Still do not approve. Still am not resigned.

[mrissa]

In the last few months I've developed a new problem.

It's not that I've forgotten my grandpa has died. I could never, ever forget that. But I make a lot of verbal slips these days. I will be listing who was at Easter dinner and say, "MommanDad, GrandmandGrandpa--no, no, just Grandma." Or I will say, "The folks and the grands--Grandma, the folks and Grandma." This hurts like crazy every time I do it.

And when I get tickets for us to see a play or a concert or something, when I see how many there are, I have a moment of irrational panic because there isn't one for Grandpa.

And I know it's Grandpa there isn't one for. That's the crazy stupid hard thing. If I was forgetting that Grandpa was gone, I would think, "Oh no, I didn't get enough!" rather than, "Oh no, I didn't get one for Grandpa!"

I think what's going on here is that Grandma has now lived up here awhile. My brain is not going, "Hey! It's Grandma!" all the time. Things are now in some sense normal again. And hey, my subconscious totally knows what normal for my family of origin looks like! It's me. Mom and Dad. Grandma and Grandpa.

Sigh. I simultaneously want to stop doing this and do not want there to be a new, grandpaless normal. But it turns out the universe did not ask me.