I have been lucky with whanau. Despite a divorce and the death of my father last year after a long battle with cancer I have always considered myself to be blessed. I have a beautiful (but willful and moody) teenage daughter, 3 amazing sisters and a wonderful brother along with associated in-laws and children but all of this had been tied together by my Mum. I think as a family we will maintain strong together, however, I am scared in the lizard pessimistic part of my brain that we will drift apart without Mum to hold us together.
Will the others still come to our town now Mum is not here as really they have no need to. Strange things trigger worries I was shopping at one of the supermarkets today and they were putting out the Christmas decorations and I had to stop and think what will we do now at Christmas. In the past, the other siblings, who have other in-laws, rotated each year but I was always with mum. It reminded me again that as I am the only single parent of the family and there is just me and my daughter, it might be very quite christmas’s in future.
I had always pictured moving Mum in with me once she wasn’t ready to live alone anymore but now I am looking at a really empty nest once the child heads off. It makes me feel a bit shallow and concerned for myself to be crying about my future, however, some of the reading I’ve done does seem to claim that this is normal although I hate that word really, what really is normal?