological trait as intelligence, personality or emotional adjustment, free from any mental disorder, sane.
And every single day I look around and wonder how many of us ‘so-called healthy people’ fit this description. Was the hit and run driver normal? I mean, is it normal to drive so fast? Was it normal to drive after smoking pot?
Not a day passed when I did not think about my son and how he’d suffered while the rest of us were trying to sort out our lives. When my parents died, I lost a huge chunk of my past, but when David died, it was my future and the dreams I’d had for him that disappeared.
My husband and I tried to do something different each day; we needed to taste life again. Yes, I realized that we had actually forgotten how to live. So, we made a point of doing things we’d enjoyed in the past like walking along the beachfront to watch surfers riding the waves which reminded us of better times when David had been amongst them. We sat down to watch the sun set slowly, painting the horizon in a way that is difficult for an artist to capture on canvas . We made of a point of driving to see fields of wild flowers in the spring, going to see a good movie or reading a book, knowing we would not be interrupted by an upsetting telephone call from David.
But, no matter what I did, I was unable to stop my tears from flowing.
