Split-Second Single Father

On Random Updates

2011-09-15T00:00:00.005-04:00

I have decided to do something out-of-character tonight.

Usually when I sit in front of this screen, it is after a post has been on my mind for anywhere from a few days to a few months. It is neatly framed in my mind with all of the talking points in order. I don’t compose the actual words until I sit down to type, but the framework is there.

But tonight is different. I have felt increasingly compelled to write here, but am not starting out with a specific topic in mind. Sure, there are things I’d like to write about, but one of the unforeseen elements of being in a committed relationship now is that so many of these situations involve private conversations which are not for public consumption. There may come a time down the road when, with Winn-D’s blessing, I might share some of those things here, but that time has not yet arrived. So instead, I’ll begin with a quick recap of our vacation (yes, it’s been that long since I’ve written here!) and see where things go from there.

The trip to the Midwest went amazingly well. It turned out to be an even better idea to take Winn-D to the places of my youth this summer than I thought it would be. That’s not to say that there weren’t stressful moments, but she handled them beautifully. The first part of our trip was spent with my late wife’s family. They have embraced Winn-D, but she had only met half of the family before the trip. Add to that all of my late wife’s friends (some of whom we had not seen in a few years) and she was bombarded with tons of new faces and old stories.

That was something I had not expected. I am not naïve enough to expect that we would not talk about my late wife at times, and I actually wanted to so Winn-D would get a more complete picture of who she was, but I did not expect it to happen across multiple settings and at such an intense level. I think people meant well, but I don’t think they realized that, while this trip was about letting Winn-D see where I came from, it was also about being a couple around the people I care about most. I think when we return to the Midwest after Christmas I will be better prepared to change the subject (or address it head-on, if needed) when these situations arise.

The second leg of the trip was actually to the great state of Minnesota. I know I don’t mention specific places here often, but Minnesota has made the list of places I’d like to visit again. We stayed mostly in the Twin Cities, but even then I felt like we barely scratched the surface of all there is to do there. It was a great chance for us to get away for a few days and spend time together making new memories (especially after being immersed in old ones for a week). My daughter loved the Mall of America even more than the wedding we were there to attend (and this girl loves some weddings!), so everyone heard more about that than anything else when she talked about the trip. It was a beautiful drive from where I grew up and we were all able to add some new states to our lists.

The final stop on our Midwestern tour was my hometown, which is also near the city where I went to college. There were more stories shared here than I expected too, but to a lesser degree at least. (Now, please don’t get me wrong. I want people to feel free to share stories about my late wife, especially with my daughter. I just thought they would spend some of that time getting to know Winn-D too.) She was able to meet my brother and sister and several friends that week as well. We spent time in big cities and small towns, attempted to drive through my old college campus (which was closed for construction), ate doughnuts from my favorite bakery, and spent lots of time in my childhood home. I knew I was excited to “bring her home”, but I don’t think I knew how much I would enjoy sharing that part of my life with her. It was a perfect way to cap off our adventure.

July has two significant potential grief-triggers for me. The first is my late wife’s birthday, which occurred while we were visiting my parents. Some years that one is harder than others. She would have been 33, so the age was not necessarily of significance, but the fact that it was the fifth birthday without her could have been.

Unfortunately, I don’t remember part of that day.

The day before her birthday, I woke up not feeling well. I was pretty sure I knew what was happening, but elected not to tell anyone at first. As the day wore on, the back pain intensified, and the first puff of my inhaler didn’t help. I tried to rest hoping that I could ward off the inevitable. By evening, I was starting to have mild trouble breathing and the back pain had not abated. My family was acting silly and dancing around and I couldn’t join in, even when my daughter asked me to, which broke her heart. I didn’t want her to worry, so I just said my back hurt and left it at that. By the time we went to bed, I knew I was going to need to go to the doctor, but I was 800 miles away and thought that at the very least I could make it till morning (and who knows what a good night’s sleep might have done, right?)

I tried my inhaler again shortly after eleven and laid awake waiting for something to change. It did, just not for the better. By midnight I knew I needed to get help. The only problem with that was that the help available to me at that time of night would come in the form of a hospital – more specifically, an emergency room.

She died the first time in an emergency room.

This was the only benefit to being 800 miles away from home. Instead of going to the ER where she died, I went to the one where I had stitches in my finger once and had my broken arm set and cast, in the same hospital where I was born over 33 years ago. I thought that would soften the blow, and maybe it did a little. But by the time my mom and Winn-D and I arrived (my stepdad had stayed home with my daughter, who didn’t know I was gone until we told her the next day), my blood pressure had sky-rocketed and my breathing had become labored. I didn’t have the foresight to tell them why my blood pressure might be so high (if you missed it, read the single line above), so I quickly ended up in the triage section of the ER. Thankfully, I didn’t know that until we left the hospital, but it added to the worries of the two ladies who were with me.

I have never had to stay in the hospital for myself. Sure, there were a few hospital stays with my late wife, but I could still come and go (from the room at least) with relative ease. Sitting in that bed, I gained a whole new respect for anyone who has ever been hospitalized. After I received a breathing treatment and could talk at a normal volume again, all I wanted was to get out of there. Knowing my body as I do, I knew that the breathing treatment would be enough to make me well again. But when you are in the hospital, even if it’s a triage bed in the ER, you are completely at their mercy (and they don’t show you any as far as your time is concerned!) To be fair though, they took great care of me and I am grateful for that.

Now, I know that some of you might be asthma sufferers yourself or might be concerned that I allowed the “attack” to progress for as long as I did. For some reason I don’t get a sudden attack. My symptoms are gradual, which gives me plenty of time to make a decision. Unfortunately, I still can’t get help until the symptoms reach a certain level (if I had gone to a med center earlier in the day, they would have likely sent me home without a treatment given my symptoms at that time). I was more than a little concerned that I had my first attack in over a year shortly after I started medication, but things have remained fine for me health-wise since that night.

The events of that night and the subsequent morning of sleep overshadowed the date on the calendar, and I managed to make it through okay. But the very next week, after we returned to the Southeast, was what would have been our tenth anniversary. I expected that one to be a tremendous kick-in-the-pants, complete with an outpouring of tears and anger about what could have been.

But in a lot of ways, it was just like any other summer day.

It would be easy to assume that this is because I’m in a relationship now and am therefore “happy” again (how many more times do I have to hear that?!?), but I really think it’s more a testament to where I am in the grief cycle. I don’t mean to sound callous because I will always care about my late wife in ways I cannot describe, but I don’t pine for her like I did the first few years after she died (which I suppose is good news for Winn-D). I can’t remember the last time I spent time crying in that painful, grief-stricken manner, but then, I couldn’t remember that before I met Winn-D either. Again, I’m not naïve enough to think that this might not ever happen again. But I am certainly glad that this day that should have turned out to be a major grief-trigger ended up being completely bearable.

There are plenty of other things rattling around in my head tonight, but this has become lengthy, so I will close with some good news. I received an e-mail the other day that this blog has been placed on a list of the 50 Best Memoir Blogs. This came at a time when I was feeling bad about not being able to post on here more often and is my first official honor as a blog author. That’s certainly not why I do this, but it does feel good to have my work here recognized in some way.

Guess that goes to show you never know who might be reading…

On Dating Trials and Surprises

2011-07-05T22:57:00.004-04:00

I have always worked best under a deadline.

I’ve been framing portions of this post in my head for two months, but now that I’m leaving on vacation in a couple days, I’m making time to sit down and actually share these things here.

First, an introduction of sorts.

It has been requested that I “introduce” my girlfriend here. Unless this is the first time you’ve read my site, you’ll know that I do not use any real names and typically limit physical descriptions of people as well as names of specific locations, with rare exception. I have decided that I need to give my girlfriend a name for this site, as she is someone I hope to be writing about in future posts as well. The name I have chosen is a play on words that only I can see. So for the purposes of this site, I have chosen to call her Winn-D.

Now, I realize that some of your imaginations jumped immediately to a former chain of grocery stores (if you live in an area where they existed) or a beloved storybook puppy by the same name. That is precisely the reason I have chosen to shorten her moniker to Winn-D, as opposed to calling her Winn-Dixie, as was my original intention. She is neither a grocery store chain or a four-legged creature, so hopefully after this no one else will be inclined to think of her as either of those things.

As far as other information goes, she is also a school-based employee, though we do not work in the same school building (which would go against my strict policy about dating co-workers). The good news about that is that we have been able to spend an increasing amount of time together this summer. The bad news is that when school starts again we will have a harder time being able to do so as we live and work in different towns.

She is probably the tallest woman I have ever dated (not that there have been many, mind you) and has brown eyes. I never had a type before I met my late wife, but the few women I did date before (and including) her all had two things in common: they were on the short side and all had blue eyes. The first woman I dated after my wife passed away was not as short and had brown eyes. Winn-D is even taller than she was. She possesses a great many of the wonderful qualities that attracted me to my wife, but does not remind me of her in the least bit. (And so far there are no red flags like there were with the last woman I dated). Oh, and did I mention she has an accent that is thick as mo-lasses?

One of the many things that has surprised me about dating Winn-D has been the response my daughter has had to her. She was initially prepared not to like Winn-D, which is precisely the response I expected the first time I dated someone after her mother died (and did not get). As I gently talked to her about it, she mentioned that she didn’t feel like she really knew her. Now, to her credit we had made it a point to get to know each other via texts, e-mails, and late-night phone conversations before we decided to go out, but my daughter had not been privy to any of that information. So she didn’t really feel like she knew her at all, and she definitely didn’t see the possibility of a relationship on the horizon. I made the comment to her that I knew her and I knew Winn-D and I was sure they were going to like each other. And when they did, I was going to make sure to remind her of that fact from time-to-time (which I do!) We had been dating over a month before the three of us spent any time together. I believe it’s important for me to see where a relationship might be headed before I drag my daughter into it. Our initial plan was to have dinner and see how things went, but the evening ended with my daughter inviting her back to our house to watch “kid tv” and curling up in her lap to do so. Now if Winn-D and I are together when I go to pick up my daughter, she always runs straight for Winn-D and only gives me a hug after-the-fact.

One of the other things that has surprised me is how often Winn-D is presumed to be my daughter’s mother. Now, I know that to a casual observer we likely seem to be a little family when we’re out to eat or shopping or on an outing. I understand that. What I didn’t expect is that her role would be “understood” and mine would be questioned. We even had one man at a festival refer to us as “your mom and, I assume, dad”. If it had only happened once, I would chalk it up as one person’s response, but it’s happened several times over the past few months!

But then, when I really think about it, for all intents and purposes, my daughter does act toward her as a child would normally act toward her mom. And for her part, Winn-D is, quite naturally, doing the same thing. It’s a beautiful thing and it warms my heart. I try not to allow myself to be plagued by the “what-ifs” (the foremost of which being “what if it doesn’t work out and my daughter is heart-broken?), but they creep in from time-to-time. Right now, I don’t have any reason to think that it won’t, but I also didn’t have any reason to think I’d be widowed at age 29, so you can see where a bit of worry might be justified.

We have already, unfortunately, had to weather a few trials (/relationship builders?) in our five-plus months together. Some of them I cannot go into here, of course, but the most recent one has been my health. I don’t know that I can say it has taken a turn for the worse, but something is not right. I had not been noticing any additional breathing difficulty (though I was on antibiotics for my teeth during our high-pollen season this spring), but when I went for my appointment with the pulmonologist last month, he discovered that my lung capacity has decreased significantly since my appointment in January. He wouldn’t give me an explanation for this as he said the list of possibilities was too long to go into without further testing. But I’m smart enough to know that this is not normal for an otherwise healthy, thirty-three year old man who has never even put a tobacco product near his mouth. (On a side note, if you smoke or use other tobacco products, please consider quitting.) So he sent me for a CT scan, which took ten minutes and cost me hundreds of dollars out-of-pocket as apparently my insurance doesn’t pay for diagnostic tests. (Money is a bit of a sore subject with me lately as my body and about half of my appliances have quit or tried to this year!) He also put me on medication, which I had been hoping to avoid. I wish I could say that it wasn’t working and could go off of it, but I think its helping. If that’s true, then I will likely have to use it indefinitely.

I go in for the results of the CT scan tomorrow afternoon. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous. It’s been 13 months since I had the initial episode that started all of lung issues and I feel like I’ve bounced back and forth between extremes. I’m worried that I’ll go in and he’ll say I have some terrible disease (like the one I thought he had originally diagnosed) and that asthma was either not the right diagnosis or is not the only lung issue I have. But I think I’m even more nervous that I’ll go in and he’ll say we need to do more tests as the results of the CT scan were inconclusive. In some ways not knowing what’s wrong is harder than knowing (or at least thinking) it’s something really bad. Any prayers would be greatly appreciated.

As I mentioned before, we are headed on vacation in a couple of days. And by we, I mean there will be three of us making the trip this time (four if you count the dog). Winn-D has met my mom, and some good friends from “home”, and my late wife’s parents, and all of those encounters went exceptionally well. But she hasn’t seen where I come from. I’ve only been building a life in the South for nine years. I lived the first twenty-four in a small town in the Midwest. I considered waiting till Christmas to ask her to come with us, but we will have been dating almost a year at that point and knowing my roots seemed too important to wait. We will be staying with my late wife’s parents, just as we do when my daughter and I travel there alone. I have tried to be sensitive to their comfort level with meeting Winn-D (as well as hers), but everyone seems more than willing to move forward with this. There are also a few friends that I inherited through my late wife, and Winn-D will be meeting them as well on this trip. They have also completely welcomed the opportunity to meet and get to know her. We’ll head to the Upper Midwest for a wedding halfway through the trip, then stay the rest of the time with my family. If she isn’t completely overwhelmed and chooses to fly home halfway through the trip, then she will have met all of the key players in my life (with the exception of my one brother who lives in New England). I’m not sure I realized until recently what a monumental thing I am asking of her, but she is more than up for the challenge, and that’s how convinced I am that this relationship is going somewhere.

I certainly hope so anyway.

On the Shock-Value of Death

2011-05-05T22:28:00.002-04:00

I didn’t think I could still be shocked by death.

It was a rookie mistake and I realize it now. Over the past four-plus years, I have learned of the deaths of countless others and not one came as a shock. But today I was more shocked by a death than I have been in over four years.

The odd thing is that the person who died was not someone I was particularly close to. It’s just that she was one of those people you always expected to be around and quite often took for granted (and sometimes didn’t exactly take seriously). She had an abrupt nature, but she had a passion for teaching children about Jesus. She raised two children to adulthood and subbed in the local school system. Like I said, just one of those people you always expected to be around.

I learned of her death via e-mail from the group server at church. It came through on my phone while I was finishing up with some students, so I didn’t read it until I got ready to leave for my next location (I work in multiple buildings). I’m used to getting e-mails from the church server announcing anything from births to deaths to who has nursery duty on Sunday. So as I sat in my van and read the e-mail it took a second before I really grasped whose name I had just read. I was certain it was a typo. I mean, there had never been an indication that anything was physically wrong. I might have believed it had it said her husband’s name, who is less than the picture of health, but HER? Don’t get me wrong, she wasn’t the picture of health either, but she also didn’t appear to be unhealthy.

Appearances can be deceiving.

I do not have the full story on exactly what happened, but as best I can ascertain, she was fine one moment and asking her husband to take her to the hospital the next. They were en route when she took her last breath. Just like that.

As someone who has been touched so deeply by another’s death, you would think that none of this would shock me, but as I mentioned before, she was a fixture in our lives. She was rarely one to miss church on Sunday or Wednesday. She often had a special treat for the kids, both the ones in her class and the ones from various other classes. She sent Christmas cards to all of the kids, including my own daughter. If she was going to miss a Wednesday night, she often made sure her class was covered a month in advance (unlike me, who is lucky to remember to get coverage a week in advance!) It was important to her that kids know Scripture, so she spent a lot of time encouraging them to memorize it both in and outside of the church building. She also often made sure that children had Bibles and Bible story books to take home, sometimes even if they already had one. She was just one of those unassuming women that people took for granted.

Until she was gone.

After I read the e-mail, I responded to the pastor to let him know that my co-teacher and I would plan on combining our Wednesday night class with hers until they found another teacher (they had sent an e-mail out recently saying we needed more volunteers for the children’s program, so I knew we were already short). I then e-mailed my co-teacher to let her know and included the statement that I would be surprised if the associate pastor didn’t want to talk to the kids tonight himself, but that I was planning to be prepared to address it with them just in case. Later in the day I got an e-mail to that effect, and I breathed a little sigh of relief. I knew that I could talk to the kids about death (who better than me, right?) and I was glad that I was willing to do so, but I really didn’t want to. Each time I wrote or received an e-mail I continued to be in disbelief that I was actually writing this particular woman’s name.

I waited till we arrived home to tell my daughter. She was too young to have ever been in her class, but I knew that she would be affected by her death, nonetheless. She took the news about how I expected her to. She was shocked, then sad, then melancholy, and eventually she was okay again. She had lots of questions throughout the evening and I explained them to her in much the same way I always do. I also explained what I thought would transpire at church that night (and was mostly right, as it turns out).

What I didn’t expect was for her husband to be there tonight. After my wife died, I avoided anything social that wasn’t funeral related – church, work, invitations of any sort – for a few weeks. The last thing I wanted was to face people who had been thrust into this intimate situation, but would not have normally been privy to any information about my private life. But everyone is different. And I think that as much as I needed to be away from social events, he needs to be enveloped by them right now.

He was still downstairs when I went up to the kids’ room. Our associate pastor did an excellent job of explaining why people die and what people need to do to ensure that they will go to Heaven. He also made certain to mention that it was okay to cry, as he himself a tall, bearded, former Marine, wept over the death of this woman. The kids were given a time to ask questions and share memories, and some of the other teachers and parents shared memories as well. It was a lovely tribute as well as an important time to explain the complexities of death and Heaven to a roomful of children who primarily had not been touched personally by death.

The discussion ended before church let out downstairs, so it was up to my co-teacher and I to take the kids to another room to talk to them some more. I have found that kids will often share things with a teacher before they will a pastor or principal or other person of “importance”. So I began by reminding them that they could always ask us questions, then if they had any or down the road if needed, and that they could certainly talk to their parents about it as well.

During the day, my co-teacher had suggested that we have the children memorize a verse of Scripture, as that was something that this woman had been apt to do with many children in the church. During the day I had thought of some, and one in particular had stood out during the associate pastor’s talk. But when I suggested this to my co-teacher, she mentioned that she had asked the husband what one of his wife’s favorite verses was. It made sense. It made it personal. And I am glad she had the foresight to ask him this very important question. So she gave me the verse and I read the first line to the children.

