Delayed…But Not Denied

So I just took a dip in the pool at my apartment. Sounds pretty boring, right?

Well, it was. Thank goodness.

I need a good dose of boring. The last three months were beyond crazy. I cannot recall a similar stretch in my life where more things happened in such a short period.

Let’s rewind to February 6^th of this year. On that day I resigned from my position with a firm in Orlando to accept a similar position with a firm in Miami, knowing that would trigger a number of required activities like relocating.

At the same time, I knew my mother was in the advanced stages of dementia, so I was debating whether to even tell her this news, for fear of whether she could even wrap her atrophied mind around it. On Sunday February 17, I called her to tell her the news. She didn’t answer the phone.

Two days later, she passed away.

Now, the plan was for my last day at work in Orlando to be that Friday, February 22, to start work in Miami on March 11. Two weeks and two days. Plenty of time to find a place in Miami, get my stuff down there, relax a couple of days, then hit the ground running at my new job. With mom dying, that was all tossed out the window. Obviously I had to get to Ohio for the funeral…but that was my last week of employment. So on my way out the door to head north, I handed my employee badge, tears in my eyes, to my boss & told her, “I guess this is it.”

Fortunately, they extended my employment a week, to March 1, so I could take care of things in Ohio. That was extremely nice of them, but it did not change my start date in Miami. Now my two weeks between jobs was truncated into one. The result was my moving plans were scuttled and I ended up in a hotel in Homestead instead of a condo in Brickell. For my first two months of employment in Miami, my commute was a surreal combination of driving, bus ride & rail ride – over an hour each way. And this was on top of learning a new job with12-hour days. During the period I basically did three things – work, eat and sleep. There was no time for anything else.

In late April I was able to find a nice apartment in South Miami, with move- in mid-May. This triggered my moving activities, with multiple 500-mile round trips between Miami and Orlando to get my belongings. I finally finished that on May 19.

Whew.

This whole time prevented me from normal activities related with losing someone’s mother. Like grieving. I was too busy. In one aspect, that’s good. I was perpetual motion, too many things on my plate to simply sit back and reflect.

But finally, last night, I did. I sat in that pool at my awesome new apartment in Miami, took a look around the beautifully landscaped area, let out a deep breath, and thought ‘I made it. I did it.’

I then thought about my mom.

And I cried my eyes out.

That was way overdue.