I haven’t written anything for my work in progress in a week.

Even typing this I feel like I’m wearing gloves (and I’m not).

My arms are heavy to lift, like I’m underwater or walking around the house in three thick wool coats.

The past week or so has been filled with intense emotions.

The best feeling is that one of my brothers and his wife had their first baby, a boy.

It goes drastically down hill from there.

On the same day, my dad went in for some tests because they discovered he had a mass in his lung. He had to wait in the hospital in order to get his levels of whatever to be able to do the test.

A couple days after that my sister in law’s grandmother, a woman who is like a third parent to her, suddenly became ill.

Then my dad was told the mass was probably malignant.

My sister in law’s grandmother passed away.

And my dad received the test results. It is cancer. It is bad.

So the rug has been pulled out from under us. Our time has come to learn first-hand how to help each other get through this hard time. My posts here will probably be as erratic as my emotions. I don’t want to force you to be my therapists, but I find that writing does help me process feelings and ideas.

I’m dropping out of National Novel Writing Month. It feels like a failure though dropping out is a necessity, and meeting my daily word count seems like a very trite concern for me right now.

In the midst of deep sadness and fear, there are still so many things to be thankful for. I know this. I even feel it. I know that days will continue to arrive. Life will carry on. There will be laughter and lightness even in the middle of heaviness.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for being a community of friends. Thank you for your patience as I try to figure out how to deal with this new reality.