up late....or early

It's 4:10 am. I can't sleep. I keep thinking about what my and the kids lives are going to be like without Jeff. Not great sleeping material. I just can't wrap my head around the fact that he'll never come home again. He won't see Liv master all her new skills. Or see Briar learn to ride a bike, swim, read or talk with words that only a mommy can decifer. He won't be here....isn't here, as I need him the most. It's just so fucking final. I can not seem to get it. I feel horribly bereft. BUT I still feel that there is some possiblity that he'll come home again. It's insane.
I've reached a stage where things that initially comforted me now really freak me out. In the first few weeks of this hell, I'd listen to his answering machine messages again and again. I was terrified that I'd accidentally erase them. I could trick myself into thinking that he had just left the messages. Now I can't listen to them. I play the new messages ont he machine and then quickly turn it off. If I happen to hear his voice, I crumple. It makes me miss him more. He tells me he loves me and to 'squish Liv and Briar'. In another, he tells me he'll be home soon. And yet another, he tells me how the fishing is and that they're not having a good trip. I can tell that at the end of this message, I manage to pick up the phone and talk to him. If I had only known them that it would mean so much to me now. That some seemingly inconsequential action would become so envied.
I should go back to bed. I just get so freaked out. Scared, if I'm honest. I'm afraid of sleeping because I'm terrified of the dreams. Even worse, I'm afraid of staring into the darkness...thinking.
I uploaded these pictures early today...yesterday. They're pictures that make me laugh. I was thinking of just leaving them in the draft folder with so many other half completed posts. But right now, I need to smile. So I'll just use them now....Some are old. Some were taken over the last couple of days.... Okay, this is really a hang-nail that she is showing me. She probably thought I was deranged laughing hysterically at her injured finger and taking pictures.
Briar wants the camera. Jeff was standing beside me and we were killing ourselves imagining his teenage friends seeing this photo.

I took this one today. She's such a bloody ham. I am so fortunate to have these two little ones. They're great giggle therapy.
My nephew, Gabe, came out of the bedroom with this when he was over on Wednesday. IHe was non-chalant about it. Made it funnier. Like walking around in a pig mask with a soother was the most normal thing on the planet. Reminds me of a baby Zorro.
I don't know why, but I get a total kick out of pictures of animals staring straight at the camera. This chicken, Lucy, reminds me of one of those guys sitting in the balcony seats on the Muppets in this photo. So disapproving!
This one isn't as great but I find the straight line 'Dolly Lama's ears make it amazing. She is such a sweet sheep. I wish we had more land. I'd so definitely have sheep.

Anyhow, I'm off to bed to either have tortured upsetting dreams or to stare into the darkness at the void that seems to be my life (yeah, I'm dramatic in the early morning) until the kids get up.