And that’s when I finally got choked up. I think I had still been in such shock that she had died, that I hadn’t really gotten to the point that I could grasp it emotionally. Sure, I teared up a little at my daughter’s reaction and certainly felt a few slide down my cheek during the associate pastor’s talk, but those were all reactionary tears. This was the catch-in-my-voice, this-is-really-happening kind of choked up. My co-teacher was across the room getting supplies with her backed turned, so she didn’t immediately see what had happened. I’m certain the kids were all staring at me, but I couldn’t look at them as I tried to regain my composure. After a few attempts, I knew it was going to take a moment or two. Thankfully, my co-teacher had come over by that point and offered to take over as I handed her the Bible. She did an amazing job of reading and explaining what was still caught in my throat. It took a minute or two to get my voice back, but I did and was able to join in the discussion after that.

After class she and I talked a bit more about things. Even though I had gotten choked up and she had to take over for a few minutes, I believe I could have gotten through the talk if it had been left up to us. I also felt good at knowing I would have included most of the points in the associate pastor’s talk, especially since I have no formal training in the Scriptures, other than what I have learned through church and my own personal reading. I could have done it if I had to. But I’m really glad I didn’t have to.

I am not typically one to quote Scripture – here, on my Facebook account, or even in person. I believe in the authority of the Scriptures, I just don’t often quote them unless someone wants to hear them. But I feel it would be remiss if I didn’t share with you the Scripture that our children are learning in memory of this woman, whose death will be mourned in our church a bit longer than most. It comes from the Old Testament book of Jeremiah, chapter 33, verse 3 (King James Version as that was her favorite also). It says “Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.”

I wrote most of this last night, but then the computer froze up and I wasn’t able to post it. The passage of another day has allowed the shock to lessen a bit.

But even as I hit “publish post”, there is a big part of me that still can’t believe I’m writing this about her.

On Being a Disqualified Widower

2011-03-29T22:31:00.004-04:00

So I’ve finished my taxes for another year. (Stay tuned or scroll down if you’re looking for non-tax-related info.) You’d think that after four years of filing on my own, I’d get used to this. I mean, it’s really the same old pattern. I plug in the information, the computer spits out a number signifying the amount I can expect to receive in a check (okay, so it’s really a direct deposit) and that number is significantly lower each year as inflation rates, gas prices, and the general cost of living seems to be increasing. Not a pretty pattern, but a predictable one at least, right?

Wrong. This year the federal government had a dirty trick up its sleeve.

That’s right. I have now been widowed long enough that I can no longer file as a “Qualifying Widower”. Now, to be fair, I knew this day was coming. But I had forgotten and seeing this reality on the screen before me was unsettling to say the least. Not to mention that my old friend TurboTax tried to tell me I should file as “Single” when it was clearly a better choice to file as “Head of Household”. I’d like to know what gives the federal government the right to decide how long I can be considered a “qualifying widower”. Does being widowed longer than three tax years mean I am somehow a less-qualified widower? If so, that would make me an “unqualified widower”. But I would contend that if anything, I am a more qualified widower. At this point I have endured and learned to handle more than most people who are forty years my senior.

So instead, I’ve decided that the government regards me as a “Disqualified Widower”. I can be a widower as long as I want (or at least until I choose to remarry), but I’m going to have to do it on my own terms, and will warrant no special tax title from the IRS. I’m not unqualified, I’ve just been disqualified as far as the government is concerned. I know it’s all semantics really, but aside from the linguistic aspects, that loss of title cost me about a third of last year’s refund!

Now on to the non-tax-related things I alluded to above:

I spent a couple of days last week sick. I think I’ve mentioned this here before, but it is really scary for a child when his/her single parent gets sick. My daughter has gotten better with the headaches and sinus infections I tend to get (love Spring, hate pollen!), but I took a day and a half off of work last week, which is unheard of for me. I have often said that if I wake up and don’t care if I see my school that day I am really sick (did I mention I took a day and a half off last week?) This time it was food poisoning followed by a headache of almost-migraine proportions. Not fun, but I bounced back quickly. My daughter had a difficult time adjusting to the idea that I wasn’t going to work the first day, but was noticeably more accepting the second day. There was a special event at her school that night, so I came home and rested between and made it a point to be as “up” as I could during the event, which helped, I think. Hmm, I think that sounds like something a “qualified widower” might do, Mr. Government Official…

We managed to make it through another February. For those of you on my FB page (if not, see sidebar) and who are long-time readers, you know that February is the longest month on the calendar for me. It was not an easy month, as I don’t expect it will ever be, but here we are now, more than twenty days on the other side of it. My daughter has become quite the good little writer at the tender age of (now) seven and I am amazed at the times she will write about her feelings and I will find the pages only after she has gone to bed. Thankfully she is also still very willing to voice them, but I fear as she grows older she may turn toward her writing more (which I know is normal, but it eliminates a need for talking to Daddy about it and I will miss that. And yes, now I know how you feel Mom…)

I have often thought that one of the reasons God allowed my daughter to be born in the month of February (five weeks early, but healthy) was to give me something to look forward to during that month. This year was no exception. All of my daughter’s grandparents were able to make the journey for her birthday this year (they are still of the age that work obligations might keep them from coming, rather than health issues). She knew they were coming, unlike years’ past when it has been a surprise, but I don’t think this diminished her joy any. She had a wonderful party and a great weekend with her grandparents. And I think that’s all any parent can hope for, single, widowed, or otherwise.

In keeping with my promise in an earlier post, I wanted to mention that I have started dating someone. I have thus far held to the pattern I used in my last relationship regarding how quickly to progress, how soon to involve my daughter, and things of that nature. The one big difference between this time and last is that my daughter knew the first woman I dated and was able to see the connection we were developing and she was not a part of that this time around (due to where/how we met, not because I tried to do anything differently in that regard). In fact, when I told her we were going out, she finally admitted that the reason she was less-than-thrilled was that she didn’t feel like she knew her (she had only met her once at that point) and wasn’t sure she would like her. I reassured her, but also told her that I would remind her of this in a couple months when she did meet her and DID like her, which I have found myself doing over the past couple weeks. It’s already evident that they like each other. She is a school-based employee as well, though not at my school, and is, as my friends put it, “more age-appropriate” than the last woman I dated. I won’t get all mushy at this point, but I will say that this relationship has definite potential.

Now, for those of you who remember back a couple months to my last post, you might be wondering why I would even entertain the possibility of dating someone when I thought I was dying. It is a valid question. The only reason I opened the door to getting to know her better at all was that I wanted to live as if I wasn’t dying (at least not yet). It was a risky move for this non-risk-taking widower, but it proved to be a good one. I did not ask her out until after I got the news from my doctor that I had a completely manageable condition, but I did spend quite a bit of time getting to know her through e-mails and phone calls. I weighed my options and decided that if I was as sick as I thought I was, she would lose a friend with a mutual romantic interest. But if I wasn’t, then by not getting to know her, we might both be losing the possibility of something long-lasting. I can’t say that it will definitely go that direction. But so far, I’m confident I made the right call.

On Thursday, I am scheduled to have my periodontal work/surgery done (the 31st). It’s not something I’m looking even remotely forward to, but when I still have my own teeth in thirty years I’ll be grateful I did. I’m having all of the work done in one day (12 teeth total – yikes!) so it’ll be all soft foods and pain killers for me for a few days. I’d appreciate any and all prayers as that time draws near – both for me as I endure the procedure and whatever pain it entails and for my daughter as she has to see me endure that pain for a few days. (On the bright side, Grandma is here to play with her and keep me medicated).

Thanks for bearing with all of my “updates” and for your continued reading, no matter how few and far between my posts become.

On Staring Death in the Face

2011-01-23T03:47:00.003-05:00

The information in this post, which was originally titled “On People and Places that Evoke Grief”, covers events that have occurred over the past 6-8 months and follows up a separate post. I have chosen to post my initial writing on this topic below, with an update following. Some of this information may be familiar as I posted about my daughter’s teacher in a separate previous post. Please know that this is not information that I find easy to share (and may not be easy to read), but for the sake of staying true to my journey, I feel that I am able to do so now. Just bear with me and keep reading for that update.

I hate the fact that after nearly four years, grief can still blindside me, but it does.

My daughter started first grade in August. Naturally, I did not expect this to be a source of grief for me, but it was for more reasons than I could have imagined. I have mentioned here before that my wife was a teacher by trade. She spent most of her short teaching career in third grade, but was moved to first a couple years before she died. And for some reason, my daughter being in first grade has bothered me. She doesn’t attend the school where my wife taught. Her teacher doesn’t look anything like my wife did. But still there’s just something that evokes grief in me.

Maybe the fact that her teacher is young and pregnant with her first child doesn’t help. My wife was still teaching third grade when she had our daughter, but it was at a similar time during the school year. Plus there’s the whole “excited about the first child/happy to be expecting” sense that surrounds the teacher. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy for her, it just makes me grieve for that happy time in my own life when I think about it. If she was having a girl, it might just push me over the edge, but she’ll be the proud mother of a little boy this winter, so I think I’ll be okay.

That was enough on its own, but there have been some other, even more significant events, that have taken place over the past few months. When I wrote this post last summer, I felt like it was something that needed to be written, I just wasn’t sure why at the time. Now I know. I mentioned then that I did not believe the breathing issue I had in June was bronchitis as the med center doctor had diagnosed.

There are times when it’s better not to be right.

After I posted that it occurred to me that, because of the way the symptoms presented themselves, it was more likely adult-onset asthma. I researched every lung disease I could think of and the only symptoms that even remotely matched were in-fact, those of adult-onset asthma. So I headed to my follow-up appointment in August fully prepared to talk to my regular doctor about this possibility. I didn’t even have to mention it. He was concerned that I was still having minor symptoms and sent me to the hospital for spirometry, which is the first step in diagnosing asthma.

That’s right. I said hospital. As in, my first visit to the place where my wife took her last breath.

And as it turns out, the first open appointment just happened to be on the first day of school. So I dropped my daughter off at school and headed across town to the hospital. I was able to enter the main doors, which reminded me more of when we were there having our daughter than the day my wife died. My chest didn’t immediately seize up and my breathing rate didn’t increase. I felt pretty normal physically, but my mind was reeling. I managed to keep it under control and completed the test when it was time. It showed that my lung capacity was diminished, but improved significantly with albuterol, which was what I expected. I went off to work and braced myself for an asthma diagnosis from my regular doctor.

When they called with the results, the news was not as I expected. There was no diagnosis of asthma. No establishment of an asthma action plan. There was only a referral to a pulmonologist for further assessment.

I froze when the nurse gave me the name of the pulmonologist.

I live in a small city, but there is more than one pulmonologist. I know of at least two by name and am aware that there are a few others around. My doctor unknowingly scheduled me with the pulmonologist who tried to revive my wife the day she died. I thanked the nurse and promptly sat down. My immediate thought was to call back and explain my reason for not being able to see him. But the longer I thought about it, the more I developed this need to see him. I remembered him as being very kind when he spoke to me about some tests they ran on her earlier in the day. I also remember the look on his face when he and the internist came out of the ICU wing to tell me they did not believe they could revive her. I have no hard feelings toward the man. He did everything he could to keep her from dying.

Unfortunately, everything wasn’t enough that day.

I couldn’t get an appointment for about six weeks, so I had a lot of time to worry/fret/agonize about the appointment. By the time it arrived, I was almost as excited as I was nervous. I take my health pretty seriously and have most of my adult life. Being a sole parent makes me even more conscious of it, especially given my wife’s health-related battles. I know that asthma is not a great thing to have, but it is manageable and I was ready to have an official diagnosis so that a treatment plan could be developed and I’d be able to feel and function better than I had been.

I was equally nervous because I was going to see this doctor for the first time in almost four years. It was over an hour before he finally came into the room and in that time my mind raced with different scenarios. The one I liked the best was the one where he entered the room and recognized my name or face and validated my loss in some small way. I knew it was a long shot, but that’s the one I had settled on when he finally opened the door. His face was a blank slate. If there was any recognition at all, he did not show it.

I realized then as I do now, how absurd it is to think that a doctor who has encountered countless patients in the intervening years might actually remember the husband of one that didn’t make it. But I still needed to find out. He conducted the appointment as I’m certain he does with all of his new patients. So I allowed myself to return to excitement about the possibility of getting an actual answer at this appointment.

When the exam was over, the news was not what I expected. There was no diagnosis of asthma. No establishment of an asthma action plan. There was only a referral for a follow-up chest x-ray and more tests.

I scheduled all of the tests and returned to see him three weeks later. I still had some level of excitement about receiving some answers, but they were covered by the fact that I was more nervous than ever and pretty sure the diagnosis was going to be something other than asthma. I worked the computer keys and stretched the limits of my internet search engine, but I still couldn’t find anything with symptoms that even remotely matched mine, other than asthma.

When I returned for the follow-up appointment I was given an answer, but it only lead to more questions.

This is the point where I may upset some of you, but for now I have decided not to state what my diagnosis is. My main reason for this is that there is such a wide-range of information on it that I want to talk to my doctor about my specific prognosis before I give it a name on this site. I will say that I found it incredibly overwhelming to read one reputable site that talked about the slight possibility of spontaneous remission (their word, but he is positive it is not cancer) and another equally reputable site that talked in terms of life expectancy.

In single digit years.

I am trying really hard not to dwell on that type of my condition. I don’t believe that’s what I have, though it is likely to get progressively worse over time regardless of the type I have. But I can tell the possibility is nagging at me even when I don’t entertain the thoughts. I’m not depressed, but I am also having to be really careful not to be. The possibility of slipping into depressive habits is inviting, but I have to resist them for my own sake and the sake of my child.

Right now we are in a “wait and see” period. This in itself makes me hopeful that I do not have an advanced form of this disease. I am not currently on any medication for it, and when I do have symptoms, the onset is gradual and the pain is minimal until I rest. I am still able to function just as I was before, only I have to be careful about how much I exert myself at a given time so as not to become worn out. I have a follow-up appointment in two months where we will reassess the situation and the doctor will determine if medication and/or additional tests are necessary.

Like I said, wait and see.

I have debated about if/when I should post this information. It doesn’t seem fair to say there’s something wrong and not give all of the details, but it is also very hard for me to talk about it at all right now. In fact, as I am writing this, I have not told anyone, including my parents. But by the time you read this I will have told them. I was in the mood to write about it tonight and am hopeful that it might be the catalyst for helping me actually verbalize these things to them. We have some family friends who have/had lung issues, and none of them have been good, so my mom especially is a little gun-shy about them. I will tell them when I finish working up the nerve.

And I will tell you all more when I am able to share more as well.”

UPDATE: I had my follow-up appointment with the pulmonologist yesterday. I have felt better in general for the past few months, but had tried not to allow myself to get my hopes up. The disease I was diagnosed with was not one that I was likely to recover from, and even though when I wrote my initial post I was trying hard not to think about the possible repercussions of my disease, I lost that battle more often than not over the two months between that original writing and this update.

It’s a scary thing to stare death in the face. Most of us know this, but from the vantage point of our spouse’s death and not in terms of our own mortality. That was one of the many reasons I could not post this when I wrote it and why I only told my parents this information earlier today. I have felt like I needed to carry this alone for now. One of the friends I mentioned above is also on the losing end of her battle with lung disease and I just couldn’t tell my parents that they might be facing that with me before now.

It’s hard to think about the possibility of not raising my daughter to adulthood. The first emotion I encountered was anger at the sheer unfairness of it all. She has already lost her mother and now there’s a chance she might lose me too? So my goal became to fight this thing as hard as I could with the hopes that I could at least see her off to college. I thought about the possibility of what my life would become as my disease progressed. Would I be able to stay in the South, or would there come a point where I would have to move to someplace where I had a better support system? How long could I continue to work? What would I do about health insurance when I couldn’t work anymore? I wasn’t worried about what would happen to me after I died, just what would happen to us beforehand and my daughter afterward. And the emotions I’ve written about here barely scratch the surface of what I have felt the past three months.

So I tried not to be too hopeful as I headed to the pulmonologist’s office yesterday. After all, I had been optimistic the first time and that hadn’t exactly panned out. I went in for my pulmonary function test (PFT) which is similar to spirometry, but more thorough and less expensive. During the first portion the tech said that things hadn’t gotten worse and that was good news, but she remained silent about my performance on the rest of the test. So I went back to the waiting room for a long while (I always take a book with me, since I know I’ll have to wait) before being called back to a room. When the doctor came in, we reviewed my information and it again was not what I expected.

This time there was an official diagnosis of asthma. There was the establishment of an asthma action plan. And most importantly, there was a change from my initial diagnosis and a lifting of my impending death sentence.

It might seem cliché to say that I left his office breathing easier, but I did. In fact, I think I was in shock about the whole situation, which is why I didn’t call to tell my parents about it until today. I can’t quite describe the feeling of thinking you’re going to be given a time frame on life expectancy during an appointment and leaving knowing that you have a completely manageable condition and can expect to live a full, normal life (and consequently, that you were right all along in terms of what was really going on in your body.)

Now, before I get a bunch of negative comments or e-mails about the doctor unnecessarily putting me through this, I want to state that I have no ill feelings toward him and plan to continue seeing him as my pulmonologist (though I’ve been cleared till June!) I don’t believe anything is ever wasted and that there must be some reason I needed to experience all of this, even if I am unsure of that reason at the present time. My doctor made the initial diagnosis based on my symptoms and the results of my x-rays and PFT. And it all fit with that diagnosis. Apparently what I actually had were symptoms of asthma which had been exacerbated by an undiagnosed “walking” pneumonia. (To further complicate things, my asthma symptoms do not follow the normal pattern of development). Once the pneumonia cleared, he was able to see that it was asthma versus the initial diagnosis (hence the reason for the “wait and see” period I’ve endured the last three months).

When I wrote the initial post, I said that I wasn’t ready to give my original diagnosis a name on this site. Now that it has been changed (and I believe, rightly so), I have decided to name it. I would encourage you not to do any research on the condition though (this means you Mom and G!) as most of the major medical sites paint a dismal outlook regarding prognosis and recovery (with the exception of the slight possibility of “spontaneous remission” I mentioned above). My original diagnosis was something called interstitial lung disease. My current diagnosis is adult-onset asthma (of unknown origin).

This post has become longer than I anticipated and I really should have made it two. But I didn’t like the idea of finally telling you all of this and then making you wait for the update, now that I have one. I am happy to say that right now, my overall health is pretty good.

But my overall outlook is even better.

On Another Year, Another Christmas

2010-12-24T23:43:00.003-05:00

I have just spent a good deal of time reading over my three final posts from last year. I had thought that this might serve me well in assessing how “far I’ve come” over the past year. And in some ways, it has.

My mood at this time last year was dreadful. I simply couldn’t get out of my holiday funk. It was a time filled with change, some of which I disclosed in those posts and some of which I did not disclose until posts written after the holidays. Some of those things have changed and some have not.

At this time last year I had just begun my first dating experience following my wife’s death. Though it was somewhat short-lived (three and a half months from start to finish), it was a necessary learning experience. It was also the item I did not disclose at this time last year, but I pledge to let you all in a bit sooner if/when I should date again. I did not see direct evidence of that relationship having a negative impact on my holiday mood, but I am certain that it must have.

