Daddies

Scene: 45 minutes after bedtime because she just refuses to close her eyes. Or let me leave.

Laura: Those kids at the pool have Daddies, Mama?

Me: Yep...everybody has a Daddy.

Laura: My Daddy's in Heaven. With Jesus.

Me: Yep, sweetie, you're right.

Laura: Those pictures over there...that's my Daddy. My Daddy loves me very much.

Me: tears You're right, punkin, your Daddy does love you very much.

Laura: Daddy loves you too, Mama. And Clara. And me.

Me: Daddy loves everybody, honey.

Laura: Why?

Me:  Because your Daddy is extra special.

Laura: My Daddy loves me very much. drifts off to sleep

[SIGH]

12, 13, 23, 24

Today is the 23rd. I hate the 23rd...and let's just throw the 24th and 12th and 13th in there, too. It doesn't matter the month...I hate these days. These are the 4 days that my world shattered.

October 12, 2011: Found out we lost the little boy we longed for, planned for and had been anxiously awaiting his arrival after a perfectly normal, textbook pregnancy. Exactly 1 week before his due date.

October 13, 2011: Delivered Will silently into this world. No newborn wails, just the wails of our hearts breaking as we tried to squeeze a lifetime of love and memories into a few short hours. No baby to take home, just an empty car seat and a purple box of keepsakes: a lock of his hair, hand and footprints.

January 23, 2015: My world was sent into a tailspin at 8:30 pm when I found out that you had gone under the ice and they couldn't find you. I found out 5 hours after it happened and in my heart I knew there was no hope but with every fiber of my being I wished and prayed that they had made a mistake. That you had somehow rescued yourself and they just didn't know it. But my heart knew as it shattered into a million pieces that you were gone...gone forever. Never to hear the last voicemail I sent you at 3:00 that afternoon.

January 24, 2015: I sat and watched every minute of the 3 hour recovery. Watched them pull you from the ice. Watched them transport you across the ice in a body bag behind a 4-wheeler. Watched them load you into the ambulance for transport to the funeral home. Identified you, crumbling over our unbelievable life story and your ice cold body. Overwhelmed by reality.

Scenes and memories I will never forget but will always wish weren't our story. And these days (12, 13, 23, 24) haunt me...they tear my heart out.

Picture taken January 23, 2015

Today, on the 23rd, you've been gone 6 months...half a year. It seems like yesterday and it seems like a lifetime ago that I kissed you for the last time. That I took a picture of you with your sweet girls. That I looked forward to your return home from a short trip...that you were HERE beside me. And I know that you are now at Will's side, but I love you and I so desperately miss you.

My Life

So I've come back to wondering, "How is this my life? Is this real? Please let this be a bad, long dream."

But let's be honest...it's real and it's not a dream. This is my life.

My life of missing my best friend with every fiber of my being every second of every day. My life of being an only-parent. I'm an only-parent, not a single-parent, because I didn't choose to raise our two babies on my own. And being an only-parent is utterly exhausting. Their well-being is my top priority and I worry about them. Will they remember their Daddy? (Laura may, there's no chance in hell Clara will and that absolutely breaks my heart.) Am I doing things like we would have if there were still two of us to make decisions and discipline? Am I giving them enough opportunities and not expecting too much of them at too young of an age? Am I spending enough time playing with them while also giving them their own space to explore and develop independence? Am I enabling them because they've been robbed of growing up with a Daddy? The worry list is endless...and it's overwhelming and exhausting.

This is my life...a widow at 32. Eating Scarfing half a meal down alone after the girls are fed before they need me again. Managing inside and outdoor chores. No one to vent to when I've had a rough day at work or when family irritates me. No one to celebrate my raise with. No one to get excited over the little things only a parent gets excited about. No one to bounce ideas off. No one to plan a vacation with or dream about retirement with. No one to go on a date night with. It's just me and this is my lonely life.

Surviving Vacation

Well, we did it. We survived our annual vacation camping/fishing trip without you. The lack of your presence was undeniably noticed by everyone. Some viewed it as a memorial trip, but I viewed it as following through with the plans and dreams we had for our girls. And our girls had a blast.

