Best laid off plans

Guy has been laid off from his job. He saw it coming with the reorganization that began back in July, so he has been talking to people and working on some networking since then. When they laid off most of the geneticists whom he supported, the writing was on the wall for him.

On December 19, some random person from his company, not even his boss or the VP for his division, call to tell him he had been made "redundant." Then proceeded to tell him that they needed him to stay until April to train people. But he is redundant. Sensemaking.

The past week has been consumed with him trying to figure out the best scenario for our family and his career. The best offer he has is in Connecticut. I have never been that far north even. The next best offer is right here at home, but it is a far cry from the best offer. There are jobs in New Jersey and Boston too. We are trying to plan how to move, what happens with custody of Lovely, and how do we sell a house that we are in the middle of renovating?

Beautiful 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath home in desirable location. Kitchen is missing a wall and part of the ceiling. Master bath has no sink and only part of one wall. Front flower beds have all been dug up and are waiting for planting. A blank canvas for the creative home buyer!

Right on. I don't see that working very well.

Today, he was talking some more about the order of events in trying to get the houses we would need to sell in shape. I just started crying. A big heavy cry. The kind of cry that I thought would have stopped by now. I can say that it didn't last as long.

All of these plans, all of these conversations, used to be about the baby. We planned the nursery. We talked about a nanny. We planned the birth. We planned for names. Everything we planned was centered around Cleatus. Then, all of the sudden, he is gone. The baby is gone, the plans are gone.

All we have left to plan is a life without him.

Then I got mad at myself and felt so awful because regardless of the sane thing I wrote last night about having him for every bit of his natural life, I had this thought: I wish we hadn't wasted all that time. It will be that much longer until we have a baby now.

Oh my God, I wish I had never thought that. How awful is that? We did have a baby. For 12 weeks. For 12 weeks, we had a baby, and I just dismissed him in that thought because it didn't turn out like I wanted it to. I hope he doesn't know that I thought that.

If I'm going to heal and move on, I'm going to have to stop having stupid bad thoughts like that one.

Time to continue putting away the Christmas decorations. Except for the dishes. My Christmas dishes are called "winter dishes." That way, I can use them until Valentine's Day. Hooray.