What emerged as the most obvious contributor to my “bah-humbug” mentality were the changes in my extended family over this time the previous year. At the time I thought that neither of my brothers would be coming home for Christmas, but one of them had a change of heart at the last minute and decided to come after all. The other did not. And sadly, that is one area that has not changed over the past year. At least not in a positive way. Unfortunately, my relationship with that brother (and his relationship with every other member of the family) has only become more strained. It has been touch-and-go with him for years, but it has really started to affect my daughter this year. I have tried to talk to him about it (even again recently), but unfortunately I get more excuses than I do genuine communication that might help solve some of these issues. It’s an unfortunate situation and one I had hoped would be on the mend by now. But at least my sister is consistent and seems to value family as much as my parents and I do.

At this time last year I had just finished most of the decorating, card sending, and shopping, which was uncharacteristic for me. This year I finished the decorating early in December (due to our trip to the Midwest over Thanksgiving), had the cards mailed out this past Monday, and had the shopping and most of the wrapping done with two days to spare. I started listening to Christmas music two weeks before Thanksgiving (which goes against one of my staunchest rules), due mostly to the release of this holiday collection. And I’ve just had a genuinely jovial outlook toward the holidays this year.

Now, that’s not to sugarcoat the frustrations I shared (and alluded to) in my last post. Those things are all still very real and very much on my mind. I spoke with the dentist about my periodontal surgery and he concurred with the periodontist. I can do this sometime in the near future, or I can continue to put my teeth at risk of having to be extracted down the line. Periodontal surgery is still tentatively scheduled for March 2011. I did receive a check that will help defray the costs some and also helped replenish my dwindling emergency fund, so I am not quite as worried about finances as I was when I wrote the last post. And my water heater is not only fixed, but it was an inexpensive repair and I don’t have to shell out hundreds of dollars to replace the entire unit right now!

The good news in all of those things is that even though I’ve had things on my mind that have weighed me down this holiday season (and still do, unfortunately) they have not managed to crush my overall outlook like similar circumstances did a year ago. And a brighter outlook has allowed me to find a little more joy in the holidays this year.
My daughter and I always spend the first week of our Christmas Break from school at home, before heading to the Midwest to see our extended family. And we always try to make the most of that special time together. This week we visited some of her old daycare teachers and had lunch with some friends/former co-workers of mine. We also visited an area lighthouse with a new/old friend (someone from my childhood that I have recently become reacquainted with. And for those of you who are wondering, there’s no dating potential-this particular friend is a man.) We carved out some time to see Tangled, which vastly exceeded my expectations. And we headed to the beach for our annual Christmas Eve excursion. And in the midst of all the excitement, my daughter managed to lose three teeth, two of which were the coveted “two front teeth” she had so desperately wanted to lose before the Big Day. Tomorrow, after all of our morning festivities, we’ll hit the road for the first part of our journey to see the rest of the family. It’s been a busy week, but I’ve found in some instances being busy can be a good thing.

So what can I conclude from all of this? Am I naïve enough to believe that grief cannot strike when my mood is “up”? Absolutely not. It already has this season and it will continue to. Do I think that I am somehow untouchable because I’m not in the same kind of rut I was in last year? Not at all. There are still plenty of negative circumstances surrounding these holidays and life in general. They have just not affected my overall outlook in the same way similar things did a year ago.

My daughter asked me last night how many Christmases this makes without her mother. She seemed surprised when I told her it would be the fourth. She sadly does not really remember Christmas with her mother, but thankfully we have video she can watch to supplement what her mind will not conjure up. She had some tough moments early in the season and has done more visible grieving than I recall her doing at this time last year. My moments of grief have been more subtle, but still very much a presence. During this, my fourth Christmas without her, the overall grief has abated some. I know this does not mean it will do the same next year, but I think a general pattern of abatement is likely.
Which makes me all the more mindful of the widow/ers who are still newer at this than I am. For some it will be the third or second or even the dreaded first Christmas without their husband or wife. If you are reading this and fall into that category, know that you are on my heart and in my prayers more at this moment than any other. And know that each Christmas is different. If this one is particularly hard, the next one may be better. And if it isn’t, then perhaps the one after that will be.

Wherever you are in life as you read this, I’d like to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy 2011.

On Random Updates

2010-12-11T23:29:00.003-05:00

I don’t really know how to begin this post.

And that has been a good portion of the reason for my absence from this site the past few months. There have been things I have wanted to write and times I have wanted to write them, but the two have not crossed paths. And even then, the posts have not been taking shape in my mind the way they usually do before I ever sit in front of this screen (and even now there have been much longer pauses in my keystrokes than normal). In order for a post to make the site (generally) it has to flow from my brain through my fingertips. And that just hasn’t been happening.

Now, I won’t lie and say that I don’t know the reason(s) for this, because I do. Sheer busy-ness has been one of the main culprits. I rarely play the single dad card, but in this case I must. For those of you who are new to this site, I live 800 miles from my closest relatives. So everything that needs to be taken care of in a day/week/month/year falls on my shoulders. There is no dropping my daughter off at grandma and grandpa’s so I can do this or that. Now, I realize that I made the choice to stay here after my wife died, but one of the unfortunate consequences has been not being able to update this site nearly as often as I would like.

I have also had a lot weighing on my mind, some of which I unfortunately cannot go into here right now. I can sum things up by saying there have been some health issues, some family issues, and some possible financial issues. Actually, that one I can go into here. I found out the day before Thanksgiving that I am going to require some extensive periodontal surgery in the spring. Well, really anytime is good, but I don’t think I’ll have the money until then. I’m not a perfect financial planner, but I do have a budget and live within my means from month to month, so money is not as constant a worry as it once was. But I don’t have dental insurance. And my emergency fund is not prepared to take that kind of a hit right now. And truth-be-told, I’m a bit of a control freak about certain things, and oral surgery was not part of my overall plan (even though I have known it might be a possibility for a while). And on top of that I found out I am likely going to have to buy a new water heater…

But I digress.

Most nights I have been falling asleep earlier than normal. I’m a night owl by nature and most nights recently I haven’t seen ten o’clock. Which is good for my overall health and well-being. But it’s short-lived. It inevitably comes in cycles and I end up with nights like the past couple where I cannot get to sleep until the normal time or even later. (It’s the middle of the night as I type this, though I will not likely post it until tomorrow). So I’m exhausted when I need to be alert and sometimes alert when I need to be exhausted. And as if that wasn’t enough, I had a dream about my wife last weekend. It was the first one I’ve had in a very long time and was similar to the first few dreams I had after she died. Only this time she was already in the hospital when I found out she was going to die and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Those dreams never get any easier to take.

But actually, as many of my long-time readers will note, the sleep issue is not really such a new pattern with me after all, so I guess I should get to the updates.

My daughter started first grade in August. I didn’t think that first grade would be a grief-trigger for me, but I was wrong. Parents expect to have difficulty letting go when their child starts kindergarten, but first grade should be old hat, right? It was in all of the normal, routine ways. But my wife was in her second year of teaching first grade when she died and that thought has bombarded my mind many times over the past several months. I think about the skills my daughter is learning that my wife taught to her students now four and five years removed, the books she read with them, the papers I helped her grade. And to complicate matters, my daughter’s teacher is a young expectant mother whose baby is due near my daughter’s birthday. She does not remind me of my wife in appearance or demeanor, but the new mom dimension has been hard to think about at times. Those were such happy times, and while I’m thrilled for her teacher and her husband, it still amplifies my own sense of loss. I think it would be that much harder if my wife had been teaching first grade when our daughter was born, but thankfully she was still teaching third at the time. And my daughter’s teacher is expecting a boy, which somehow helps a little as well…

We spent a lot of time trying to see family this fall. Living as far apart as we do, we welcome any chance we get to meet family, either where we live, where they live, or somewhere in-between. In October we met my parents in-between one weekend and my wife’s parents in-between the next weekend. It was a lot of time on the road for a little bit of quality time, but it was well worth it. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough, so the week before Thanksgiving I made the official decision (I had been contemplating it for a long time) to head back to the Midwest for Thanksgiving. That’s not something we do every year and it was a decision which was complicated by a few factors. Normally I have the day before Thanksgiving off, but due to some school cancellations early in the year we were required to use that day as a make-up day. On top of that, plane tickets were outrageously priced (a thousand dollars for two weekend plane tickets was also not in my budget), so we were locked into driving. Fifteen hours each way. To be with family for two and a half days. I know a lot of people would have taken the day off and pulled their child/ren out of school, but I made a rule before kindergarten that I would only keep my daughter out if she was too sick to attend. (Which, interestingly enough, happened the day after we drove fifteen hours home!) Even so, it was still worth making the trip to be with family for Thanksgiving and a few other special events…

The weekend after Thanksgiving held a milestone of sorts. It was the anniversary of my first foray into the dating arena. I didn’t actually think about it until the day before and am not sure I would have at all had it not been in such close proximity to Thanksgiving. But I did think about it some. A year later, it’s not a decision I regret making. But it’s also not one I’m anxious to make again anytime soon, no matter how many “nice Christian girls” my friends and co-workers want to set me up with…

And now Christmas is upon us. Last year at this time I was in a rut and had difficulty being excited about Christmas. Thankfully that is not the case for me this year. We got the house decorated last weekend, the Christmas shopping is about half-completed, and the cards are in a box on the kitchen table ready to be signed. Having a brighter outlook toward Christmas this year has been a huge blessing.

Mostly because my daughter is struggling so much with it now.

My daughter continues to experience her grief in waves, much like I do (though not always during the same periods). But sometimes it blindsides her as well. Last weekend was one example. If you’re not a widowed single parent of small children, then you’ll have to take my word for this next sentence: Comforting my grieving child is one of the most difficult things I have ever had to do. When she says things like “Mommy will never get to watch me open presents again” or “Mommy won’t ever get to read me a Christmas story again”… there are no words that can heal that kind of pain. But even worse than trying to comfort her without being patronizing, is having to watch her endure the kind of pain that grief can bring and not being able to do a thing about it…

So I guess that is my update of sorts. Now that I’ve typed it, it seems as scattered as it did in my head. But I wanted to get something on here for those of you who have been genuinely concerned about my absence. I truly do appreciate your messages and Facebook comments. I’m slightly better about returning e-mails than I am about posting here or on Facebook, so should I go missing again, please don’t hesitate to drop me a line.

It actually kind of brightens my day when you do.

And right now my days could use a little brightening.

On How I Spent My Summer Vacation

2010-08-24T02:23:00.006-04:00

As a school-based employee, I am afforded the luxury of having an extended break from work during the summer months. Yes, I do work a couple days a week most weeks, but in general I am able to take the time off and really enjoy the summer months. My wife was a teacher, so it was a double blessing for us to be able to spend this time together when we were first married and throughout our marriage. Many of our vacations were spent with family, either visiting them or entertaining them in our home, but occasionally we branched out a bit from our normal vacation routine.

Four years ago was one such time. My stepdad turned sixty that summer and my mom planned a surprise trip with out entire family, which was no easy task considering there were thirteen of us at the time and we lived in three separate states. However, being the expert planner she is, she/we were able to pull off the surprise. We actually rented a beach house about half an hour from where I live, which made the surprise part all that much easier (we incorporated the week into part of their annual summer trek to our house). My wife and I enjoyed being able to play a small part in the surprise, and it was our best vacation as an entire family.

It was also our last vacation as an entire family.

At the time, my wife was starting to show signs of her illness becoming worse, but she was under the best care we could find and the doctors had given her clearance to lead as normal a life as she cared to. The month after our beach trip we spent our five year wedding anniversary in New York, a city she had never visited, but had always wanted to. Seven months later, she was gone.

This summer my mom also had a milestone birthday (though with respect to the lady, I will not mention just which milestone it was). My sister and I had previously discussed doing a trip for Mom’s next milestone birthday when we were all at the beach four years ago, but none of us knew what would happen in the intervening months and years. Last fall we decided to start looking for a place to vacation anyway. My only request was that we did not do it here again, as I thought it might be too painful to duplicate that atmosphere with all of the same players. Minus one.

Our original plan was to head to the Gulf Coast. She had a friend in Alabama who could get us a good deal on a rental, so we set the plan into motion. Then my older brother announced that (for reasons I cannot go into here) they would not be joining us. That dropped our number to ten. Then the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill happened. (On a side note, I am amazed at the number of times I heard about the poor pelicans and possibility of oil stained beaches in comparison to the number of times I heard about the people who were killed and the families they left behind). So we decided to move our trip elsewhere, preferably as far away from the possible effects of trace oil and tar balls as possible.

So in mid-June, we set off toward Maine. I had never traveled to the New England states (well, not any further than Stamford, CT at that point), so we took a couple of extra days to get there. It turns out a lot of that time was spent stuck in traffic and driving around certain cities looking for the way back to the interstate. My parents traveled with us, so that was an added bonus and we had an enjoyable time. We finally arrived in Maine on Saturday afternoon and my sister met us with her family a few hours later. By this time, my younger brother had also backed out of the trip (for reasons that were at least a bit more valid than my other brother’s, but frustrating nonetheless), so there were only eight of us who spent the week together in our rented house. We were about a five minute walk from the beach, which was magnificent, but so very different from the beaches I have grown accustomed to here in the Southeast. I’m not much of a shutterbug, but I took several hundred pictures during our week-long stay. (Check out my Facebook page for a larger selection than what I’ve posted here).

I have to say that New England was everything I thought it would be. From the many quaint towns we visited, to the rock outcroppings along certain highways and the entire coastline, it was simply magnificent. There were so many places we were unable to travel to (Gloucester and Rockport, MA for one) that I am most assuredly going to have to travel that way again sometime. We did manage to spend a day in Boston hiking the Freedom Trail, which took us throughout the city and allowed us to see many famous sites that were important in the Revolutionary War (check out photos of that on my Facebook page as well) and an afternoon at the Portland Head Light in Cape Elizabeth, ME (yep, more pictures of that on Facebook too).

I cannot say enough what an amazing time it was. Family has always been very important to me and I cherish whatever time I am able to spend with my loved ones. I was worried that this trip would have an adverse effect on me, even though the location was so very different from our last family beach trip. I cannot say that the effect was adverse, but there were many times when my grief was much closer to the surface than I am used to it being these days. One afternoon in particular I remember being in my room at the rented house and just sorely missing her. It seems a bit silly, knowing that she’s in Heaven, but in those moments, I just really wanted her to share Maine with me.

The day after we returned from Maine, Bible school started, so I busied myself with lesson-planning and skit practice for my role as a ranch-hand who couldn’t sing on-key. My parents left and her parents arrived. We spent a few days with them, including some time at the beach and watching fireworks over the water on the Fourth of July, before heading to another place I had never visited (though this one was a much closer than Maine!)

Charleston, South Carolina is another place that did not disappoint. We only stayed a couple of days, but we packed a lot in. The first day was spent at a rice plantation, where we learned about the local wildlife (including alligators!), the way plantations were run, and the importance of the slaves who lived and worked there (not only for their labor, but also for their knowledge). In an interesting twist, we learned that following a major hurricane in South Carolina many years ago, logs from that particular plantation were sent to Boston and used to restore the USS Constitution, which my daughter and I had just seen less than two weeks earlier.

We spent that evening downtown viewing the slave market (which we were told was used by the slaves to do their trading and not used for the actual selling of slaves), eating, and taking an informational carriage tour around the historic areas of the city. The next morning we took the boat to Ft. Sumter and toured the area where the Civil War officially began. It was amazing to be able to see sites from both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars in a two week time period (yes, yes, those pictures are on Facebook as well).

The trip to Charleston was bittersweet for me. We moved to the Southeast less than a year after we got married, so I got it in my head that I would surprise my wife with a first anniversary getaway and Charleston was a feasible place to do so. Plus it was on her list of places she had always wanted to go. I wish I could say that we went and had a great time, but it was not so. As I was getting ready to set up the details for the trip I realized that I had made an error and left the cost of the moving van out of our checkbook. We were juggling two checking accounts at the time, waiting for things to clear so we could close the one back home, and it was a complete oversight on my part (which was incredibly hard because I am overly cautious about finances and it ended up ruining our chances to take the trip). She was disappointed, but understanding when I told her what had happened and that I had planned to surprise her with the trip. By the next summer our daughter was on the way and we just never seemed to find the time or the money to see Charleston together after that.

My in-laws left the day after we returned from Charleston and some friends arrived two days after that. We spent a lot of time visiting local places (within a two hour radius anyway), but I unfortunately do not have pictures to accompany those travels. It was, however, very nice to be able to enjoy and appreciate some of the areas that are very close-to-home. The two weeks following that brought my neighbor’s sister and her daughter from out of state (think blueberry patch from my previous post), so we spent a lot more time around home during those weeks.

The final few weeks of the summer were spent in various states in the Midwest visiting and traveling with family. We managed to work in five days with each family, plus travel time and a side-trip of our own. In that time with family we: saw an exhibition of big-wheeled bicycles, went to a small zoo, celebrated my in-laws’ fortieth wedding anniversary (my parents celebrated their twentieth earlier this summer as well, but we were not able to be with them then), took my daughter to see her first of the Great Lakes (which she enjoyed, but promptly reminded her grandmother that it was nothing like the ocean), attended a minor league baseball game, visited friends in their home, celebrated my Mom’s actual milestone birthday (trip was planned earlier in the summer due to the likelihood of higher temperatures in our initial location in August), helped my parents with an outdoor project, visited with friends in my parents’ home, met some new people and pets, and had an all-around enjoyable time (I know, I know - quit selling the Facebook page already!).

On the way home last week, my daughter and I took a detour and went to a new zoo. It has become a tradition of sorts for us to visit a new zoo each summer. We usually take this trip by ourselves, but last summer we had the pleasure of incorporating it into a trip we were on with my parents. The zoo we went to was nice, though the exhibits were a bit overgrown, so it was hard to see some of the animals. We enjoyed our daddy-daughter time together immensely though, especially since it was our last big hurrah before school starts tomorrow.

All in all, we set foot in twenty different states this summer. Six of these were new for me, which brought my overall states visited count up to thirty. Eleven were new for my daughter, which brought her overall count to twenty-five (and she’s only six!) We spent more time away from home than we did at home, which is unusual for us. And we had an excellent summer, but for one thing:

Every memory made and experience shared is another one without her.

On Unrealized Dreams

2010-08-01T23:36:00.003-04:00

July is always a hard month for me. Not as hard as February, but it is what I have decided to refer to as “my other hard month”. The only redeeming quality it has is that it falls during the summer and I, therefore, have more options to avoid grieving than I do in February.

July 21st would have been my wife’s 32nd birthday. It is the fourth one I have recognized alone. I hesitate to say that it is getting “easier”, but the truth is that the grief is not as raw now as it was during the first couple. Plus, my daughter is older now, so I have been able to share what the date means over the last two years, whereas I was totally alone in it the first two. (We were actually with family last year, which also helped).

