An Orderly Life

I've always considered myself a fairly flexible person. My adult children may disagree, but that is the privilege of motherhood :). I prove my case by pointing out that I spend my days with eighth-graders. Flexibility is the key to survival in my game.

And yet flexible as I see myself, I realized tonight, (after verbally puking my grief and guts out in a friend's  lap ), that I've really had a very orderly life. 

Until now. 

And I'm not coping well with that. Any minor change in plan from what I expect to happen, throws me for a loop. Going with the flow? Pretty hard.

Everything in my life has happened in order. I went to college, graduated, got married, got a job and had two children. And even though that marriage ended sadly in divorce, the order of my life continued. I got remarried at 39 and carried on, building a new career on the way.

My children did things in order too...nobody made me a grandma before I was a mother-in-law. There is nothing wrong with that, but what I am expressing is that there were no surprises along the way. Everybody followed the order rule. College, job, marriage, house, children .

 Orderly.

Even my dad's death was orderly. He fell on a Monday, and died peacefully the next Sunday at the age of 87. 

Orderly.

Three weeks ago at about this moment, that order ended. Abruptly. A ninja came in and ripped apart my orderly life with a samurai sword. Glenn was not supposed to die that night, not yet, and not so violently. It wasn't in the order of my life. I was supposed to retire early, we would go somewhere warm for a bit in the winter; we had even been looking at renting an RV for a road trip. Maybe when I was 70 and he was 82... maybe then the order would have been more palatable. 

Not yet. Not now.

It's out of order.