My life is about to change in ways that I can't even imagine. I know I've been writing a lot about my mother. As you can imagine, that has been the major overshadowing event of my life lately. There's going to be something new, now. And, rather than being an overshadow, I believe it will be an overlight (to butcher the language a bit more).
My wife is pregnant.
Believe me, I'm actually orders of magnitude more excited and amazed and shocked and a whole list of other emotions that I can't put into words than the simple statement above indicates. But I can't even begin to put that into electrons. So, the simple statement will have to suffice for the moment.
We haven't gotten it confirmed by the doctor yet, but a missed period (this past weekend) and two positive home pregnancy tests done 24 hours apart certainly seem to be an incredibly strong indicator. Anna's trying now to get a doctor's appointment so we can get final confirmation. Based on some on-line estimated due-date calculators, we're probably looking at a mid-November delivery.
I know that people usually wait weeks until they start telling people, but I've had so much bad news that I've shared with people lately that I absolutely want to be able to call people up and tell them something positive. I guess it's a minor form of therapy for me.
And that brings me to the title of today's entry. My mom's life is ending, a new life is beginning. We've already told her about the pregnancy and she's happy for us. What I don't know is whether that knowledge will give her the desire to try and stay around at least until the birth.
The one dark spot in this particular bit of brightness is that I am saddened that my children will never have a chance to know their grandmother (my mother). I believe that they'd have an amazing chance to learn from her and she would have enjoyed seeing them.
Don't get me wrong - I'm absolutely ecstatically happy about my impending parenthood. But it can't block out my sadness (and forming grief) about my mother. Somehow, I guess I'll just have to figure out how to live with both.
But in the meantime, I've got a whole lot of learning to do about what it means to have a baby! Woohoo!!!
Author: ben@tmk.com