For us it was a quiet day. I work two days a week in the summer, and this year her birthday happened to fall on one of those days. I did have lots of time to think about her on the drive to and from work and during the afternoon hours while my daughter was still at her summer program, but the feelings were primarily of fondness and the pangs of grief were held at bay. I teach some of our elementary-aged kids at church on Wednesday nights, so that was another welcome distraction. And as I recall, I fell asleep on the couch watching tv with my daughter that night.

Mile one, down.

One week later came what should have been our ninth wedding anniversary. As far as the day itself goes, it was very similar to her birthday in that I worked during the day and had church that night. I was able to pick my daughter up earlier that day (no field trip with the day program), but she watched tv while I took a nap, then went to play with a friend nearby while I made dinner. That evening (after church) we sat and talked to some neighbors, which was another nice distraction. I was still trying not to dwell on the day when I posted about it on my Facebook page with less than half an hour to go. But eventually I found sleep and the next morning arrived.

Mile two, down.

I think I sometimes downplay my emotions on this site. I don’t have very many attacks of raw grief like I did at first (before I could even write about it) or like some of my favorite bloggers are still encountering and enduring, but that doesn’t make it any less hard when these days arrive. It just makes it a different kind of hard.

That’s what I’ve begun to realize over the past few days. Her birthday will always be difficult in that it symbolizes one more year that she could have lived on earth and one more year she is not here with us now. No one’s birthday should be symbolic before age thirty-two. But for me, every day symbolizes that. Her birthday is just an enhanced reminder of what I live daily.

Our anniversary is another story. While I “made it through” the day okay, it’s the one that gets me. It’s the day that reminds me that I’ll never realize the dream of 6-7-8-9+ years of marriage with her. Yes, there could be another Mrs. 3SF someday, but it’s not something I am concentrating on at the moment. And the fact of the matter is, even if I do “find love again” it can’t be with her.

Now, this may seem conflicting for some of my long-time readers, considering the fact that I dated a very nice young woman this winter. (Supa wrote a great post about being a remarried widow recently). Dating or marrying someone else doesn’t suddenly erase the sense of loss you feel at having never realized certain dreams with the spouse who made you a widow/er. And I believe I may have only scratched the surface regarding that when I dated last winter.

Most of the time I am truly at peace with the idea that I could remain single for a very long time. I was okay with it before I dated and was again pretty soon after we broke-up. Being comfortable with myself with or without someone else has always been important and after two-plus years of being widowed, I finally regained that sense of self, which is what allowed me to be ready to date when I did.

But something happened Friday evening that caught me off-guard.

My daughter and I were eating at one of our favorite Italian restaurants after her appointment with her ENT in another city. We were seated at a table-for-two, which is obviously not uncommon for us. I sat facing a window and the table just below it. It was another table-for-two, and I could not help but stare at the people seated there throughout our meal.

Seated over my daughter’s shoulder were two people who could be us in 15 years.

The man was in his work uniform, which made me believe he was a mechanic of some variety. He had a full beard and his eye color was different from mine. But other than those differences, he could have easily been me. The resemblance with the girl was even more striking. Other than the eye color difference, she could have been a computer-aged image of my daughter in fifteen years.

Normally I would find a scenario like that endearing, but the other night it just made me sad. I kept thinking “This could be my life for the next fifteen years”. I have obviously known that since February 26, 2007, but these people placed in this setting at this moment in time reminded me that no matter how comfortable I am with myself and my current single/widowed status, there will always be moments of sadness. There will always be pangs of regret.

There will always be unrealized dreams.

Yesterday an opportunity arose to spend some time with a single woman and her daughter and I took it. I normally shy away from these types of situations for fear that I might lead someone on, but yesterday I was a bit more selfish (though I tried very hard not to send any mixed signals). We took the kids to a pizza place and then to pick blueberries - a very typical family-type event. And even though I wasn’t really part of a nuclear family, it felt good to spend a few hours in that type of situation. (Plus I made a delicious blueberry pie from the fruits of our labor!)

Writing that just now, I’m not sure if I actually feel good about doing it or not. But my promise to my readers has always been to stay true to my journey, and that includes the parts I’m a bit embarrassed to admit now. (Please don’t judge me too harshly).

Today has been better. I don’t feel the same sense of imminent sadness I felt Friday evening, nor do I feel the need to take any single ladies out to the blueberry patch to fill my need to feel like part of a pseudo-family for a few hours. I’m back to being comfortable with the day-to-day aspects of my single/widowed life.

And I’m really glad it’s August.

On Breathing

2010-07-17T23:11:00.004-04:00

The last month of the school is always very hectic for me. I have mentioned before that I am not a teacher in the traditional sense of the word, so it always means extra paperwork and headaches for me. I’ve often compared it to a race, with the finish line being the final day of school and always approaching much too quickly. This year was no exception.

So why, you may ask, am I finally addressing this topic when the school year officially ended five weeks ago? And what could this possibly have to do with my title regarding “breathing” anyway?

Patience, my friend. I’ll get to that.

This year I began working at a new school, which was much closer to home and was just the environmental change I needed. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my old school, but my total drive (partly due to my daughter starting school this year) went from an hour one way to twenty minutes. Unfortunately, during the last month of school I spent the difference sitting at my desk, or in meetings, or running about the school building collecting information, or… well, you get the idea.

And on top of that, I broke my cardinal rule and brought work home with me. Almost every night that month and every night during the last week or two. I even spent the better part of the last weekend before summer at this very computer typing one piece of information after another into the necessary forms. In fact, I spent so much time here that weekend that my back really began to ache. A lot.

By Sunday afternoon my back was so tight that it was actually painful. And this is from someone who prides himself on having a very high pain tolerance.

By Monday morning I was wincing whenever I moved the wrong way at work and was worried that co-workers would start to notice.

By Monday afternoon, it was evident that I needed to go to the doctor/med center. In addition to the severe pain across my upper back, I was also having trouble breathing. And that lump in my throat that I forgot to mention earlier, but had until this point thought was indigestion, had refused to go away.

So I called a friend to watch my daughter and headed to the med center, as my doctor’s office had closed by this time. As I sat there my head also began to hurt, but only as long as I kept my eyes open. It did not turn out to be a migraine as I had originally feared, but it did cause me to spend the majority of my time waiting (several hours’ worth) with my eyes closed unless it was absolutely necessary to open them.

And during this time it also became increasingly difficult to breathe. At one point I worried that it might be some sort of panic attack brought on by the overwhelming amount of work I had yet to complete. But I’ve been with several people who have had panic attacks in the past, and none of the symptoms really seemed to match up. So I sat. And waited. And worried. And tried to catch my breath.

They finally called me back to a room, but I waited there so long that I thought they had forgotten about me. Just about the time I was ready to climb off of the table and open the door, the doctor came in, all apologies about having to suture someone’s finger.

I guess open wounds trump the inability to breathe at this establishment.

The doctor said I had bronchitis and that I was to go with the nurse for a breathing treatment. They checked my lung capacity before and after the treatment and said that I needed to come back in the morning to get an x-ray. It was too late to fill my prescriptions, so I picked up my daughter and went home to bed.

Throughout this time I was a bit troubled by the diagnosis of bronchitis. I had bronchitis once in college and I remember it being accompanied by other symptoms much like those that come with a severe chest cold. A family member had also had bronchitis recently and had the same chest-cold-like symptoms. I felt fine other than the lump in my throat, the pain in my back, and the extreme difficulty in breathing just one single, normal breath.

So the next morning I put my daughter on the bus and headed back to the med center for my x-ray and follow-up. They said that I had “something suspicious” in my right lung (though it was the left lung that hurt when I took a deep breath) and that I should take my medicine and have another x-ray done in August (keep in mind this was early June). So I stayed off work the rest of that day and part of the next day (but that was prearranged as my daughter’s kindergarten program was that morning). But the work wasn’t going to wait any longer and I could breathe well enough to function at that point, so I went in. As it turns out, I made those days up as it took me an extra day and a half to finish all of the work necessary to end the school year (I just ended up doing it on my own time).

I’m still not entirely convinced that I had bronchitis. I think it was more likely pneumonia, or walking pneumonia at the very least, but I’m not a doctor, so what do I know?

What I did find odd is that I take the ability to breathe so completely for granted. As a widower, you would think that I would cherish every life-giving breath. After all, it was the cessation of breathing that made me a widower in the first place. And many of you reading this are here because your spouse or another loved one also lost the ability to breathe. And yet, I take that ability for granted.

I did not, at any point during this ordeal, think that I was going to die. I felt reasonably certain that the doctors would know what to do and that I would feel better in a few days’ time. But I felt reasonably certain of that on the night of February 25 and during the day on February 26, 2007 too, so I guess one can never be too certain. I can say that I haven’t taken the ability to breathe quite so much for granted over the last month though…

So that explains my absence from the Mother’s Day post to about mid-June. There’s another explanation for my absence this last month, but it will have to wait for a future post. In the meantime, please check out my Facebook page and be sure to click that you “like” it. The more people who like it, the faster my blog posts will appear on the page. (A special thanks to the three of you who have checked “like” already!) And the more interest shown in the page, the more interactive it will likely become.

Stay tuned for future updates.

And cherish your ability to breathe.

On Being a Mom by Default

2010-05-10T00:49:00.003-04:00

As happens every year, Mother’s Day has come. And by the time this is actually posted, it will likely have gone as well. This year I am not overly concerned about it (it happened last year too) as I was on the phone late with my own mom, which seems to have something to do with what Mother’s Day is all about.

Except when the mother of your child has died.

As many widowed single fathers have come to realize, Mother’s Day takes on a whole new meaning when your wife and the mother of your child/ren is no longer here to be celebrated. Its primary purpose seems to be to bring that in-your-face reminder that she’s not here and seemingly everyone else’s mother is.

Mother’s Day began for us about a month ago with the inevitable discussion with my daughter’s teacher about how I wanted her to handle Mother’s Day crafts and activities. I gave her the same answer I have given her daycare teachers in previous years - allow her to participate in the same capacity as the other students and let her choose the recipient of whatever she makes – and that is exactly what she did.

Mother’s Day must be a huge event at my daughter’s school. It seems like every day for the last week she was involved in the making of some craft or writing assignment or the like, which was compounded by the activities in her separately-run after-school program. She was vague about some of the details, which of course lead me to believe that I might be on the recipients' list again this year.

The last few years she has taken all of the Mother’s Day hubbub in stride. But this year her grief has been more visible. I’m not certain how much of this is a reaction to the intensified grieving period I can’t seem to shake (which I wrote about in my last post and is on-going) and how much is a reaction to her own feelings of sorrow. I know that both are factors. And I know that I can’t change either one for her.

So over the past few weeks she has made more comments about missing Mommy and Mother’s Day approaching. Sometimes she has wanted to talk, though all conversations regarding this topic lately have been brief, and sometimes she has simply wanted to make her comment and move on to another topic. I try to follow her lead when she initiates these conversations/ comments, but sometimes it’s hard not to draw her out more when she clams up. It’s something I have to respect in her though, as I am prone to doing precisely the same thing, so I know she will talk about it when she’s ready.

Which leads me to the saga of the Mother’s Day Tea. The culmination of the weeks’ Mother’s Day events was the aforementioned tea. My daughter had asked if I could come, but I explained that I couldn’t due to the scheduling, and reminded her that I will be taking an entire day off to accompany her on a field trip in a couple weeks. She appeared to be okay with that decision and I wasn’t worried about it as there has been very little parent participation in her classroom this year, so I knew that few students would have someone attend and she wouldn’t be left out.

Guess I missed the “Mother’s Day is the Most Celebrated Holiday at our School” memo.

When I picked my daughter up that afternoon she brought up the tea and the fact that she almost cried during it. I assumed the reason had something to do with seeing some of the other kids with their moms and grandmas (we live 800 miles from both of her grandmas, so they couldn’t attend either). I assumed wrong. She was upset because she thought I would come and surprise her even after our discussion about my not attending. She recovered quickly and told me about the rest of the day, but not before reporting that almost every other student had an adult relative attend. If my daughter exaggerated often, I would not have felt bad. But her observations are usually on the mark, so this was part two of her unintentional one-two punch. For those of you reading who have never seen your child disappointed by you, for whatever reason, brace yourselves. It was one of my hardest moments as a parent, to date.

But Mother’s Day itself was mostly about me. She woke me up with two cards. One was made by a friend at church, but my daughter had signed it. The other was a drawing she made before I got up this morning that said “Happy mathrs day! I love you” with pictures of both of us as people and again as cats. When I went out to the living room I noticed immediately that she had picked up all of the toys she had left out the night before (and simultaneously wondered just exactly how long she had been up!) I half-expected to see the table set for breakfast, but she stopped short of that (which is good as it would have involved climbing on a chair to reach the plates, so I’m glad she exercised good judgment there.)

During breakfast she asked if she could give me my present. Now, here’s an interesting story. When I picked her up on Friday she mentioned that she had a surprise in one hand and that I was not to look behind her back. She made a big show of hiding it even when she got into the van. At some point before or after the conversation regarding the Tea, she mentioned that the gift in the bag would need some water. Then she inquired as to whether I might know what it was. So I said that if it needed water it must be a plant or an animal. There was a short period of silence, followed by soft mewing sounds from the backseat! When we got home I gave her an appropriate amount of water and she disappeared into her bedroom with it. I did not hear any more mewing all weekend. Until this morning. I could hear her footsteps as she crossed the living room, but before she came into view. What I could also hear once again, was that soft mewing sound. She came into the dining room with my gift behind her back. And I can now say I am the proud owner of the only pink petunia planted in a plastic cup that can say “meow”!

After breakfast we headed to church, which was an exercise in torture. (Bear with me here). I’m starting to realize that attending church on Mother’s Day might not be in either one of our best interests, especially if we are in the midst of a particularly difficult period of grief as we have been this year. And this comes on the heels of a service which had very little mention of Mother’s Day as the pastor is preaching through one of the books of the Bible. I can only imagine what it might have been like if he had delivered a traditional Mother’s Day sermon. The first year we spent the weekend alone at a friend’s beach cottage. I’m tempted to see if I can call in a similar favor for this Sunday in May next year.

After church we went out to eat, then to a birthday party for one of my daughter’s classmates. It wasn’t exactly how I wanted to spend the afternoon, but it was important to her that we went. The timing of the birthday party interfered with my plans to head to the beach, even though it was twenty degrees colder today than it was yesterday, so I knew it would likely be cold and windy standing on the edge of the country with the ocean at my feet. But after the party my daughter asked if we could still head to the beach because it was Mother’s Day and she wanted “to do something special to remember Mommy”.

They say “great minds think alike”. I say sometimes grieving minds do too.

So we drove down to the beach in attire that was not appropriate for beach combing, but was good for a short walk on a windy beach day. Except we would have been better off in shorts and swimsuits. As a general rule of thumb, the beach will range anywhere from five to ten degrees cooler than it is in town during all seasons except summer. Today, of all days, was the exception to the rule. Not only was it just the right temperature, the breeze was slight, and the waves were gentle. It was one of those perfect days at the beach. Except we weren’t dressed for it, and it was Mother’s Day, and I was getting a sinus headache.

Okay, the headache hit pretty fast so I’m not sure how much of it was truly sinus-related and how much was me being angry that of all days this would be the perfect beach day and we weren’t in the right attire or frame of mind to enjoy it. Despite all of this, we did stay for a short while – long enough for my daughter to carefully make a small fortress out of wet sand. I was further irritated thinking that she was going to somehow get her clothes wet and I had no way to dry her off (though I thankfully did not let her know I was irritated). When we left, she told me that she had built that for Mommy and she as glad we had come to the beach.

Leave it to my six-year-old to put a positive spin on my negative outlook.

When we got home it was time for the dinner/bath/bedtime routine. Then I called my mom (my daughter had spoken to her earlier in the day), which is where I had just left off when I started this post. And as I mentioned, it is already after midnight, so Mother’s Day has officially passed on the 2010 calendar.

But I can’t help but wonder what it will continue to bring on our grief calendar.

On Avoiding Grief

2010-04-29T23:44:00.003-04:00

I have been avoiding this post for two weeks.

Or trying to anyway. The content has been here, it’s the writing I’ve been trying to avoid. This, of course, has been part of an attempt to avoid something of a much greater magnitude. Namely, my grief.

It’s been over three years. I’ve managed to resume a sense of normalcy for my daughter and myself. I’ve even tried my hand at dating again. I have what I would consider to be a relatively content life, especially given the circumstances. So why in the world have I been actively grieving the past two weeks?

I should take a moment to clarify that statement. I have never ceased grieving over my wife’s death. I have just felt over the last 12-15 months that it has moved from an active state of grief to a more passive one. I miss her just as much now, but not in the raw, broken way I did during those first several months and into the second year.

So in a moment of naiveté I guess I allowed myself to put my guard down a bit. I got comfortable. I became passive in my grief. Then I was slammed back into the rocky crags by yet another pounding wave of active, self-exposing grief. And as has been the case over the past three-plus years, I was completely blindsided by it.

I should have noticed the signs. We had a particularly nice visit with family over Spring Break, but I was more aware of my wife’s absence during this trip than I have been at any other time in the last year or so. It seemed that everything reminded me of her. The visit to her stone was especially poignant in that my daughter asked for a moment alone, then went to the car so that I could have some time by myself. She returned from the car just at the moment that my tears began to flow, though she had no way of knowing that since my back was turned to her the whole time.

We returned to a flurry of activity and I thought I could bury myself in all the trappings the end of the school year brings. The first week home was especially busy and stressful, but by then my sleep cycle was out-of-whack – another sign of things to come. Many widow/ers have mentioned the issues with sleep cycles, but again, I was naïve enough to think that once this evened out initially, the erratic patterns would not return. But for the better part of two weeks my sleep cycles were wildly out-of-control. One night I’d be up till the wee hours before sunrise, and the next I’d be asleep on the couch soon after sunset.

Then there was the dream. I have mentioned in previous posts that I have seldom dreamed about my wife since her death. And all of my dreams thus far have been overshadowed throughout by an impending sense of doom. This dream was different. But I think I’d like to go back to the impending doom dreams again.

I don’t remember much of the actual dream itself. What I do remember are the last few fleeting frames – glimpses of beauty I have not seen in a very long time. When I awoke I truly thought it had been real. And in that foggy, pre-dawn moment, my reality came crashing down around me all over again.

I felt a bit like the Time Traveler’s Wife, a woman who spent her life constantly holding on to her love, knowing he would disappear, and often waking up with the realization that he had. I left the dream holding on to my love, and woke up knowing that she, too, had.

It is never easy to be blindsided by grief. I have mentioned here before that every time I figure out how it is going to manifest itself, it develops a different pattern for doing so. I’m serious when I say that I’d like to return to the impending doom style of grief-related dreaming. At least in those dreams I am already aware of what has happened and the fact that I am powerless to change it. I prefer that to being handed a glimpse of hope and waking to find that it cannot be attained this side of Heaven.

