conflicting emotions

Been a while since I posted anything here...I haven't been feeling much like doing the diary thing, and any random brain bits tend to get thrown onto Facebook and then purged from the buffer. Life has been both busy and chill...busy getting the house pulled together and doing the million and one things it takes to move into a new place and merge two lives, but chill in that we are taking our time, making sure to fit in some fun and downtime. We've had friends over for beer, barbeques, and swimming, Will has gone on motorcycle rides and car rallies, I've napped and read and scritched Pepper and walked Darwin, we've stretched out on the couch and watched the birds and deer and squirrels in the backyard, been fascinated by the sounds of coyotes howling and yipping nearby [eerily nearby], spent hours in front of the fire pit just watching the flames light up the night, snuggled up together enjoying the peace and quiet, basically enjoying the moments as they come.

Even with all that, though, I've been feeling rather melancholy. Part of it is a feeling of disconnection...from friends and family across the country, and from a world I left behind after Dad died. Folks that I was close to were lost to the oddness surrounding those times; they drifted away as they grew uncomfortable with what was happening, and then just faded entirely. A precious few are still in my life, and I love them dearly...nothing like a bit of chaos and pain to show you the underlying strength [or lack thereof] of bonds of friendship and caring.

Another part of the sadness is weirdly because of the new house. It's a really nice place; it has some weird issues [the people who owned it before us tended to choose form over function, so there are some strange choices they'd made that we are either learning to deal with or planning to fix], but overall, it's awesome. The location is the best part, though...the backyard is full of trees and plants that draw in all kinds of wildlife. Bobcats, quail, woodpeckers, finches, doves, hummingbirds, deer, coyotes, bunnies, frogs, lizards, hawks, moles, a bunch of different birds we haven't identified yet. There is even a donkey that someone nearby owns, and we can hear him ee-awwing once in a while. We are on a hill, so the view is of the sky and trees, and we can even see some stars at night.

It's all quite cool and a great place to picture living out the next 20+ years...and I keep finding myself thinking about how much Mom and Dad would love this place. Mom and I would sit out back in the early morning, watching the birds and sipping coffee. Dad would absolutely flip his shit over all the animals...he'd be loving it. He would also be volunteering to help fix some of the random electrical issues that pop up, or at least telling us what we should be looking for as we tried to fix them ourselves [or hired someone to do it]. Mom and I would be floating in the pool and relaxing with some margaritas or maybe a daiquiri or two, while giggling at Dad trying to lure in whatever random animal was in the yard at the time.

I know everyone says it when they've lost someone they love, but I wish they could see this. They saw me go through so much shit in life, they were always there to support and console and cheer me on. They gave me an amazing set of tools to rely on as life rumbles on its way...I wouldn't be who I am without them. And I dearly, desperately wish they could share all of this with me...Will, the life we are building, the house, the land, the place I find myself in life right now. It doesn't lessen what is happening and how amazing all of this is, but I find it coloring how I am able to appreciate it.

That, I think, is the cruelest aspect to death and loss: the loss of what could have been, the inability to share the 'now' with the ones that helped us achieve it and saw us as we struggled to get there. We all learn to move on; we've been doing it for as long as we've been emotional beings...and it is just as difficult for us now as it was for the first person to experience it.