I believe you were with us in spirit, turning on the toy airplane and bubble machine at random times. Baker found it annoying until I told him it was you telling him to get off his ass and go fishing. Laura told me she saw you "last night" a couple different days and those conversations both warm and break my heart. Our friends are doing a great job helping out with the girls and giving them the experiences that I can't on my own (your brother needs a swift kick in the ass, btw) and I will be forever grateful that the girls will have those relationships. I call the guys the girls' pseudo-dads because they love and treat the girls as their own, but none of them will ever compare to the Daddy that you were.

Grief

Grief is a peculiar thing. It's a vicious cycle that sneaks up on you when you least expect it. It's the littlest things that seem to hit you the hardest. A song on the radio (I've heard the funeral songs every.day on the radio), the fact that I had to cook burn the bacon for breakfast on Sunday, the fact that I had to permanently unpack your stuff from the camper. That one's not little...that's huge. I procrastinated as long as I could. And when I forced to do it, it sucked. And by unpacked, I mean I put all your stuff in a tote and hauled it into the bedroom. Where it's now sat for 2 weeks. Because I don't know what to do with it and I'm not ready to address it beyond this point yet.

Grieving opens your eyes to the real trials of the world. Someone else's bad day that they lament over is minute on my scale. Because really....you only locked your keys in your car. I would deal with that every day for the next 20 years if it meant I could have Sam back.

But I'm doing ok. I'm excelling at work, the girls seem to be happy (although Laura still has anxiety over people leaving her), they are involved and I have a social life outside being an only parent. But it's still not the same and given the choice, this isn't the life I would choose.

Vacation starts in two days. Vacation, for us, means camping and fishing on the Missouri river. Which isn't something I had ever done before I met Sam. It's something he grew up doing, introduced me to and I really enjoyed it. We had big plans to help our girls experience this. And now those plans rest solely on my shoulders to carry through. The maiden voyage is going to be hard. The whole 8-day trip is going to be bittersweet. I promised and planned to do these things with you for the rest of our lives. Instead, I have the rest of mine. And however long that may be, I promise I will never stop loving you and doing everything I can to make sure our girls experience everything we had dreamed of doing with them.

Updating

I've been MIA for a while. Life has been such a confusing, busy whirlwind this month. When I have thoughts I want to jot down, I don't have time. And when I have the time, the thoughts have escaped my exhausted brain.

* I survived Mother's Day weekend. I spent time with friends the night before Mother's Day. On Sunday, I spent some time by myself distracted by the task of trying to organize/muck closets. I packed up his ridiculous collection of shoes by the door I was tired of tripping over. I packed up his clothes out of the dresser but couldn't go any further. I spent some time with the girls and my parents. I accomplished little but thinking of what should have been. There should have been a little boy with us, too. And his Daddy. Instead, there were the three of us and lots of  "girl hugs."

* Clara turned 1! I can't believe that a year has passed since we welcomed our Baby Girl into this world. She is the sweetest little instigator loved beyond words. Sam would have been beaming watching her ride her new 4-wheeler. He would have been irritated with the amount of time I spent working on decorations that no one but me cares about. But he would have been proud of his Baby Girl. The day was so very bittersweet...the first of many birthdays to come without him.

* I continue to fight insurance through my attorney. The appeal period is drawing near and I'm ready to just be done with it. I'm still avoiding things like taking his name off our accounts, insurance and changing all of our vehicle titles.

* I'm trying to plan vacation and get us ready to go for the annual week-long camping trip. And by trying I mean I've thought little about it except when we're going, which is now only 3 weeks away. I still have menus/food to prep, a camper to clean and pack. But, see, that's the hold up. Because I'll be cleaning out his stuff and NOT repacking it. Camping was his hobby that he introduced me to. We had big plans of taking the girls on many camping/fishing trips, we bought a new camper big enough for all of us two years ago. And now he's not here and I'm left to make sure these things happen on my own, with the help of friends. But it's not the same and it will never be the same.

* Laura asked about Daddy for the first time in a while last night while we were showering. The conversation went something like this:

"Daddy never coming home, Mama?" No, Punkin, Daddy won't be coming home. "It's ok Mama. I saw him yesterday. I played with Daddy." What did you play? Rode bikes, build castles, RZR ride. I had fun. I'm glad you got to play with Daddy and that you had fun. Daddy loves you.