That happened on a Saturday, the week before last. The weather was beautiful, so I threw myself into several hours of yard work (or as I like to call it “yard therapy”). I transplanted flowers into a new bed (the one with the birdbath I’ve shown in previous posts), weeded for several hours in other beds, and even dug out the space where I plan to eventually hang my hammock. But apparently my yard therapist needs a raise. None of that work provided the payoff that a job well done typically yields. But I guess it was worth a shot. And at least the yard was starting to look ready for the season, which was an improvement over the house.

I generally keep a clean house. Now, that doesn’t mean that the dishes are always washed immediately following a meal, or that I don’t miss a week cleaning the bathrooms, but as far as cleanliness goes, I’d say we do okay. It’s definitely nothing that would land us on an episode of Hoarders (I watch that too, Dan), even when my daughter has toys and artwork strung across the entire living room.

But that week I let the housework go. Completely. I washed clothes and dishes on an as-needed basis, but nothing else got done. No sweeping. No vacuuming. Certainly no dusting or mopping or cleaning of bathrooms. But by Sunday I realized that it needed to be cleaned regardless of my emotional state, so after church I put on some cleaning music and my daughter and I spent the afternoon cleaning up our respective messes. And several days later it remains in a state of relative cleanliness.

I need order. I seek calm. Chaos has no place in my life. And three-plus years after the most chaos-inducing event I’ve ever endured, we have managed to come to a place of order and calm.

But that does not, by any means, make us untouchable. Rather it makes us vulnerable in increasingly penetrable ways. It takes us from a long series of relatively normal days to erratic sleep cycles and haunted dreams, interrupted routines and binge sessions with a large bag of M&Ms.

It is grief. It is raw.

And it is my reality.

On What I Said to the Crowd

2010-03-29T21:50:00.003-04:00

Early in February I was asked to speak at our evening church service. It is a tradition in our church to have a service conducted and implemented completely by the men each year. I have never participated in this and am still not really sure why I was asked to speak (of all things). The only guideline I was given was to take a passage of Scripture and speak on it for about ten minutes (I took almost fifteen).

It was immediately apparent in my mind that I would speak about how to help widow/ers and I remembered the verse about helping orphans and widows (though I admit I had to look it up as I had no idea where it was in the Bible). And since I also have a heart for orphan care, I managed to throw in some information about helping orphans as well.

I know many of your spiritual beliefs may differ from mine and I completely respect that. I ask only for that attitude to be reciprocated as you read what I shared and know that I used the opportunity I was given to get the word out about helping widow/ers.

I actually presented this information on Sunday, February 28, 2010, just two days after the third anniversary of my wife’s death.

Please turn in your Bibles with me to James 1:27. While you’re turning there, I’ll offer a bit of background on the book of James. It is believed to have been written by Jesus’ brother, the first fully biological son of Mary and Joseph, who was instrumental in the development of the early Christian church. It was written less as a way to explain Christianity to the early church, and more as a guide for teaching Christians practical applications for living out our faith.

It sounds like most of you have found the verse, so let’s read James 1:27. “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (NIV).This is a verse we often hear, especially in the context of orphan care. It is the “theme verse” for Show Hope, the adoption organization Steven Curtis Chapman and his wife Mary Beth began several years ago. It is a verse that is often used in this context and is one of the few places in the Bible where orphans and widows are specifically mentioned.

So as not to take the verse completely out of context, I’d like to offer a little background. James 1:27 falls at the end of a section in which James is instructing the early church regarding sin and adherence to the Word of God. It seems that the early church, just as many of us today, was pretty good at listening to what was preached, but not so good at actually following through with it on a daily basis. They were good at getting dragged into a variety of sinful behaviors because of their, and our, focus on the things of this world. Earlier in Chapter 1, James even likens this to looking at oneself in the mirror then forgetting what one looks like when the mirror is removed. God wants us not only to hear his Word, but to put it into practice as well.

This is where verse 27 comes in. Here James gives us a very practical way that we can put our faith into action: by caring for orphans and widows. Or, in the most literal translation of this verse, by sharing the Word of God with them. James goes on to remind us again that we are to keep ourselves from being polluted by the world, which is something that would require much more time than the few minutes I have allotted this evening.

So now that we’ve looked at the context surrounding this verse, I’d like to look again at the beginning of James 1:27. Let’s read it again. “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world”.

I am not going to spend a great deal of time tonight discussing how we can help orphans. Though I do have a heart for orphan care and adoption, there are several organizations in place, such as Show Hope, which I mentioned earlier, that are doing an excellent job of getting the word out about orphan care. There are numerous resources online for any number of these organizations that would be glad to help you get started in assisting with orphan care on some level.

There are however, very few organizations that deal with practical ways to help widows and widowers, so I will spend the remainder of this time focusing on that.

The fact of the matter is that it is very easy to help children who are unable to help themselves. And even to a lesser extent, it is easy to help widows who have small children, especially if their husband was the sole breadwinner. But what to do with self-sufficient widows? And what do we make of widowers with small children?

For those of you here tonight who are not aware, Friday made three years since my wife passed away. I was 29 at the time and my daughter had just turned 3.

Some of the ideas I will mention momentarily are things that were done for us by members of this congregation and other friends during the early months following her death.

Many of you are probably also aware of [another family in our community], and I know some of you know them personally. If you do not know them, write down these items anyway as you will almost certainly know another young widow or widower in your lifetime. And even if you don’t, these ideas also work wonders for single parents…

In the interest of time, I will only be sharing ten practical ideas for helping widows beyond praying for them and sharing the Gospel with them (if necessary).

They are presented in no particular order.

1. Offer to watch the kids.

Widows and widowers often very quickly develop a sense that we have to do it all alone. It doesn’t occur to us to ask for help, and when it does, we decline the notion for fear of imposing on anyone, especially if we don’t have family close by to rely upon. I recall only asking for help if I was in a bind, and typically for me that was mainly during the summer when I had to mow the lawn.

It doesn’t have to be much – a simple “Let me take the kids for a few hours so you can get some things done around the house” will suffice. But be persistent. I found that if I told people no once, they often didn’t ask again. The people who kept asking were the ones whose offers I eventually accepted.

2. Invite them over for dinner.

Again, this is an area where you might have to be a bit persistent. One thing about widows and widowers is that we suddenly find ourselves in a very awkward place in society, especially if we have children. We are no longer married, but we still feel married. We don’t usually fit in with the singles crowd, but we also no longer fit in with the married crowd either. For widows with children, it may be a bit easier to fit in with the Mommy crowd, but single dads aren’t generally welcomed into that group either (for a variety of reasons which I won’t spend time on tonight).

There were a couple of families who were very good about inviting us over for dinner in the months following [my wife’s] death. They were not always elaborate meals and we weren’t invited often, but those simple invitations were a great way to help me remain connected with other families.

3. Take them dinner.

So what if you’re not the best host or hostess in the world? That doesn’t let you off the hook either. Now, this is not to say that these people are not good hostesses, but there were also some families in this congregation who were good about bringing meals.

Here’s what’s important to remember about this: don’t take meals during the first few days. Everyone else is bringing in food then, and most of the time the family doesn’t really feel like eating it. The meals that meant the most to me were the ones that came two or three or even four months later, when most people had moved on with their own lives.

Again, don’t take no for an answer, Just call and say, I’d like to bring you such and such sometime soon, when would be a good time?

4. Don’t forget them.

As I’ve mentioned a few times throughout this list, timing is important. We all want to respond immediately when someone has lost a spouse and rightly so. But it was amazing to me how quickly people went back to their own lives and seemed to forget that we were still hurting. So make it a point to send a card, or cook a meal, or make a phone call periodically as time passes.

I have several friends who still do this on occasion, even though it has been three years. If you are worried about forgetting, flip ahead in your day planner or set-up a reminder in your cell phone to do so. It doesn’t matter by what means you’ve remembered, it just matters that you do remember.

5. Do something practical.

A little gesture goes a long way.

I knew of a woman who was behind on her ironing when her mother passed away. A co-worker insisted that she let her do the ironing. It turned out to be a blessing for both the woman and her co-worker. For me, it was mowing the yard. There were a few times when I’d come home and the yard would be completely mowed, trimming and all. I found out later that once it was a former co-worker and twice it was my nearest neighbors. It was a thoughtful gesture, and it was nice to come home and have one less thing to do on those evenings.

6. Send money.

Nearly everyone who is close to the family sends a sympathy card. This might sound like an odd suggestion, but consider including some cash or a gift card as well. I’ll be honest, the first sympathy card I opened with money inside threw me a bit. I was still reeling emotionally, and could not figure out why someone would send money. But there are significant costs associated with funeral services and burials, and not everyone has insurance to prepare for those things. And even if they do, the everyday bills suddenly need to be paid on one person’s salary, so any money you send will be put to good use.

Several people sent us restaurant gift cards also. I tried to cook as often as possible, but on those days when I just wasn’t up to it and there was no more lasagna left in the freezer, it was nice to be able to take [my daughter] out for dinner and not have to worry about how to pay for it.

7. Keep your condolences simple.

If you attend the wake or the funeral, say whatever you need to say about how sorry you are for the family then. But when you see them out and about for the first time after that – at work, at church, at the grocery – keep it simple. The best thing anyone said to me when I returned to work was “I’m glad you’re back”. It was a simple statement with no specific reference to what had happened, yet the person acknowledged it without upsetting me.

Too often we are worried about what to say and end up making the situation worse. So when in doubt, keep it simple. If the person did not share personal details of their lives with you before, they are not likely to do so after. And all they want is for things in their public lives to return to normal as quickly as possible.

8. Don’t be afraid to share memories.

While it may not be appropriate to share memories with the person as soon as they arrive back to work, there will likely come a time when it will be. Don’t be afraid to do so when the time is right. One of the best things people can do, even now, is share a memory they have of [my wife] in the context of a conversation.

Since Friday was the third anniversary of [my wife’s] death, I posted a comment on Facebook for people to share memories of her. It was wonderful to be able to read those memories throughout the day and actually helped to make the day a bit more bearable for me.

9. Don’t deny the person’s existence.

To take this one step further, don’t be afraid to talk about the person in general and use their name when doing so. It doesn’t always have to be a special or elaborate memory. It could be something as simple as referring to “[my wife’s] parents” instead of “[my daughter’s] grandparents”.

One of the things that has meant the most to me is when people have made comments or told stories and used [my wife’s] name. It is validation that not only did she exist and play an important role in [my daughter’s] and my life, but that she meant something to other people as well.

10. Listen without talking.

If you find yourself in a position where a widow or widower is sharing their feelings with you. listen, listen, listen. You don’t have to say a word. Just listen. Sometimes all we want is to be able to get something specific off of our chest.

Now, most of you will probably never find yourself in this position as widows and widowers tend to be very private about their situation. But if you do, just remember that listening is the absolute best possible thing you can do.

There are plenty more things you can do to help a widow or widower in their time of need, but these ten will give you a good place to start.

If you have any specific questions, please feel free to contact me.

Thank you.

At the time I uttered these words, I did not know that the audio would end up on our church’s website within a few hours’ time. About a week after I received the e-mail regarding this, I decided to also post the link on Facebook. I’ve never been asked to speak about being widowed before, and I’m not sure that I ever will again, so I wanted to get this out to as many people as possible who might not otherwise hear this type of information.

Posting it here is yet another step in that process.

On Healing

2010-03-22T00:28:00.007-04:00

Since I seem to be in a pattern of posting a maximum of once a month of late, I’m going to proceed with a series of mini-posts that will hopefully serve to catch you all up to speed on what has been happening in the last month or so. It seems like there is always so much more I want to write about than there is time and energy to actually type it out and post it here. I am hopeful that this pattern will change soon, but until then, please accept my “mini-series” of posts, if you will.

On Winter Snow

As even the most occasional reader of this site has likely discovered, I am not a big fan of winter. I do not enjoy cold weather. I do not enjoy scraping ice off the car windows. And I most assuredly do not enjoy snow or ice.

We have experienced both this winter.

One weekend late in January we had an inch or two of rain that froze overnight. I live far south enough on the East Coast that life pretty much comes to a stand-still when there is ice or snow on the ground. It had melted off by time for church the next morning, but it was enough to cancel Sunday School, which is unheard of in these parts.

Just a few weekends later, we woke up to a slightly different sight. On the Friday night before Valentine’s Day about eight o’clock, I looked out the window (knowing what had been forecast) and saw huge, wet snowflakes falling from the sky. I got my daughter and we walked out to the back porch so she could really see them well. By the time she went to bed an hour or so later, there was a groundcover of snow and the flakes were still falling rapidly.

The forecast had said one to four inches, which is a rare sight in this area. What we actually had in our yard the next morning was eight fluffy inches of pure white snow. If this had happened a year ago, I would have been nothing short of traumatized. But I have done a tremendous amount of healing over the last year, thanks in large part to being able to write out my thoughts and feelings here, so I was able to see this snow through a different lens.

So instead of grumbling and being in a generally lousy mood all weekend, I embraced the snow, knowing it would only stick around for a short while. So once the power returned (it went off just as we were suiting up to go out and play), we headed out to build snowmen, make snow angels, and have snowball fights. I took plenty of pictures and even some video (my daughter gave me a five-minute instructional video on how to have fun in the snow, which I will always treasure). All told, we spent about four hours total in the snow that day.

By the next morning there was significantly less snow on the ground and even less than that by the time we arrived home from church. But being unsure of when this might happen again (good for me, but not so much for her), we suited up again and played in the wet slush until there was literally no snow left to throw or build with. I think we eked out about another two and a half hours between morning and evening service that day.

When I was a kid I loved the snow. And growing up in the Midwest, we definitely had our fair share of it each winter. I have three siblings and many fond memories of times had in the snow with them. This snowy weekend reminded me of those times, only I shared them with my own child instead of my brothers and sister. I was able to play with reckless abandon in a situation I would not have otherwise (or at another time) enjoyed.

And I took that as a sign of healing.

On My Daughter’s Sixth Birthday

The Friday after the “big snow” was my daughter’s sixth birthday. She loves birthdays and was, as expected, very excited about having another party. The thing she was perhaps the most excited about was getting to take cupcakes to share with all of her friends at school. But that turned out to be overshadowed by some other events that day.

Since it was a special day, I drove her to school that morning instead of having her ride the bus as she normally does. I was dressed for work, so she had no reason to think I wasn’t headed there after I dropped her off. However, I instead went into town to pick up the cupcakes and then back home to finish doing a few other birthday related things. Since kindergarten classes eat lunch first at her school, I was able to finagle my schedule so that I could take a half-day and join her for lunch. And seeing the look on her face when I showed up with the cupcakes and told her I was going to stay for lunch was definitely worth it.

I hated to leave after lunch, but she had more to learn and I had a mandatory meeting that afternoon, so I walked her back to class and went on my way. But my joining her for lunch was just the first surprise of the day.

My daughter usually attends an after-school program since her school ends earlier than mine, and she rather enjoys it. I can only imagine what went through her mind that afternoon when the secretary came over the intercom to ask her teacher to send her to the office for pick-up. And further still, I can only imagine the look on her face when she turned the corner and saw not her daddy as she had probably expected, but her grandma and grandpa who had driven down to surprise her again this year. (After last year I told them no more surprises for me, so I was in on it this time). Once we all got home, we headed to our favorite Chinese restaurant for dinner, then watched her open her gifts (again with plenty of pictures and video).

On Sunday we had her party and since the weather was a far cry from that of the previous weekend, she and her friends who attended were able to spend quite a bit of time playing outside. We also did the usual cake and ice cream and presents, plus a craft activity which the girls all really seemed to enjoy.

We usually have her party at home and invite a small number of her friends and their families. She has made it even easier on me by requesting Disney Princess parties the last three years (plus the one before that which her mommy and I chose), so I have been able to use the same accessories from year-to-year. She just chooses a different princess to highlight (this year it was Belle) and we make sure she is featured on the cake.

Each year it seems like the actual party-throwing part of the birthday festivities comes a little easier (though I’m still learning), but each year that passes is another year that her mommy has missed.

And no amount of personal healing on my part is going to make that any easier.

On the Third Anniversary

Exactly one week after my daughter’s birthday was the third anniversary of my wife’s death. I wasn’t sure how I would be affected on this day as this was the first significant grief event to pass since I started dating. I talked to my girlfriend ahead of time about the actual date and my plans for it, and she was overwhelmingly supportive.

So that morning before work, I posted this on Facebook: [My name] is attempting to see something positive in this day. If you knew [her name] please share a memory of her here.

It was the most positive thing I could think of to do, and it turned out to be really good for me. Throughout the day and well into the evening, my Facebook ring tone went off repeatedly as people posted their memories. It was nice to find reasons to smile that day, instead of focusing solely on how much I missed her and how much she was missing by not being here.

As tends to be the case with us, this day was also marked by two other events. Since I started this blog on the second anniversary, this date also marked one year of blogging (however sporadic) for me. That one was anticipated.

But the surprise event came that afternoon, when my daughter came into my bedroom and said “Daddy, I think my tooth is loose”. I checked, and sure enough, it was loose enough she could wiggle it with her tongue. I told her I’d pull it and she said “No Daddy, I think I can do it”. And sure enough, halfway across the bedroom she turned back with a tooth in her hand. It was so loose she had popped it out with her tongue! So the third anniversary of my wife’s death also became the first anniversary of the tooth fairy’s inaugural visit to our home. Only in this family could two such events coincide.

That night my daughter and I went down to the beach and ate at the restaurant we discovered on this date last year, although this year there were no dolphins to watch as we ate. It was however, considerably warmer than this time last year, so we walked on the beach for a little while both before and after we ate. (I took plenty of pictures, but no video this time). I had planned to post something here that night, but she and I were both asleep on the couch by nine o’clock instead.

In a lot of ways this anniversary was “better” than the past two have been. And by better, I mean more bearable. I think the passage of time had something to do with it. And the fact that I not only had considered dating, but was actually in a relationship (though I did not see her that day) probably made a difference as well.

Whatever the reason, a bearable anniversary is much-preferred over an unbearable one, and I considered the bearable nature of this one a sign of healing.

On a Different Sort of Milestone

Exactly one week after that, on March 5, I had a pretty rough day grief-wise. It was the anniversary of my wife’s funeral, but that was not the cause of my grief on this day. It actually had to do with what was to follow.

One semi-consistent pattern in this widowed journey has been that my grief tends to well-up more after a grief-inducing event, once the anticipation and the actual event have passed, than it does before. This usually happens within the first few days following the event. But as is common with grief, its patterns are often inconsistent, and this one hit me a day in advance.

When my wife died, my daughter was three years and one week old, to the day. On March 5, my daughter was six years and two weeks old, to the day. So March 6 marked the day that I had officially parented her longer alone than I had with my wife.

That’s the first time I have acknowledged this in any form outside of my own mind. I haven’t even told my parents (sorry you all had to find out with everyone else). I think it was something I wanted to keep private for just a bit longer, but in staying true to my journey and this site, the time had come to post it here.

Ironically, this is one event in this post that I had planned to mark with pictures, but did not. You see, my daughter has had her picture taken at day care and school many times over the last three years, but she and I have yet to have a professional family photo taken. I kept putting it off, then realized that maybe after this “milestone” I’d be ready. And I think I am. But I didn’t get it scheduled in time for that day, so it will have to wait just a bit longer.

