An Hour and a Half Later

Written 11/10/2020

Woah.  Where do I begin on what all has taken place since I announced we were moving an hour and a half away?  It has been a whirlwind.  It feels like it’s been many months ago, but it has only been two months.

Soon after we announced we were moving, we started looking for places to rent.  This search took a little bit longer than we expected.  We even looked at a couple houses to buy because finding a rental was becoming a daunting task, but buying in the middle of all this chaos was just too much right now. We thankfully found a rental to move into for mid-October.  This left us with a few weeks for Andy to have to commute an hour and a half to work.

During our rental search, our sweet dog Nova had to have surgery unexpectedly.   She had a random mass for on her leg.  Thankfully, she made it through and seemed to do pretty well overall with the surgery.   She seemed to even be doing better than she had in a while.  In hindsight, I think it was the antibiotics she was taking for the surgery.   They must have helped out some with whatever issues she was having from old age.  

Andy started his new job on September 21^st.  It was an hour and a half away from our house and he commuted a couple days and we could tell already it was going to be rough.   Right before he started, Nova started to have what seemed like her normal bad spell.  She was a little more out of it and lethargic.   I was nervous because we were going to go stay with my parents on Wednesday the 23^rd while our house was listed on the market.  I didn’t know how she would do on the hour and a half drive and staying somewhere new.  Andy suggested we head up early in the day Wednesday instead of waiting for him to pick us up then drive back.   I agreed, even though I wasn’t looking forward to driving with an elderly dog and a 2 year old by myself for an hour and a half.  I am now very grateful for this change in plans.

Nova was acting pretty out of it but she had an even worse spell like this in August, so I hoped she would snap back out of it in a couple days.   She did great on the way to my parents’ house, but sadly things started going down when we arrived.  Her breathing was labored and she had a couple violent seizures.  She had seizures before but these were some of the worst and close together in timing.  In between her seizures, our house hit the market, but we were obviously distracted. We ended up having to drive her a half an hour away to an emergency vet because it was after normal hours.  She ended up having another violent seizure while she was being examined in the back room.   Her vitals crashed soon after and they were not able to resuscitate her.  If we had stuck to our original plan, Andy would have gotten back to the house right around the time we got to the veterinarian’s office. I can’t imagine how I would have dealt with being alone with a 2 year old kid and a very ill and seizing dog.   I am sad we lost Nova, but I am thankful we were able to have my parents watch Hannah while Andy and I said our goodbyes after she passed.

Driving home without Nova felt so weird and the half an hour felt so long.  Over the next couple days, we normally would have tried to grieve and process at home, but our house had just hit the market in the biggest seller’s market I’ve ever seen.  So we immediately started getting alerts that people were scheduling to see the house.   It should have been an exciting time with over 12 showings scheduled and getting 4 offers in less than 48 hours from hitting the market, but I was just ready to go home.  I needed some sort of normalcy to grieve.  

We didn’t get much time in between going back to the house and Andy having to commute for work again the following Monday.   It was much needed time, but we could have used a lot more time in between. The couple weeks between Nova passing and us officially moving were some of the hardest I’ve ever dealt with.   Between preparing for the move, grieving over Nova, and Andy’s commute, we were just trying to survive. 

I really wanted to immediately move after losing Nova.   The house was constantly reminding us that she was not there.   It’s easy in hindsight to be thankful for this time to grieve at the house she lived in with us, but I just wanted to be done.  It was such an exhausting time.   In a year that already felt forever long due to coronavirus, the waiting and grieving during the move made time move even slower.  

I am beyond grateful to be writing this on the other end of this move.  Through the trials of finding a place, selling our house and losing Nova, I still felt at peace with our decision.  I am very grateful to God for that peace because it would have been easy to turn it all negative and try to stop the moving process.  It would have been way easier at the time.  But I sit here in our 2 bedroom duplex style apartment and feel more on track than I had for a while in our 4 bedroom house.   And that is after I had to have the apartment management company spray for spiders last week because we were getting more than our fair share of giant spiders.   It isn’t perfect, but it is right for our family right now.   We hope God will open the door to a house next year, but I can tell we are learning a lot in our time in this 2 bedroom apartment.   We are learning we needed less than we thought.  More importantly, we are learning that following in faith doesn’t always look great on paper, but it can bring a sense of peace and will lead you where you are meant to be.   We don’t know where all the road leads from here, but it is nice to know we are on the right track.