I am so very glad that she gets experiences like this and I hope they don't end anytime soon. I also hope she continues sharing them with me.

* Clara pointed to the family portrait on the wall last night and said "Dada."  Repeatedly...over and over. Even after getting distracted by something else, she was right back to identifying Daddy on the wall.

* I'm avoiding giving any thought to what should be our 7th wedding anniversary on Sunday. We never made a huge deal out of anniversaries but it still hits hard that there will never be another. I think I'll just hide out at home with the girls with the doors locked and shades drawn. It's supposed to rain all day (again) anyway.

I think, overall, I'm mentally in a better place than I was. I've accepted that I'm a single-parent regardless of doing everything "by the books" the last 32 years of my life. I'm grateful that the girls and I have such a strong network of close friends that pick us up when we are down, step into that father-role for my girls more times than I can count and just let us be...without judgment. My girls have so many pseudo-Dads/uncles that they'll never be able to get away with anything (or have lots of help pulling it off)!

But no matter how much time passes, there will always be a lump in my throat, a tear in my eye and a hole in my heart.

The carousel never stops turning

How do you do it Shonda Rhimes? How do you manage to mimic my life, my feelings, my inner thoughts, my fears?

Oct 2011 – We unexpectedly lose our son at 39 weeks. Stillborn.

May 2012 – Amelia loses her newborn son. (Private Practice)

January 2015 – I unexpectedly become a widow with two very young kids; a widow due to a freak accident in which the hands of the rescuers were tied.

April 2015 – Derek dies. Meredith is a widow with two young kids; a widow due to a freak accident. (Grey's Anatomy)

You might think that watching this version of my life play out on tv would haunt and torture me. Is it easy? God no. But there’s something about it that makes me feel a little less alone. It forces me to face emotions I try to bury…forces me to name the feelings I couldn’t before find words for. And it gives those on the outside looking into my life an idea of what I'm dealing with.

The carousel never stops turning. It’s funny the way memory works. The things you can’t quite remember, and the things you never forget.

He was the love of my life. I doubt I'll ever love another man the way I loved him. I'm certain I won't. How could I? But he's gone. That's the point, isn't it? He's gone and I'm here. And there's no getting him back.

I wish Daddy were here.

It's awful being a grown-up. But the carousel never stops turning.

You've never lost the love of your life. You've never cried over the body of the person you love most in this world. You don't know how that messes a person up. You've never had to claw your way back from that.

I can live without you, but I don't want to. I don't ever want to.

I still get up every morning. I face every day. I don't get to jump on a plane and fly halfway across the damn world.

What the hell is going on? What’s the point? I mean, is there a reason for this? Because if you can think of a reason, any reason at all why the universe is so screwed up and random and mean, now would be an amazingly good time to tell me because I really need some answers.

Nothing comes easily. I want to settle down and grow old with you. I want to die when I'm 110 years old in your arms. I don't want 48 uninterrupted hours. I want a lifetime.

He's gone and I know he's gone. And the bed feels lonely. Nothing comes easily. I don't know how to sleep alone. Where do I begin? Nothing can bring me peace I miss you. I've lost everything. I just want to feel your embrace.

I know people were worried. Since he died, everybody's been looking at me, waiting for me to fall apart or freak out or just become a mess. Like some bomb everyone thinks is supposed to go off.

And I'm all alone. Now I have to raise my daughter[s] alone. How am I expected to do that?

I needed more time with him, but it just keeps going forward faster and faster and there is no more time. You can't go back, you can't press pause.

If there's a crisis you don't freeze. You move forward. You get the rest of us to move forward. Because you've seen worse. You've survived worse.

It's a choice I'm making. To move forward. To move past this. I can do that.

The carousel never stops turning. No matter how hard I drag my feet, it keeps turning and the calendar pages keep turning, the girls keep growing and life moves forward. I have to be present for them...active in their lives. I have to figure out how to make this work for the three of us. Love them SO HARD so they know how much their Daddy loves[d] them.