I’m not sure where I am in terms of healing on this one. But I do know that I’m really thankful it’s a “milestone” and not an anniversary I’ll have to acknowledge (and dread) every year from here on out.

On Breaking Up

In my last post, I mentioned that I had been dating someone for the first time since my wife’s death. And throughout this post I have referred to her as “my girlfriend”, which was true at the time of each of those events. But early last week we decided to break up.

It was strange in terms of break-ups in that it was something neither one of us wanted, but both of us knew was necessary. The fault was not really with either one of us so much as with some external factors that were not likely to change any time soon. So it was a better decision to break up than to continue working against them.

I believe that she is okay with this decision as we arrived at it together. And I am okay with this decision, even though I think there was some unrealized potential in the relationship. Her daughter is young enough that it probably didn’t even faze her.

But mine is not.

So that evening, I sat her down and got the reaction I had expected to get when I first told her I was going to date someone – lots of tears. She was upset that she would not be seeing my girlfriend much anymore, but was more upset over the fact that she would not get to play with her daughter. She had allowed herself to start to get close to them, even though their contact was still fairly limited, so it was another loss for her when she realized they wouldn’t be coming around any longer. After a few minutes she calmed down and began to accept it, as she has had to do so often in her young life. Within a few days, she had stopped mentioning it altogether. That’s not to say she won’t again, but I think it’s a sign of her acceptance of the situation.

There is some good news in all of this though. I met someone who sparked my interest, asked her out, and built a new relationship with her. At the time of the break-up we had not said or done anything regrettable, which made it that much easier to create an amicable split. And the split was in no way, shape, or form related to my “baggage” as a widower. So I’d say for my first foray into the dating world things went pretty well.

In addition, I learned some things I will do again if/when I date someone else. I will be honest and up-front about my “situation”, but careful to disclose information at a rate with which she is comfortable. I will take things slowly. I will maintain minimal contact between my daughter and her (and myself and her kids should she have any) until the relationship is established and is moving to a more serious level. And I will remain content in my circumstances until then, so that I can be content if/when my circumstances should change.

And I think that’s the best sign of healing I’ve experienced yet.

On Starting Over

2010-02-18T00:22:00.003-05:00

This post was originally planned to be put up around New Year’s Day, but as you can see from the sidebar, it’s been well over a month since I have actually posted anything here. The good news is that this has been less for grief-related reasons than it has for hectic, everyday life type changes. When I returned to work after Christmas Break, I was informed by a colleague that she was moving, which in turn would more than double my workload. So we spent the following four weeks rearranging our schedules and preparing for these changes, which left me exhausted on the best of evenings.

And as if that wasn’t enough, I started dating someone.

Yes, just when I had accepted the fact that I would likely be single for the next ten years or so, someone sparked my interest in a way that I didn’t think was possible anymore. Now, since I write this blog largely to chronicle my life as a widowed, single father, I will refrain from gushing about how great she is. She does have some great qualities, some of which are not all that unlike qualities my late wife possessed. But the beauty is that she is not an exact replica of my wife and I’m okay with that. One of the things I have worried most about since I started thinking about dating again in general, was that I would seek out someone who was a carbon-copy of my wife. I would guess that is a fear with most dating widow/ers, and I’d bet that many of us end up falling into that trap at some point or another. But unless this initial foray into the dating world is my last, I am not immune to this possibility. I’m just glad it didn’t happen that way this time.

Now, this might be a good time to point out that I am not a casual dater. Including my wife, I’ve only had four serious relationships since I was old enough to date. I put a lot of thought into the possible ramifications of actually dating anyone I might be interested in. I am as comfortable as I can be with being single, which I think allows me the freedom to act when I do meet someone. And being choosy landed me in a good marriage the first time, so I have no reason to think it won’t again if there is to be a second time.

That being said, I was as surprised as most of my regular readers probably are now when I found myself attracted to someone else less than three years after my wife’s death. But as I posted in the fall, I wanted to work toward healing so that I would be ready when the ”right” person came along. I’m just still really floored that it happened so soon.

Now for some background. I actually met her this summer at church. She was supposed to be the assistant for the Bible school class I was teaching, but ended up being assigned to another class. I would be lying if I said I didn’t think she was physically attractive even then, but at that point even finding another woman attractive was a huge step. So that’s as far as it went then. We saw each other off and on at church, but communication was pretty limited over the next few months.

Enter Facebook.

Not one to jump on bandwagons, I reluctantly joined Facebook this summer. As it turns out, that proved to be to my advantage. Sometime in October I received a friend request from her and over time we started chatting. (I had actually tried to look her up prior to this point, but was unaware at the time that her name is not spelled in the traditional manner and could not find her). I definitely felt like there was interest on her part as well, but let the chatting continue over the course of the next several weeks to give us time to get to know each other and allow myself to get my head around what could ensue.

Even then, it was still early December before we had our first date.

And even now, we are continuing to take things slow.

Dating in and of itself can be a scary venture, but throw widow(er)hood and a grieving child into the mix and it can be downright frightening. So once we had decided to go out, I sat down with my daughter over a bowl of ice cream and tentatively told her that I had a date. I expected tears. Or screaming. Or drama of some variety. The only thing I didn’t expect was the reaction I got – a wide grin and a gleam in her eye.

My daughter had, of course, met this woman and had seemed drawn to her in a way that she does not show with many women outside of our extended family. So in her own way, without even knowing it, my daughter had given me the green light to begin this relationship. And what I loved about it is that my daughter sought her out during some of our initial encounters at church. She wasn’t overly zealous about it, but she would ask if we were going to see them that day at church and things that she never asked about anyone else.

One of the many things I worried about when I thought about dating in general is that some women attempt to get to single dads through their child/ren. I was afraid that if that happened I might not see it coming. I’ve had single women friends who suddenly took more of an interest in my daughter than I was comfortable with, so I have experienced it on some level and knew what to watch for. It didn’t happen with her.

Perhaps that is because she also has a young child from a previous relationship.

And that is one of the many reasons we are choosing to take things slow. When I mentioned the date to my daughter and she smiled, she also said she was happy. Then she proceeded to determine which room would be the other child’s (there was only one choice) and how often she would be willing to share her toys with her. So I put my hand up and explained the process to her. I told her that we were starting with one date, then maybe another and so on and so forth, and that eventually if things went well, we would possibly start doing things with the kids at times too. It seemed only logical that if I had worked out the process in my own mind, it might bring her comfort to know what could be expected.

And for the most part, that has worked out well. The morning after the first date, my daughter smiled and asked me how it went. So I told her there would be a second date and she seemed fine with it. But when the time for the second date actually rolled around she was not quite as “okay” with it as she had initially been. She acted a bit more like I had initially expected her to, and it actually made me feel better to see that she was having a “normal” reaction. There were a few moments like that during the first month or so, but she seems genuinely glad to include them now. I make sure my daughter and I still have plenty of time to ourselves, including our Friday night dinners out, and she asks to include them sometimes when we do things. It has become a pretty workable balance so far.

But dating as a widow/er does not come without its pratfalls. Not only is this my first new relationship in ten years, but it started in winter (note to new readers: I loathe winter) and the three-month mark falls smack dab in the middle of the darkest part of the year for me. And it’s still early enough that I view everything through my widow/er glasses. Every phone call. Every text. Every Facebook status update. Every face-to-face interaction. And let’s face it, it’s hard to be romantic sometimes when grief has you by the scruff of the neck.

But she’s stuck by me thus far. And I can’t help but think that if she’s attracted to me at my worst, then things can only get better from here.

On the Eve of Christmas

2009-12-24T23:03:00.006-05:00

So it is as I mentioned it would be in my last post.

December 25 is coming, whether we are ready for it or not. And in a few short hours (at least in my time zone) it will be here. When I mentioned that, I was speaking mostly in terms of being physically ready – having the gifts purchased, the cards sent, those sorts of things. But for so many of us, it means so much more than that. It means another significant day without our loved ones.

I also mentioned in my previous post that I was having a rough time getting into the Christmas spirit this year. I have always loved Christmas and everything is stands for. I am not as crazy about the commercialization of the holiday or the fact that the real meaning so often gets lost in the shuffle, but that is fodder for another post entirely. What has surprised me about my attitude this Christmas season is mostly that I didn’t see it coming. I would have expected this for the first and maybe even the second Christmas after my wife’s death. But the third?

And yet, I had no choice, but to make sure everything got done. My daughter’s Christmas memories shouldn’t have to suffer simply because I’m in a funk this year. So the Christmas shopping was all completed, with time to spare no less. And the decorating was finished, albeit to a much lesser degree than in previous years. And even though some of the cards and packages won’t arrive till sometime after tomorrow, at least they were in the mail ahead of time.

But I still can’t shake this feeling I’ve had lately. It’s very reminiscent of what I went through last winter grief-wise, but last year it didn’t begin until much closer to my birthday. I guess I was just naïve enough to believe that it wouldn’t happen again this year.

One thing that has helped me continue the façade with my daughter is that we have so many traditions this time of year. The Christmas my wife was pregnant with our daughter, we announced to both sets of families that we would begin our own traditions now that we were going to have our own child. Part of that included not spending Christmas Day in the Midwest, but going there the week after Christmas (one of the luxuries we both had as educators). And when we did begin our own traditions, we mostly mixed the ones we had both enjoyed as children.

In the years since my wife’s death, we have kept many of those traditions, but have added a few as well. We still bake a coffee cake on Christmas Eve to eat for breakfast Christmas morning. We still read all three of the same stories just before bed. And of course, we still put out a plate of cookies for the big guy in red.

The Christmas Eve after my wife died, I felt the strongest urge to see the ocean. There’s just something about standing on the sand and looking out across the blue water that fills a need within me sometimes. We try to make it a point to go down about once a month in the winter, even if it’s freezing cold or raining and we just sit and stare at it through the dunes. We were leaving for the Midwest the following afternoon, and I knew that I needed to see the ocean again before we did so.

Out of that moment of need, another tradition was born.

As much as I would have liked to head to the beach alone, and stand on the shore that day and cry alone, it was not a possibility. As a single father living so far from family and not feeling it appropriate to lean on anyone else on Christmas Eve, I did the only thing I could do. I drug my then three-year-old along with me.

And it turned out to be the best move I could have made.

You see, I did not stand on the beach and cry that day. I chased my daughter down the length of sand instead. Oh rest assured I was still incredibly melancholy. But I didn’t have the luxury of pouring out my grief in that moment. I had to be a father first and a widower later, once she had gone to bed that night and I found myself setting out her gifts alone.

As my siblings and I grew up, moved out, married, and the like, it became a tradition at my parents’ house for everyone to bring one item to put in everyone else’s stockings. I’ve received everything from candy to trinkets to lottery tickets from various family members over the years.

That day on the beach, my daughter began picking up stones. I have always loved beach stones, much more so than shells. But my daughter was then prone to picking up solely shells. To this day I have no idea why she picked up stones instead on that Christmas Eve. But as she picked them up, it occurred to me that they would make the perfect stocking stuffers for my mostly land-locked family. So we picked up enough for everyone, and the next week she helped me determine which one went into each individual’s stocking. It’s something they seem to look forward to now.

It occurred to me sometime after we had picked up those initial Christmas Eve stones, that they represented some things. Now, I have never been one to believe that there is any sort of power or energy within stones themselves, but I believe that these particular stones contained a powerful meaning for me. There seemed to be a certain semblance of hope in stones that had washed ashore on Christmas Eve. And I think hope is what I needed more than anything else on that first Christmas Eve alone.

Maybe it’s just what I needed on this Christmas Eve as well.

When I first set eyes on the ocean this afternoon, I could see that it was a deeper shade of blue than is typical, even in winter. Its unusual darkness seemed to mirror my mood. If Crayola could capture the shade, they’d have no choice but to label it “melancholy”. But the sun was out and my daughter was smiling, so I once again found myself embracing the hopefulness of the moment as she selected this year’s stones.

As I write this, I am very mindful of those who are in a similar position as I was on that Christmas Eve two years ago. Those who are embarking on their first Christmas without their mates – WomanNShadows, Dan, letterstoelias, SuddenWidow, and Boo – to name but a few. If I could send all of you a Christmas Eve stone, I most assuredly would. But know at least that you are all in the hearts and prayers, not only of myself, but of the many who read this blog and yours as well.

May we all feel the hope of Christmas this year.

Merry Christmas,

On Winter Weeds (or A General Sense of Apathy)

2009-12-15T22:24:00.002-05:00

In the area of the Southeast in which I reside, it is not uncommon to have warm days throughout the winter. These are usually followed within one to three days by significantly colder temperatures. And yes, the same cycle then begets warmer days again. Except for the period from mid-January to the end of February, which I typically refer to as our “six weeks of winter”. But since it is now just mid-December, we are still well within those warming-cooling cycles.

All of this talk about the weather brings me to the title of this post. You see, in many areas of our country the ground freezes and either stays frozen or freezes repeatedly throughout the winter so that most of the vegetation dies off, save that of the evergreen variety. Where I live, even when we have significant cold spells, the annuals and most flowering perennials die back in the winter, as do the summer and fall weed varieties. There are, however, certain weeds that not only survive the winter, but seem to thrive.

I was reminded of these weeds as I stood in the yard with the dog this morning before work on what turned out to be a relatively mild December day for us. These winter weeds have already overtaken a portion of the flower bed just off the back porch, directly below a rose bush which is uncharacteristically still in bloom (I think this may be a first). They have grown taller than the remaining stems of the perennials there and have begun to spill over the border stones and into the yard. If they keep it up, I will have to mow sometime in January to combat their advance.

Stay with me here, I do have a point.

What struck me about my winter weeds on this particular morning, is that they are an allegory for what I have been experiencing lately. An anomaly of sorts, if you will. You see, it defies logic that weeds should flourish in the winter. We are taught from an early age that in the cycle of the seasons spring is the time of birth and life, and winter is the time of dormancy and death. So why, then, do my weeds thrive throughout the winter?

Just as winter is typically looked upon as a bleak period within the cycle of a year, Christmas is looked upon as the high point in the cycle of holidays on the traditional American calendar. It is meant to be a time of extreme happiness, love, and togetherness.

So why am I just not feeling it this year?

In the eight years since I married and was subsequently widowed, I have always had the house completely decorated and ready for Christmas no later than the first weekend in December, depending on whether we were home for Thanksgiving or away visiting family. I finally put my tree up a week ago Saturday. It’s a small tree and does not require many lights, but I found when I reached the third string they no longer worked and I no longer had any spare strings on hand. So I went to the store and bought some the next day. But still, the tree sat unplugged with two strands of lights for another week before I actually strung the third set.

Now, I could argue that it wasn’t really my fault that it took so long to get the lights on the tree. And I would be partially correct. Sometime in October I was approached about acting in our church’s Christmas play. I had never been asked as it was usually a children’s performance, but this production called largely for adult actors, and I was happy to have been a part of it. As it turns out, the part I was asked to play was typecasting at its best. I played the part of a thirty-something, divorced middle child who was having a hard time accepting that his wife didn’t want it to work and having to handle his kids on his own (though he had two and it was a joint custody situation). So even though there were some discrepancies, the sense of loss he experienced was similar. Incidentally, there was a widower in the play, but he was my character’s sixty-something father and though I’m graying at an alarming rate, I don’t quite look that part just yet.

Overall, the play was a great experience and came together really well. But it also required a great deal of time for practices, including all of that Saturday morning and most of Sunday before the actual performance. There were some additional changes that took up another part of that weekend, but that will have to wait for a future post.

The week that ensued was both incredibly busy and extremely exhausting, so we did not get any decorating (or posts to this blog) done then either. So this past Saturday I made it a priority to get the tree decorated. As of right now, the tree is decorated complete with ornaments, ribbon, and working lights and all of the nativities are up. But I still have a few snowmen to place and the outside lights to hang.

And Christmas is just over a week away.

Which brings me to my next area of neglect. It is not uncommon for me to still have shopping to do this close to Christmas. It is, however, quite uncommon for me to have barely scratched the surface this late in the game. I tried three nights last week and came home frustrated and empty-handed (except for a birthday gift, which doesn’t quite seem to count) every time. So tonight I forced myself to make a list and go to the store. I let my daughter pick out gifts for some of her cousins and friends for whom we buy, but that was about as much as I could stand. Thursday we will go pick out teacher gifts (her last day of school is Friday) and tomorrow I have to attempt to complete her shopping between work and time to pick her up.

And let’s not forget about the Christmas cards. Yes, I still send out Christmas cards every year and I actually don’t mind doing so for the most part. But this year it took me forever to even go buy the things, and they are sitting on my kitchen table still in the shrink-wrap as I type. The plan is to attack those this weekend, but it may just turn out that some people don’t receive their cards until after the big day.

So why am I so far behind on everything this year? Is it that grief is overwhelming me to a point that I just can’t cope with these things? Nope (not on a conscious level, at least). Is it that I am so busy and tired that I haven’t the time to take care of them? Maybe, but I don’t that’s the most likely reason.

Okay, so what is going on already?

I think the culprit in this case is that I simply haven’t wanted to. I haven’t been “feeling” Christmas at all this year. And I don’t seem to be alone in this. It seems that every time I talk to anyone about Christmas in general, they tend to be experiencing similar feelings. Or perhaps, the lack thereof. I have remarked more than one time over the past several days that Christmas is going to come whether we are ready for it or not. But it really saddens me that there has been so much less joy in it for me this year.

And I don’t know who or what is to blame. It could be the effect that the economy is having on people, which is some ways might be even greater than it was at this time last year. It could be that the new administration has not been as successful at implementing positive changes as many had hoped. It could be a general sense of despair that seems to be directly linked to that. It could be that Christmas has become so commercialized and politically correct that we feel like there is little enjoyment to be had from its celebration. It could be any of these things. It could be all of them. Or it could be something completely unrelated. I simply do not know.

One thing I do know is that Christmas will look a lot different for us this year. We will still celebrate at our house on Christmas Day and head back to the Midwest after that. But due to some issues which occurred last Christmas, neither of my brothers will be coming “home” to celebrate this year. I won’t go into the reasons or how valid or ludicrous they might be here, but the bottom line is that on top of my general sense of apathy surrounding Christmas this year, physical components of certain celebrations will be noticeably absent. And I would be lying if I said that wasn’t going to be hard.

“So suck it up” you might say. You’re the guy who was widowed before thirty. You live 800 miles from your nearest relative and you’re continuing to raise your young daughter single-handedly. How can subtle changes make things any worse? How can this Christmas be any harder than the first one without her?

I don’t know that this Christmas will be worse, but I do know that any level of change, especially within the family structure, reminds me of how completely precarious life can be. And it drives home the fact that my wife is no longer physically a part of all of this.

I said earlier that I didn’t think this was all coming from an overwhelming sense of grief. And I meant it. But I failed to mention then that I believe it’s coming.

