To Do: Accept Loss

There are so many things I need to get done.

So of course I chose to do the last thing on the list today. The task that could be perpetually put off until I die, but suddenly became the number one priority because it helped me avoid the ten thousand other items before it.

So… what was I doing?

I went through all of our picture files…. I labeled, I organized into folders, and let's face it, I oohed and awed over younger versions of us. That wasn't enough, though. All the other things that need done were still pressing in on me so I went ahead and copied the files with our friends The Pringles in them, organized those. Made it all ready to put on a cd and hand over before they move. Five years of friendship made neat and tidy in chronological files.

Because they are moving. It's true. I really must believe it. Sure, they've been around as long as we've been digital….longer actually, there's just no way to prove it. Yes, they have been present for all the major events of our lives, as we have in theirs for the last five years. And yes they are our family. Family as in people we chose to relate to, people who have stood up with us, who have shared germs with us, who accept us exactly as we are, not because they have to, but because we all want to.

Contrary to all that, they're packing their things and moving across the country.

Oh I know. There's email, phone calls, *gasp* snail mail. I'm working on convincing them to get a myspace account. And I will buy a web cam and suffer the shame of people seeing it attached to our computer and thinking we're having the cyber sex, I'll do it for the kids. We'll send cards, scrapbook pages, video clips, gifts, letters, and whatnot.

It will be fun. I know that. I know they will still exist across all those miles, they'll still be there, be our Pringles. For the first six months there will be a flurry of digital activity between our families. Our smiling faces with travel to their inbox, their new adventures will be typed out and sent our way. We'll attempt to carry on.

And then we'll get too busy.

The miles, the distance, the diverging growth in our families will be bigger than the time we had together. When we do manage to make contact the topics we cover will highlight the differences, the changes, the time between us. They'll find a new McPeterman family to play with, some strange North Carolina version of us. We'll pretend we like them and we'll be happy for them.

We will come to accept that they are no longer we.

But not yet. Right now, I have a lot of other things to do.