Cape for sale, cheap.

I'm tired. Tired beyond belief. There hasn't been any real rest for me in a very long time.

Being Maggie's mother meant I was on call 24/7. To be fair, being anybody's mother means you are on call 24/7, but the demands of raising a child with ongoing health challenges and disabilities means the "calls" came frequently and at every hour of the day.  In the first five years or so  I was so sleep deprived I probably should not have been driving. Somehow, though we adapt to whatever we need to do to get by.

After several years we started getting nurses at night - not every night like in the last years of Maggie's life, but sometimes. It was often enough that I  started feeling a little less dangerous when driving. Still there were more nights than not that we didn't have a nurse and I was up several times during the night or just didn't sleep at all.  Once the nurses were there all the time, things got better still, but there were always emergencies or a sick nurse or something that disrupted my sleep.

To compensate for this, I developed a superpower. I could sleep anytime, anywhere for as long as was allowable under the circumstances. If there was a 30 minute window, I could lay down or just sit up and sleep for 28 minutes. It was uncanny. It was my own way of keeping myself in an operational state.

Now Maggie is gone and so is my superpower. I've lost my ability to sleep. Not just my superpower of power napping on demand, but sleeping at all. I can count on one hand the nights I've slept through since February.  It was starting to abate before we went to Ireland, but then the trip totally threw off the clock again. Plus, now that we are back, I am feeling the loss much more sharply than I have in recent months The trip was a good diversion, but it's over and now I'm back where I was.

I suppose it's to be expected. An emotional upset as big as this is going to have some long lasting reverberations. Losing Maggie was the rock in the pond. It was a huge splash.  Not sleeping is one of the many ripples that come from that splash.

So, now I'm off to bed where I will read until I fall asleep and then awaken three hours later and stay awake for most - or the rest - of the night.

I'm tired. I miss my sleep superpower, in fact I will have to get rid of my sleeping cape.

But most of all, I miss my girl.