Normal?

You know those books you read where the first chapter is written from one person's perspective and the next is from another and so on?  You see movies like that too.  You kind of have to suffer through it patiently or impatiently until the two characters meet and start having scenes together.  That's kind of what my life has been like for the past 5 months. 

I'm existing in this time and space and the sun keeps coming up and going down to remind me that the earth hasn't stopped, but I can feel Ian existing right around me and I can't see him.  I'm living some alternative universe sequence that you'd think could only be possible inside some one's imagination.  He's here.  I can see him pausing the TV to interject his comments on things.  I can sense that he would have a giant crush on the new girl at church.  I can feel him listening to me butcher primary songs on the piano.  I know he would've begged for the American flag converse sneakers I picked up at the thrift store yesterday. 

I thought I heard him laugh today as I entered a room and then realized he wasn't here.  I feel like he and I are tied together by a tether I can't see or follow back to him.

Someone asked Keith this week if things were getting back to normal for us.  Ignorance must indeed be bliss.  Things will never be normal again.  Normal would be hearing fighting in the house.  Normal would be actually getting out the right number or plates to set the table.  Normal would be watching Ace of Cakes instead of trying to decide if I can delete the timer on the DVR.  Normal would be never going without conversation in the car.  Normal would be knowing that the Red Sox just got one of the Padres best players.  We will never be normal again.

I don't know how he can feel so close and so far away at the same time.  I see the discomfort on peoples' faces when I bring him up in conversation, but to me he's always there.  How does a mom just cut one of their children out of everyday conversation?  How does she not think of him while walking the aisles of any store or while she prepares anything he ever loved to eat--or didn't love?  How does she not want to photoshop him into every recent photograph? 

She doesn't.

I guess I'll settle for him occupying an alternate universe here with me.  It beats the alternative.