All the feels

Today, I start menopause month 2.  It also happens to be Reagan's due date, 5 years later.  And 9 months to the day since Lucas passed away.  So many things should be true that are, in fact, not true.  I should be huge and uncomfortably pregnant with Noah.  I should be ~15 weeks pregnant with the next set of twins, or even just announcing my pregnancy with our most recent transfer.  Instead, I am barren.  Empty.  I have 3 kids whom I love and adore, and yet our family feels woefully incomplete.  And I am already beginning to have panic attacks about the last transfer, because it is the LAST.  I don't ovulate, so I know pregnancy without intervention isn't in our future.  Add to that my "advancing maternal age" and, well, it's a bleak picture.  I'm in need of another surgery before our final transfer and find myself still fighting to get a doctor who is qualified to perform it as we are rapidly approaching the deadline.  All the hurts and emotions and stressors seem to collide today. 

And then, our fish died.  A stupid little fish I have no emotional connect to.  I took him to our preschool "pet shop" this morning and he did just fine.  But on the drive home, his bowl flipped over.  I'm still not quite sure how it happened, I was going about 10 mph.  The kids kept asking if there were old people around (they equate old people with slowness in the car, can't imagine where that came from...) but NO, I was just going slow to keep our fish water from splashing.  Yet, somehow this bowl turned completely on its side and dumped out the water, the rocks, and Tiger2.  I was about 30 seconds from the neighborhood so we raced home, but no luck.  Tiger2 was gone.  Dean sobbed for about 30 minutes over this fish he had ZERO interaction with.  But, it was his Lucas replacement.  It was the one thing he cried about the day after Lucas died, that his fish had died.  It broke the tension for Andrew and I, helped bring a bit of light into that day, but it was Dean's way of connecting with death, his way of grieving for his brother.  We brought home Tiger2 that day, a replacement for Tiger the original who had died right before Lucas.  It seems like such a silly thing, but it's kind of a slap in the face too.  For it to happen on this day in such a weird way.

So, here I am, continuing to grieve Reagan and Lucas (and Tiger2) while riding the emotional highs and lows of menopause and anticipating what I only expect to be failure in the future.  Better days have to be coming, right??