old and new

I hate thinking of things in terms of my Old Life and my New Life, but it feels impossible not to. 

This season we’re in and the one we’re about to enter are ones Pete has never been a part of. Not physically, at least. EVERYTHING about our lives changed. We had a suburban Massachusetts life where I was a work-from-home mom who didn’t drive, raising a preschooler and a newborn, with a very involved and supportive husband who did all the errands and grocery shopping and shared all of life’s responsibilities with me. And now, less than a year later, I’m about to move into my first very own home in rural Vermont, raising a kindergartener and a toddler all on my own, working two jobs, attending massage school, driving all over the damn place. Nothing about my life looks the same as when Pete was here. So if feels impossible not to see this great divide between Now and Then. My Old Life and my New Life. 

I worry that my Old Life will get further and further from my memory, and become faded and sepia toned. It’ll be like a story I recite because I know it by heart, not because I feel it so strongly in my bones. I worry constantly about the things I’ll forget, about the things I’ve already forgotten. I cry all the time thinking about how many stories and memories Pete had inside him about our life together, and now I’ll never have access to them again. He can’t remind me how we like to wrap the Christmas lights on the tree. He can’t remind me what funny face Axl used to do. He can’t remind me which soccer team was his favorite. So much is already gone.