Quandry, it just makes me ache to hear your experience with the loss of your parents. Hard doesn't even begin to describe dealing with those kinds of feelings.
Thank you for the caring support, rocketman, wolfman85, New Chapter, and SweetBabyCheezits. The positive energy of others on my behalf has been and continues to be a real force to keep me going through these days.
Still thinking, blurt and blurt some more. It just helps to be able to talk about things.
I did go back and do my first class today. I had another person there to assist me, the teacher who had been filling in. It was a fairly easy day, since the students had essay drafts to do peer review (read and comment on one another's papers). Still, it was difficult, with me all teary-eyed at first, but I got through. The semester is over in a couple of weeks, so I think I can get that much done. Mostly, as I walk around campus, I just have this sense of detacchment from everything. It is all familiar, yet distant and strange. This is a time for reexamining things in my life. One thing I am learning is to let go of my perfectionist expectations for myself. I just do what I can do, and that is all I can do. Tomorrow, I am going to lunch with a friend, so that will be good. I sit here tonight in my computer room/library, and look at the stack of condolence cards I need to write 'thank you' cards for, but everything I start, I know I will end up crying, and I let them sit. Gotta do it soon. On the whole, I cry less, but my energy for doing things is not what it used to be.