And I am simply bracing myself as best I can for its impact.

On Giving Thanks

2009-11-24T23:02:00.003-05:00

It is not very often one can say on this Widowed Road that they have been fortunate. Or maybe it is, but is just too hard for us to see when we are mired in our grief. But if I had to identify one area in which I had been fortunate regarding my wife’s death, it would be that she died in the late winter, which meant that I had a good nine months of active grieving before I had to face the dreaded holidays.

Thanksgiving has never been my favorite holiday. Don’t get me wrong, I love the food, the time with family (when possible), and everything it stands for. But for me it has always been overshadowed by holidays like Christmas and Easter, for reasons which I will likely delve into when those holidays come around again. One thing that I have always dreaded, at least when I lived at or near home, was the obligatory “what are you thankful for” session around the Thanksgiving table (sorry G). I dread it all the more now, though I have not spent Thanksgiving with my side of the family since the last one with my wife in November, 2006.

It can be hard as widow/ers to be mindful of the positive things in our “new” lives. How can we possibly be thankful for anything when everything we’ve ever lived for is suddenly gone? It’s a hard question, and one that is not easily answered. Nor is the answer the same for any of us. But I suspect that over the next week or so there will be many posts in the blogs listed at the right of the screen which deal with this topic on some level. And I suspect most, if not all, will contain some level of gratitude, even amidst our given circumstances.

The first Thanksgiving without my wife was spent as planned prior to her death, with her family in a state adjacent to my own. It has become an unspoken tradition that we meet there every other year when her sister has her children for the holiday. It’s a time I always look forward to, but one that was incredibly difficult that year, nonetheless. Thinking about it now, though, I cannot convey just how difficult it was. This is one of the many times I wish I had been able to write during the multitude of firsts. Sadly, unlike many of you who have or are about to experience them, I have no written record of those times and can only rely upon my memory, which is unreliable at best. But what I do remember is that we all cried a lot and laughed a bit, and ultimately made it through.

Last year was an off-year as far as that unwritten tradition is concerned, and as it is too far to travel to my original home state in the Midwest, we relied upon our surrogate family here to take us in. On Thanksgiving Day last year, we woke up in our own beds and watched the parade in our own living room. Late in the morning we drove to the home of our friend’s parents and spent a lovely fall afternoon. The weather is more temperate here this time of year, so the kids were able to play outside and even jump in great piles of leaves without much fear of illness settling in. We stayed through dinner time, then headed back to our house and watched specials on tv together. I was still not able to write then, but my recent memory serves me a bit better than my distant memory does.

And so arrives this Thanksgiving. In staying true to the pattern, we will again head to that adjacent state in the morning, fighting what I am sure will be all manner of angry drivers and impatient travelers along the way. My daughter, for what I believe to be the first time ever, told me this morning that she is not looking forward to the traveling part this time. Or maybe it’s just my frustration level during the journey that she’d rather avoid. But I digress.

I can’t really say that I’m much in the mood for the holidays yet this year. The time off work – absolutely. I’ve been looking forward to that for weeks. But so far I just haven’t been able to get excited about the actual celebrating of the holidays. However, in preparation for said holidays and the composing of this post, I have once again been reminded that I have plenty for which to be thankful.

Like my beautiful, precocious little girl, who still looks and acts a lot like me, but has those blue eyes and sweet disposition that drew me to her mother all those years ago. Despite her ear surgeries over the summer, she is a healthy child. And since health is something her mother battled with for most of her short adult life, I am certain that she too would be grateful that our daughter has been in such good health these past few years as well. She is doing well in school, both academically (like me) and socially (like her mommy). And she has handled life after her mother’s death with a grace and poise that is well beyond her five years. Though I always dreamed of having a large family, I have been given more in my one child than I would have ever thought possible.

Though we are physically isolated from our families much of the year, we make every effort to see each other when we can. Both families. And that is another thing for which I am thankful. I come from an average-sized, though anything-but-average family. Love was always a part of our home growing up, and though at times our differences have caused that love for one another to be much less evident as adults, I am confident it is still present. And I married into a family that was very similar to my own in that regard. My wife grew up in a loving home, which I was welcomed into with open arms. And as you can tell from the preceding paragraphs, that love was not cut off after she died. In reading blogs of other widow/ers, I am constantly made aware of how blessed I am not only to have my own family, but to have my wife’s as well.

There is also, of course, the laundry list of other things as well. I have a good job, which to this point has been safe from the spiraling economy. I am in relatively good health myself. I have good friends and acquaintances. I can afford to pay my bills and still have some left over to go out to eat and take trips to see family. I’m even starting to come out of that six-month state of lethargy I wrote about here (see photo above for the completed version of the photo at the top of that post). And now I have an ever-growing support network in a place I never thought I’d find it – the internet.

Lots of blessings.

Lots of things for which to give thanks.

But perhaps the thing for which I am the most grateful, is that over the past two years and nine months, I have not once had to worry about or question where my wife resides now. She had an unshakeable faith in Christ and I have no doubt that she is with Him now. This knowledge has done little in the way of taking the sting out of everyday life on earth without her, but over time I think it has helped me become more accepting of her death. Now I’d be lying if I said my own faith hasn’t wavered greatly since then, but at times, it has also been the only thing that has sustained me.

So yes, I have a lot to be thankful for. And as cliché as it may seem, I am putting it here for you to see as Thanksgiving approaches and ultimately passes us by. But I’d like to leave you with this: As you celebrate this holiday with family or friends, please be reminded of those of us who are celebrating it with one less chair around the table. Especially those like Dan and Woman N Shadows, who are doing so for the very first time. If you are a praying person, please say a prayer for us as well.

And if you are fortunate enough to be celebrating with your husband or wife, hug them a bit tighter for those of us who can no longer hug ours at all.

On Interwoven Dreams

2009-11-15T23:45:00.002-05:00

It is not uncommon for me to dream.

It is also not uncommon for me not to dream.

What is uncommon, however, is for me to dream about my wife. I am closing in on the three year mark and I believe I am up to six dreams of her in total. I’d say it’s an average of one every six months, which is true, but misleading as two dreams occurred on consecutive nights. In the first couple dreams she was back, but I knew that she was going to die and was powerless to stop it. In the other three dreams she was also “back”, but the moments of which I dreamed were normal moments we could have easily had when she was actually here (with the exception of certain details of the third dream of the five, which I wrote about here.) As you have by now guessed, I had the sixth dream quite recently, but you’ll have to read a bit further before we get to that.

Friday night I fell asleep at some late hour in the overstuffed leather recliner with both the tv and the lamp still burning up electricity. I do not usually sleep comfortably in the recliner, but there are still periods (though increasingly shorter in duration and further between), when I opt to remain there at night rather than face my empty bed. When coupled with the incessant noise created by the tv, it’s a wonder my mind was able to formulate dreams that night, let alone clearly enough that I would remember them.

My dreams throughout the night bordered on psychotic – the kind you have when you eat too much greasy food just before dozing off. But two were so lucid and so very different from all the others, that I could not help but recall them the next morning.

During the first of these dreams, I was dating someone. For those of you who are new to this blog, I have not dated anyone since my wife’s death, nor have I thought about it a great deal. I am not one who dwells on such things or seeks them out. I am as content as I can be alone, but am becoming increasingly accepting of the idea that I could possibly be happy with someone else someday, if and/or when that time comes.

And that was the beauty in this dream. I think for many of us widow/ers there is a tendency to want to replace what we had with our husband/wife/fiancé if and/or when we do meet someone else. During those times that I have pondered the general idea of dating, it has crossed my mind that it would be easy for me to do the same. But in my dream, at least, this was not the case. Sure, she had some of the same qualities as my wife, namely a similar hair color and a beautiful smile. But she mostly possessed qualities that made her unique unto herself. She was not a “replacement” for my wife, but was instead someone I could care about (and love?) for who she was alone.

This dream showed me that someday I could possibly love someone else. I don’t think I’ve entertained that idea up to this point, and might not have now, had I not had it forced upon me in my slumber. In fact, I think I’ve spent more energy the last few years resigning myself to the idea that I might just be single for a good many years.

I don’t remember many specific details of this dream, but I do remember being blissfully happy. And it felt really good.

Cue dream two. The initial details are a little fuzzy, but at the beginning of what I remember, I have just come off my first date with the dream girl when I somehow find out that my wife is still alive. She is in something of a comatose state and resides in an abandoned house in the town where I grew up. She is being kept alive by her own sheer willpower and the grace of God – no machines whatsoever. And no one has been privy to the fact that she’s been alive all this time until now.

So at the outset of the dream I am forging my way into this abandoned house, which has no useable entrances and has become quite treacherous to enter over the years. After climbing over, under, around, and through all manner of debris, I come to a room where she is lying on a bed, quite still, but also seemingly quite comfortable. At this point the dream takes on a fairy-tale-like state and I swoop in and save her, so to speak.

But some of the fairy-tale ending is missing. While I am incredibly happy to see her and know she is alive, I am as concerned about showing her what has happened during the last two and three-quarter years as I am about having her back again. I even remember specifically taking her to each of the rooms I’ve painted in our house, hoping she’ll be pleased with the colors I’ve chosen.

And in the back of my mind lurks the date from which I have just come. During the dream I remember being relieved that things had not gone further with the dream girl, but also wondering what might have happened had my wife not miraculously been found alive. It is enough to create chaos deep within a man.

While the details of these dreams did not match up completely, I can’t help but think they are related. And though I generally do not put much stock in dreams having meaning, it seems that in this instance they almost certainly must.

Like the fact that I must be inching closer to the prospect of dating, whether it happens tomorrow or in ten years. And the fact that I could someday embrace a relationship with someone who is very different from my wife. And the fact that I can choose to do this, knowing that I am as content as I can possibly be with my current circumstances.

I think what surprised me the most about these dreams is that there was a level of guilt evident in the mix. I don’t know if I have written about this here or not, but a few days before my wife died, we had a conversation during which she asked me to make her some promises. Her health had declined very quickly and though I don’t think either of us believed she was going to die at that point, it was necessary for us to say some things to each other. The one thing she asked me that I could not promise was that I would marry again. And here’s why. I told her that even (though hard as it was to imagine at the time) if I ever managed to fall for someone else, I could not guarantee that someone else would ever fall in love with me. I don’t believe in making promises I can’t keep. So instead I told her that I would keep myself open to the possibility.

I guess that’s what I’m trying to do now. I was just naïve enough to think it wouldn’t be hard.

And, for now, it was only a dream.

On a General Sense of Lethargy

2009-10-27T22:59:00.003-04:00

I have been rolling the content of this post around in my head for about two months now. It was originally intended to be a summer wrap-up post, recounting many things that occurred, but were never committed to paper (or in this case, screen). But by taking so long to actually compose and post these thoughts, I have become a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. And I have lived up to the title.

What prompted me to actually post these words now was a recent post by Supa, who has apparently been experiencing many of the same thoughts, feelings, and (lack of) actions I have. Ironically, I read this post while in the midst of cleaning house, but that may come into play a bit later on.

When I started this blog, I had visions of grandeur. I thought that I would post twice a week, or once at the very least, and then only when things became extremely harried in my daily life. I never dreamed I’d see months with only two or three posts. But this blog is an account of how grief has/is/continues to affect my life and that of my daughter. And the truth is we’ve had a lot of two-post months as of late.

It seems to have begun sometime in April. After an excellent trip to visit family over Spring Break, we settled into what would become the end of our now familiar routine - my daughter’s last few months at day care before embracing the world of “big school” and my last few months of school at the job I have held for the past five years.

In May we managed to take our first family trip to Disney World, which I wrote about here. Despite the rain and being acutely aware that we were supposed to make this trip as a family of three (not two) we had a great time. And the end of my school year was, in some ways, one of the smoothest I’ve ever had.

But sometime in May, I noticed that I had put on a few pounds. And that it wasn’t coming back off readily. Not a big deal for most people, but for me, it was a sign of things to come.

About six months after my daughter was born, my wife and I decided to do something about our “baby weight”. Those of you who have children know why it was ours, and not solely hers. When I stepped on the scale, I was amazed to see that I had gained twenty pounds since we’d been married, which was at that time only three years. So we set out on a regimen of strict dietary change and increased exercise. And the pounds came off. In no time at all I had lost twenty-five pounds, and my wife was within ten pounds of her goal weight. I ended up losing thirty pounds in all (I had thought I needed to lose ten going into it) and kept it off for four and a half years.

Now, I typically put on a few pounds around the holidays and any time we visit family (here or there) because my eating habits change. But I am always able to get back to my normal weight within a reasonable amount of time. The distressing part about the May weight gain is that it didn’t really seem to coincide with the trip home or the trip to Florida. I had just gained some unexplained weight.

But it was not so much that I couldn’t bear it. And I had other things to attend to. Like my daughter’s graduation from preschool and the emotions I endured in having to go through that alone. We had a nice visit with all of the grandparents during and after…

But then I sold the car and had to deal with all sorts of new grief-driven feelings.

Then within three days’ time we not only found out that my daughter had to have ear surgery, but she also had it. You can imagine what that was like (or read about it here).

I wrote about those three things. But at the end of June, I completed my first week of teaching Vacation Bible School at our church. It was a rewarding experience and not nearly as mired in grief as the rest of the month had been. But I never managed to share that experience here.

Within a week of that, we were headed to the Midwest for our annual summer trip to see family. We arranged for five days with each side of the family, with a five day side-trip in the middle. You may recall that while some of you were at the Widow/ers Conference in San Diego, I was in the heart of the country at a work related conference. It was my first time in that city, and I managed to add my twenty-third state to the list, while my daughter added numbers thirteen through fifteen to hers (she’s catching up too quickly!) I had big plans to record the exciting moments here, much like I did with the Disney trip, but alas, this is the closest I’ve come to doing so.

And only two days before that trip, I was doubled-over by the worst physical pain I’ve ever endured, which turned out to be a kidney stone. I had actually composed an entire post about that in my head and yet, it never made it to this small screen. Suffice it to say, I can now boast that I have driven halfway across the country on (low, legal doses of) painkillers though.

And as I’m writing, I realize I forgot to mention the garden. That beautiful, sad little plot that held so much potential. Strong tomato plants, evenly-spaced rows of bean seeds, hills of pumpkins, yellow squash, and zucchini… But the bean seeds never took, even with two plantings. And we had almost a week of hundred degree heat in June, when that is usually reserved for late July/early August. Then we had our ten days of rain (which is customary for June, but does not usually follow extreme heat). We did manage to get one small, hard, inedible piece of yellow squash and several undersized tomatoes. But I don’t eat tomatoes. And I’m guessing neither did the people to whom we gave them.

July is also a month with some hard dates for me, as is evidenced by this post and this one here. But as you may recall, I posted them in reverse order and the latter was posted almost three weeks after the date.

And then came August. We had out-of-town guests who inspired my first trilogy of posts on this site (see here, here, and here). And we increased our time at the beach, even though we had managed to make it down there more often this summer than we did the last.

Then my daughter started kindergarten and had her second ear surgery within three days of one another, but I didn’t get either of those posts up until September.

In the midst of all of this, I left the school where I’d worked for the last five years for one closer to my home. With the job change and my daughter starting school, my commute was cut by forty minutes each day. Yes, I gained almost an entire feature-length film’s worth of free time every day. (Not that I know where it has gone!)

The job change was an amicable one, but it’s been over two months and this is the first real mention I’ve made of it here. There have been some occurrences there, mostly dealing with having to reveal my marital status, that I will save for another post (here’s hoping it makes it to this screen sometime in the near future).

But suddenly September was gone and within a week we’d make a weekend trip together to see family in a nearby state and a weekday trip apart (since she’s in school now), which I did manage to write about here a few weeks back.

I know what some of you are thinking by this point, but it’s not true.

Some of you are thinking that these all sound like classic symptoms of depression. And they do. But they are not. I have been depressed before (though ironically it was in college before my wife and I even began dating) and it was much worse than this. Precursors to depression? Possibly. I won’t rule that out at this point. But full-fledged depression? Not even close yet.

What I think this is instead, is simply grief manifesting itself in my life. Like other widow/ers I read, my grief has changed over time. Just when I figure out all the triggers, they shift and I have to learn the new ones. It’s a seemingly endless battle, but one I am destined to fight (or flee from at times) nonetheless.

And there is hope in all of this – namely that I recognize what is happening. So that’s where things like cleaning the house come into play. I usually keep a relatively neat house (especially for a single dad!), but over the last month I noticed that I was cleaning a few rooms here and there, but the entire house was never completely clean all at once. So this weekend I set out to do just that. And once I had accomplished that goal, I felt better.

And even though I’ve gained ten pounds in total since April and I keep eating junk food like someone is going to take it away from me at any moment, I’m starting to make healthier choices here and there again. Just last week while my daughter was at gymnastics, I spent some time walking at a nearby park. Baby steps in that department perhaps, but it is, at least, forward motion.

And in all of this I have managed to maintain the daily routine. My daughter’s homework is always completed, the laundry is never so far behind that we’re scrambling for things to wear, we’ve increased the number of meals we eat at home, my work hasn’t suffered… All important aspects of our lives that are being carried out in such a way that no one would know the relentless undertones of grief that are always there, just below the surface.

Day by day. One step at a time.

Forward motion.

On Distance and Conflicting Obligations

2009-10-15T00:11:00.004-04:00

It is often said that “absence makes the heart grow fonder”. And while I have seen that statement become reality in many situations in my life, none more immediately than in the years since my wife’s death, I did not expect it in my most recent encounter with absence.

But it happened, nonetheless.

At this time last week I was headed to bed in a larger city in a Northeastern state. Or rather, I was headed to my sleeping bag on the floor of my brother’s home office in said city/state. At that time, my daughter had been asleep, snug and cozy in bed, for about three hours. The only trouble was that her bed was in someone else’s house, several hundred miles away in our hometown.

It is also often said that “there’s a first time for everything”.

And such was the case last Wednesday night. My brother had asked me to come up for an overnight visit, the details of which I unfortunately cannot divulge at this time. But suffice it to say he asked me there for a specific purpose, and since he has not acted in such a way in the ten-plus years he’s lived there, I obliged his request.

I rather enjoy visiting my brother and exploring his city, which is so very different from my coastal corner of the map. I enjoy it so much that I am planning what will be our third annual winter visit in January (the details of which I will gladly divulge!) I do not, however, enjoy taking time off work. I do so when my daughter is sick or when we are out of town (though this is increasingly rare since she is in school now) or when she has a medical need (her surgery and follow-up appointments, for example). I even, begrudgingly, take the occasional day off when I am absolutely too ill to climb into the car and drag myself to school. So it was more than a big deal for me to take a day off at my brother’s behest, but I was also glad to do so.

The hard part was leaving my daughter. I was not so much worried about where she would stay, as our friends (who are getting an increasing amount of praise on this blog lately!) who always seem to be there for us gladly took her in for a few nights. As a single parent, it’s not only a relief to have people you can count on when something like this arises, but it’s an added bonus when you have people you can trust to the point that you truly don’t have to worry about your child while you’re away. But I was worried about telling her I was going alone, and then actually doing so.

