In the middle of the night last night I woke up so afraid I could barely breathe. It was just all too much. The hurricane and it’s terrible ongoing aftermath. I still have so much to deal with recovering from damage here and I am beginning to wade through it but in the middle of it all Delilah got sick, and then died, and in the days after I was so worried about Pugsley I cancelled all my appointments except my therapy for the month of November. I didn’t know how I was ever going to leave him. And all of a sudden a thousand things loomed large that have to be done. Tons of pictures put together in a file for the insurance company, before and after the hurricane. People out to give me estimates on repair work and taking down huge hanging tree limbs and other tree work. Insurance adjusters out. I need to continue to work with little Pugsley day by day to see how I can help him get through this and I had to reschedule appointments for December and January that I cancelled for November. The holidays are coming, and the list goes on and on and in the middle of the night it felt like just to much to even begin to try to cope with. Too much. I took medication to help me sleep, finally, and read until I could go to sleep and was awake again at 5. How am I going to survive all of this, I wondered? I can’t do it.

But, of course, we can, and we do, one day at a time.

At 5 a.m. I took Xanax so I didn’t come out of my skin. I have been taking it as rarely as possible but it is a godsend on the really bad nights. I held on to sweet Pugsley in my lap, he is such a comfort. I went back to sleep until after 8 and we got up. The things I am afraid of are not going to go away, I told myself. Start, start somewhere, start anywhere, just start.

I walked my wee boy and got him his breakfast and meds. I made coffee. I came in here to my work table, and took out my notebook. I wrote down every single thing that I could think of that I had to do. A whole list just of phone calls, appointments to reschedule, things to cancel, calls to get information, and on and on. I had to work through my budget for the month, had to order some things. I started inching my way through the list, and as I crossed things off I started to breathe. One day, one moment, one task at a time, cross one more thing off the list, keep going. Do what I can each day, just what I can. It all adds up.

And then today was therapy. I had struggled to figure out what to do. I hated to leave Pugsley but I had come to believe it would be less stressful for him to stay at home than to take him. I would only be gone for an hour and a half. I went out yesterday for 40 minutes and he did okay. And so I went. And he was okay, very glad to see me, a bit anxious and worked up, but he was okay. One more step forward.

Therapy was good, my therapist is absolutely wonderful and she helped me a lot with figuring out how to manage all of this, in baby steps, in bite sized pieces, even if I only got one thing done each day I would be moving forward. And I actually got quite a number of things done today. And now the day is done. My heart is easing a bit.

The loss of Delilah is of course still very hard. I feel like I am managing better and then I break down. Of course talking about it all in therapy today was hard, and I cried, but it was a good, healing kind of processing. There is no way out but through. Grieving is a process, it is not a straight line, it takes time. This time last week Delilah was still here. It’s hard to wrap my mind around that.

We made it through another day, Pugsley and I, and though it is just a little after 8 I am so tired I can barely keep my eyes open. I will walk him, get ready for bed, and snuggle up with him in our big recliner. I will read, I hope I will sleep, I will try.

Tomorrow is another day, I don’t know what it will bring, but we made it through today, and we go on from here.