A lot has happened since my last post. I wish I could say I have another book written and ready to be released but sadly that is not the case. It's far from it. I finished the spring semester of school with and A and began work on my house to fix it up so it would sell so my family could buy a new house and get settled. The repair to the bathroom was going well. I was starting the demolition and I had help from my brother and sister in law. It was also the last week of school for my kids. I had gotten all the tile off the wall and dry wall that surrounded the bathtub. My brother in law helped me demo the bathroom vanity and floor.
School let out officially for the summer on friday. I attended the last assembly of the school year at my son's school that morning with my brother and sister in law. I didn't know the next day everything was going to change. All in the blink of an eye.
Saturday morning I bought a box of donuts. My husband took the day off from work so we could get the bathroom work well underway. Since All the demolition was done we had to replace the sub floor and work our way up. My sister in law helped out with the kids. My brother in law helped my husband with all the work and I grabbed whatever tools they needed. We all spent the day together. They helped us bring bathroom stuff to our house when we went shopping for supplies. They left our house in the afternoon, I started dinner. My husband began work on the bathroom trying to decide how he wanted to go about fixing it. We were eating dinner when I got a phone call from my mother in law asking me what happened to Peter. She told me he was hurt in an accident and was unconscious. I told her he was fine we were eating dinner. I told my husband what had happened and asked him to call his mom. Not long after that my mother in law showed up at our door telling us that my sister in law and brother in law were in a car accident and their daughter was with them. We all piled in my car and started driving to the hospital. It was pouring rain outside. In fact the area was flooding. We had to change our path frequently to avoid flood zones. It should have been a twenty minute drive to the hospital and it took us almost an hour to get there. We had no idea what we were about to walk into.
When we arrived and parked we made our way into the emergency room after explaining who we were looking for they brought out security. They also told us only two people were there. There should have been three. This was the second time in my life in a nine month span that we have been told by hospital staff that a family member has died. I watched my mother in law collapse to the floor wailing. I had my two kids, and tried to stay calm. My husband went to comfort his mom. I looked at one of the nurses and asked, "Is she really dead?" He shook his head, yes.
My sister in law was killed in a car accident and it flipped my entire life on it's head.
I can't even begin to explain the following weeks and months that have passed since that night. I'm still trying to catch up and process it all. We left our house that night and moved into my brother in laws' house. He was badly injured and couldn't really walk for a month. He had broken nearly every rib on his right side along with his sternum, collarbone, eyesocket, and jaw. He was unrecognizable in the ER room. We moved in to help him with his kids and really help any way we could. My entire life went on hold so I could help. My niece had superficial wounds from the wreck which is a miracle considering she was unrestrained in the car at the time of impact.
While my Brother in law was recovering I would take trips to my house and I began boxing and moving everything out. I also began the updates to my home. It was a nice distraction from the chaos that was surrounding me. It was the only thing that made sense and I threw myself into it. I spent my mornings driving my brother in law anywhere he needed to go and spent the afternoons turning my house into something better than what my husband and I had first purchased. Work didn't finish until August. In the meantime my brother in law bought a cheap car and I wasn't as needed as I had been.
In september my brother in law returned to work. I stepped into a new role. Because my brother in law works nights I began taking care of his kids from the time they came home from school until they went to bed at night. Nothing has been easy. Everything has felt like a struggle since that night in May. My house finally received an offer after being listed for over 100 days. My husband and I found a new home to buy. I had to take the fall semester off from school so I could focus on my family and moving. Everything is out of my old house and spread across four different places. I'm waiting for the closing date and then I'll be waiting to close on the new house.
I'm essentially homeless. Sure i'm staying with my brother in law but to save on money I stay close to where my kids go to school. I can't stay at my old house I'm done there. Everything has been cleaned up and it's ready for the new family. I'm still trying to process the last five almost six months of my life. So much has changed. It was sudden change and it's all fixing to change again. In January I go back to school and I'm wondering if I'm really ready. I'm relying on public places for a place to stay during the day until I have my new house. I went to the library to hopefully get to work on some new story. But right now it all feels so pointless. I'm surrounded by books and I'm just not that into it. The escape would be nice but the reality of it all creeps in and before I know it I've read the same sentence over and over without it making sense. So I figured I would tell internet strangers why I've stepped away from writing for so long. Usually I'm working on something whether it's a plot line for a new idea, a poem, or a character, I'm usually writing. In a way I still am. I'm writing this at least.
