no one's perfect.

Well another summer has come and gone and here we are back in school.  This summer was fabulous/  Caroline came to visit and I proved to myself that I could conquer Philadelphia with four kids in tow.  It finally feels like we can actually do things, now that everyone is (mostly) potty trained and I no longer have to pack half the house with us to go places.  We went to North Carolina on vacation with my parents and other family, had barbecues and baseball games and fireworks and everything awesome about summer.  For me though, there was always a shadow behind me.  It's been nearly 4 months since Molly died, and not a day goes by that I don't wish it wasn't so.  

There are reminders everywhere - there's the obvious: driving by the cemetery or going to Kristen's house, and the subtle, like seeing a butterfly or a rainbow.  But it's the unexpected reminders that get me the most - during the Perseid meteor shower in August, I was struggling to explain what meteors are like to my 4 year old and I said that meteors are tiny and wouldn't hurt him, it would be like glitter falling from the sky and he said, "Molly's throwing glitter from Heaven!" 

All the while, I remind myself that what I feel is a sliver of the enormous pain that Kristen and her family are going through.  While that gives me perspective, it's not always enough to keep me from being angry or sad, or or generally unpleasant to be around.  I wish I could say that this experience has made me more patient with my kids, or made me kinder to others, or made me want to crusade to end Pulmonary Hypertension and HHT.  It hasn't, at least, not all of the time.  I'm just as patient as I've always been, which is to say about as patient as a regular old mom.  I'm as kind as I used to be, but probably more judgmental.  Somedays I want to contact my Senators and Congressman, but there are plenty where I want to pretend like I still had never heard of those diseases.  Those days, those times, I feel like I'm letting Molly down.  Mols, who never gave up on anything, would expect me to be better.  

But there are days where I do better - when I let Will walk on the wall at Crossroads, just to hear him say "yay!" and see the look of pride on his face when he jumps down by himself or when I actually ran around in a rainstorm with the kids or when I don't internally freak out at the guy taking his sweet time to back out of a parking space.  Those days, I remember that life is really too short, and there's no reason not to take the "super spy double secret back way home" (which is twice around the neighborhood and down a cul-de-sac and back).  

Today, a butterfly raced me down the road to the bus stop.  I couldn't help but say "Hi Molly." And then it occurred to me, did I see the butterfly because the butterfly is carrying Molly's spirit, or did I see it because I am carrying Molly's spirit in me?  And that was a very comforting thought.  Cause Molly, though persevering, wasn't perfect and it made me realize that she wouldn't want me to be perfect either.