So in a moment of genius, I made two bowls of ice cream and broke the news during a nice little father-daughter moment we were having. And she took it extremely well. She was, as I had hoped, very excited about getting to stay with her friend for two nights (two school nights, no less!) She was not thrilled about me going to see her uncles without her, but when I explained that I didn’t want to take her out of school to go, she seemed to understand. Plus, I gave her about a week to adjust to the news, so as to help decrease some of the shock a bit.

So last Wednesday, I put her on the bus at ten till seven like I do every morning, knowing I wouldn’t see her for two and a half days. And she hopped on just like she does every other day. No tears. No hysterics. No drama at all. Just my happy little girl hopping on the bus as if it were a normal day. It made leaving her a whole lot easier than I had thought it would be.

So after work that afternoon I flew to the airport a couple hours away (keeping the wheels to the pavement) only to find out that my flight had been delayed for almost an hour and a half. So my twenty hour jaunt turned into eighteen. And my big-city dinner in my brother’s neighborhood was replaced with an over-priced bagel sandwich alone at the airport. I had, at least, had the foresight to bring a book, so I was not completely bored while I waited for the clock hands to trudge forward. But the night had not begun as planned.

Thankfully the rest of the night did not follow suit. The plane took off and landed on its adjusted schedule without incident. I managed to direct the cab driver to my brother’s place without incurring an additional fare. And I enjoyed a nice quiet evening watching tv and waiting for my other brother and his wife to arrive.

The next day was a blur of events capped off with a nice lunch at a local southwestern eatery, complete with drinks, and dessert at a nearby bakery. Then it was off to the airport to catch my return ride. I had initially thought that by taking the earlier flight I’d be able to pick up my daughter before bedtime and thus have to endure only one night apart, but when the drive home from the airport was factored in, this was not a feasible plan. We knew this ahead of time, so she was expecting to stay with our friends two nights, but that did not make the pain of that night’s phone call any easier to bear.

When you have spent nearly half of your young life being raised by a single dad without any close family nearby, you have a tendency to grow exceptionally close to said father. When you couple this with the fact that the only nights we’ve spent apart in the past two and two-thirds years have been the occasional night in the Midwest when she has stayed overnight with her closest cousins (and was thereby the one “leaving”) you start to get an idea of just how hard a night or two apart might be.

So when I called her just before bedtime from the airport city last Thursday night to let her know I was safely back in our state and would see her the next day, it seemed only appropriate that the tears would flow. She wanted to know why I couldn’t pick her up that night and told me how much she missed me. I tried to reassure her that I would see her after school the next day, but I had to choke back my own tears while doing so.

After we hung up I finished my sandwich from a local fast food chain and decided to try to do some shopping. I am not big on shopping without a purpose, nor did I have a purpose that night, other than pure avoidance. You see, I had prepared myself as much as possible for the separation from my daughter, but I had not prepared myself for a night alone in our completely empty house. And now that I was faced with the prospect of such, I opted to go shopping instead. I didn’t find anything I couldn’t live without, but I did manage to stay gone long enough that when I arrived home I was tired enough to crawl into bed and ignore my solitude as much as possible.

When I was in fifth grade I went away to camp for the first, and only, time. When I arrived home my mom asked me if I had missed her and was taken aback when I said “no”. And I had not. But what I was quick to point out was that I certainly appreciated her more now that I was back home.

It was the same with my two nights away from my daughter. I did not spend my time actively missing her, though I did think about her quite often while I was gone. But I was certainly glad to see her when I picked her up from after school care the next day. She was a welcome sight, running across the playground with her arms stretched wide and a smile to match.

She wanted to hear all about my trip, so I told her on the way to rescue the dog from the kennel. She was clearly very glad to have me back home, but seemed at ease with the idea that we were apart for a few days. It happened to be the week of our local fair (it’s too hot for the fair here during the summer months), so we finished off a hectic week with some corndogs and a couple of “prize every time” games. Then she decided to use all of her ride tickets on the merry-go-round and of course wanted me to endure the dizzying rotation with her.

It turns out she may have been mad that I left her for two nights after all…

On Single Parent Surgery - Round 2

2009-09-17T22:06:00.002-04:00

The last Friday in August my daughter underwent Round 2 of her corrective ear surgery (a left tympanoplasty for those of you who like to call things by their proper names). As many of you will recall from this previous post, I had many mixed emotions about her initial surgery back in June, both before and immediately following that procedure. Her right tympanoplasty turned out well and healed just as it should, which was one of the main reasons for continuing with her second surgery so soon afterward (the original wait time was to be four to eight months to encourage maximum healing). However, the other driving reason for doing these surgeries so close together was that my insurance year changes on September 1st and I would have had to begin paying toward my deductible all over again.

What I did not know at the time was that this was a great idea for another financial reason. Unbeknownst to me, my insurance plan was voluntarily changed by my employer to the degree that if we had waited on the surgery, it would have ended up costing me twice as much out-of-pocket. Yes, you read that right. Twice as much for the same surgery performed in the same surgery center by the same surgeon. So, needless to say, I was happy that we were able to get it in before it would become an even more astronomical strain on my single-income budget.

Overall, I found that I was not as worried about this surgery as I had been about the first one. I’m certain it had something to do with the fact that she had her right tympanoplasty done only two months prior and that the healing process had gone remarkably well. It probably had a bit to do with the idea that I was preoccupied by some close friends during the first surgery itself and realized that this single parent surgery thing could be gotten through with a little humorous conversation. And I know it helped that about a week prior to the surgery another friend of ours had volunteered to come sit with me during the surgery, which was really great since most of my teacher friends had already gone back to work. And having two months’ advance notice of the surgery itself this time didn’t hurt either.

So the day before the surgery I started thinking about what needed to be done in preparation. Nothing to eat after midnight. Only a bit of water before leaving the house the next morning. Pack a pair of socks in case the OR is cold. Call the school and let them know why she would be missing her second full day of kindergarten. Read the surgery center book to her that night to ease her fear of surgery, even though she’s done this in the recent past. Bring a book in case there’s a lull in the conversation. Put in the old car seat so she would have better head support for the hour and a half drive home. I had pretty much thought of everything, and I was more than a little proud of myself for how thorough I’d been in my planning.

But nothing could have prepared me for how I would feel when the first wrench was thrown into it.

Because of the staggered enrollment process in our local school system, my daughter started school on a Tuesday, then was off Wednesday and Thursday. Her first full day with her entire class would have been the Friday of her surgery. Because I also work in the school system, but am not on a staggered return-to-work plan I had to work the two days she was “off”. So I asked our friend who had volunteered to sit with me during surgery (and whose younger daughter is the same age as mine) to watch her those two days. When I went to pick up my daughter on Thursday evening, the woman casually mentioned that she “would not be able to make it tomorrow” and left it at that. Now, I tend not to show much emotion on my face, but I am certain that she must have seen some mixture of shock/surprise/concern/confusion cross my brow at that moment. If she did, she never mentioned it. When I got in the van I asked my daughter if she had mentioned why she couldn’t come and she said it was “because she had some stuff to do around the house”. I could tell she was upset, so I didn’t press it further. But something just wasn’t adding up.

Now, there is one thing that I despise perhaps more than almost anything else: I cannot stand it when other adults make false promises to my child. I don’t think this is a kind thing to do to any child, and I make every attempt not to do it to my students. Children should be brought up with the idea that adults remain true to their word. It is a good lesson in how to deal with children when they are the adults some day and it reinforces the idea that adults should be a source of safety and security in a child’s life. But my daughter has suffered a great deal more hurt than most children her age and though she’s taken it in stride much more than I ever thought possible, she takes adults at their word. So when her best friend’s mom says she’ll call to arrange a play date for a given day, my daughter takes her at her word. And when a friend offered to “come see” her before her surgery? You guessed it, she took her at her word too. So I was more than just upset about this friend breaking her “promise” to me. I was upset about her breaking her word to my little girl.

As we drove home, I started to ponder exactly why things didn’t add up in this situation. The first thought was obvious. This friend is a stay-at-home mom who home-schools her children, so anything that needed to be done around the house could have easily been done during the days prior to or following the surgery. It was a flimsy excuse, but what was the real reason for her sudden change of heart? I wondered if maybe she didn’t want to drive the hour and a half to where the surgery would take place. I know money is generally tight for the family, so I thought maybe the extra gas and probable meal out for three would put too much of a strain on their budget. Both legitimate reasons, but why not just tell me as much? The more I pondered the situation, the more irritated I became.

Then the true reason hit me like a ton of bricks.

So on the way home from dinner with some other friends of ours, I called my mom and told her that this friend was not coming the next day. Now, I realize that this is not a fair thing to do to a mother who is 800 miles away and is already worried about her youngest grandchild enduring her second surgery of the summer, not to mention the fact that her son is still the sole caretaker of said grandchild. But my mom and I have always had a remarkable relationship, so I called to tell her what was going on. When I told her that I would be sitting alone during the hour and a half long surgery, she confirmed what I had surmised. Her words were something to the effect of, “I don’t want to put bad thoughts into your mind, but do you think it could be the husband?” Bingo Mom. You have once again hit the nail on the head. My mother, with all of her women’s intuition, had drawn precisely the same conclusion about this man whom she has only met a time or two. And sadly, I’m certain it was the proper conclusion to have drawn.

I have always been overly cautious in my friendships with married women. I work in a predominately female field and have never had any difficulty maintaining friendships with women. It was something I talked to my wife about early in our relationship as I had previously dated a girl who was very jealous (one of the many reasons I refer to her as “the one who showed me what I didn’t want in a wife”). My wife always took it stride, and was, more often than not, friends with these women as well. (To be clear, these friendships never extended beyond work unless my wife was also friends with them). It was something we continued to talk about during our marriage as well. Not that either of us were worried about anything inappropriate happening, but typically those kinds of things happen when your guard is down, so keeping an open dialogue about it just seemed like a smart thing to do.

The level of caution I used when I was dating and married could not even begin to compare to the level I’ve used since becoming a widower. As with everything else, I suddenly became very aware of how it might look if I spent too much time with another woman regardless of whether she was single or married and whether the time was spent inside of work or out. For the most part this transition time was actually that in name only. I stayed friends with my two happily married, middle aged friends at work and became better friends with the whole family of one of my other friends who is thirteen years my senior.

Here I will take a moment to mention how much I have appreciated this friend and her family. I met this friend when I worked at my first school after moving to the Southeast. By the time our daughter was born a year and a half later she was one of the few people we trusted to watch her on those rare occasions when my wife and I got out for a date. She never let us pay her and always said that the best thing we could do for her was to let her watch our daughter again the next time we went out, which we did. After my wife died, she and her husband, who attend our church, started inviting us out for lunch on Sundays. Over time it became a standing invitation, with the understanding that if one of us couldn’t make it on a particular Sunday there would be no hard feelings. Through this I have also become better friends with her husband, which is no small task since he is not much of a talker. They are some of my best friends here now. And incidentally, she and her daughters are the ones who sat with me during my daughter’s first surgery this summer (her husband had to work).

One thing I have always appreciated about our friendship is that her husband does not seem to mind that she and I are better friends than he and I are. He doesn’t seem to feel threatened or jealous or any of the other types of things husbands might feel in that sort of situation. (And rightly so as we are strictly friends).

Contrast this with the husband of the friend who backed out of the surgery. He is a prominent member of our church, and I mention this only because as such he should know better. Now, as I mentioned before, I know the importance of guarding oneself against any sort of impropriety in single/married friendships. But there has to be a level of trust involved as well. For him, that trust does not exist. Couple that with what I believe (and have observed on a minor level) is a complete and utter lack of respect for his wife and you have an idea of the dynamic that was involved in causing me to sit alone during what should have been a very scary hour and a half.

And more importantly, causing my innocent daughter to see that yet another trusted adult in her life was willing to let her down.

So that night, while I was getting her ready for bed and long after she was asleep, I did something very uncharacteristic. I got angry. And not only did I get angry, but I allowed myself to stay angry. I generally save my ire for social injustices and certain members of the local school administration (there’s a story there, but this has already waxed long), but in this moment I allowed myself to feel it for all it was worth. So I let it stew and fester for a good long while before I simmered down and headed to bed. But sadly, I lost whatever respect I had left for that man during those moments and have since been unable to bring myself to sit through his Sunday school class.

At this point I know you’re all hoping that things went well so this post will be over (if you’re still with me). And they did. My daughter was a bit more nervous than last time, but handled it amazingly well. I sat alone with my book, and was able to concentrate more often than not on the words on the page and not the images of what was happening to my daughter in the OR. When it was time to see her in recovery, her nurse (a man this time) did not ask me any questions beyond what was appropriate, so I was not forced to give an account of why I was there alone following her surgery this time. And I was facing a wall, so I did not have to see any other patients and therefore did not once have the urge to run screaming from the building. Which was good, since my daughter took about twice as long to come out of the anesthesia this time. We made it home safely (using the old five-point seat proved to be my best idea of the week) and our good friends brought us McDonald’s for dinner since we were confined to the house for the weekend.

If you can say you had a good experience with surgery, then I guess we did. Again.

But I still can’t help but be a little sad for the loss of respect we both suffered as a result of this experience.

On the First Day of Kindergarten

2009-09-03T23:22:00.003-04:00

On the last Tuesday of August, my daughter and I marked another of the many milestones in her life. For the first time, she embarked on a journey that lead her to what people in our area of the South commonly refer to as “big school”.

It was a day I had anticipated with very mixed emotions. The Logical Dad side of me could see the benefits in not having to drive her to daycare any longer, which is halfway across town and took us fifteen minutes on a good day, but added a minimum of half an hour to my total morning commute. But the Emotional Dad side of me stood back and anticipated the rush of tears that, according to my Facebook friends back in the Midwest, where children begin school a bit earlier in the month, was certain to come before, during, and after the big send-off. And the Regular Ol’ Dad side of me wavered back and forth between the two.

When I was in elementary school, my mom always drove us to school on the first day each year. And she always made a big deal out of it. So it seemed logical to me that I would also drive my daughter to school on her first day. This decision was made even easier by the fact that her school is on the way to my school. (No, I did not enroll her where I work as I wanted her to attend school in our home district). And she was all for it.

So that morning we got up and she put on the new pink and white striped dress I had laid out for her, followed by the brown closed-toed sandals we had searched two cities for, as the school dress code prohibits any student from wearing flip-flops, open-toed sandals, or crocs. I pulled her hair back into what has become her signature pony tail and we began the obligatory, but enjoyable, photo session, with my favorites being the ones we took on the front step before we left the house.

As is our unfortunate, but customary pattern, we arrived late, just as the bell was ringing, but this time it was of little fault of our own. They had begun some construction between our house and the school, making our five minute drive last for twelve. However, as it was the first day of school, we were not by any stretch of the imagination the only ones arriving just then.

As some of you may recall from a previous post, I worked at my daughter’s school through the year she was born. So any time we arrive I am greeted with hugs, handshakes, and pleasant conversations with no fewer than three people before we reach our destination. It’s a little bit like coming home after a long vacation.

The first day of kindergarten did not disappoint.

Once we finally arrived at my daughter’s classroom, which we had visited on Orientation Day the Friday before, we had been in the building close to ten minutes. Her teacher and teacher’s assistant were there to greet us with yet more warm smiles (no hugs though, they’re both new since I worked there). The assistant showed my daughter where to put her new Disney Princess backpack, which had been waiting patiently at the top of her closet since she received it from her grandparents last Christmas, and even let her choose which “cubby” she wanted to put it in. Then my daughter got to find her name tag on the table so she would know where to sit when the teacher said it was time. Before I left there were many hugs and kisses exchanged, but overall it was a good way to begin her official academic career. And I managed to make it through the morning without crying.

But in all fairness, I had gotten that out of the way the night before.

The weekend before the Big Day started with kindergarten orientation on Friday. We arrived during the morning session to more of the afore-mentioned hugs and other greetings. Then while I settled in to fill out the voluminous folder of paperwork (I seriously signed fewer documents when we purchased our house), my daughter was taken to another table to work on an “All About Me” collage made from various magazine pictures of her choosing, During the hour we were there, two other students came in with their parents, so she was able to catch a glimpse of what some of her other classmates would be like.

As we left the school, the rain clouds had begun to close in, and I began to wonder if it would somehow rain every day I set foot in the building with her, as the same thing had happened the day of her kindergarten registration. (It was sunny the first day of school, so presumably the curse has been lifted). We had planned to spend the afternoon at the beach, but it was not meant to be.

Or so we thought.

After several short downpours, and more than one children’s program on tv, the rain let up enough that I decided to try it. By this time I had promised my daughter a fast food lunch at the beach, so we stopped and picked up some at one of her favorite “on-the-go” establishments. The sun was shining at the beach, but the clouds surrounding it were much darker than the ones around home, and I was worried that we had wasted the effort in coming.

Five minutes after we set up our chairs, the bottom fell out.

We had just enough warning to make it to the covered building nearby, so our heads stayed mostly dry as we huddled under the awning with the thirty-or-so others who had been crazy enough to brave the elements for a day at the beach. After less than ten minutes of torrential downpour, the sun returned and so did our plans for the day. We spent the next several hours engaging in most of our favorite beach time activities, except for playtime in the ocean as then-Hurricane Bill, though out to sea, was keeping our rip current risk greatly elevated that weekend.

Saturday we went back-to-school shopping, where I had my first experience of having to wait outside of the dressing room while my daughter tried on clothes. (I thought she’d be much older the first time that happened.) We also went to several stores in our town looking for shoes she could wear with her dresses that fit the school’s strict shoe policy. And while we found lots of cute school clothes, we struck out in the school-approved shoe department. So Sunday we went to a larger city about an hour away and searched for several more hours before finally finding her sandals at a store ten minutes prior to closing time. We celebrated with dinner at an Italian restaurant nearby.

Monday was a repeat of Friday, but without the kindergarten orientation and rain. We spent several hours at the beach. And while we sat digging holes in the wet sand, things really began to sink in for me.

This was really the end of summer for us.

But not only was it the end of summer, it was the start of something completely new. So as I dug, I finally allowed the Emotional Dad side to take hold, and I really thought about what all of these changes would mean for us. And I thought about how things might have been if my wife had been here to share in them with us. And the longer I sat there pondering these things, digging holes in the sand, the more I realized that by doing so, I was trying desperately to hold on to the last few moments of my daughter’s childhood as I had known it to that point.

But that was not the moment during which the tears flowed.

We went home and completed our normal nightly routine, with the new addition of packing the backpack and setting it by the front door, and my daughter went to sleep easily, despite her anticipation of what tomorrow might bring.

When the house was quiet and she was tucked in for the night, I hopped in the shower to rid myself of the salt and sand that remained. And I listened to two songs on a particular cd, one of which I will likely share in a future post, and this one. And in that moment, the water from my eyes joined that which was already flowing overhead, and I allowed myself the luxury of a good, long cry.

It was the kind of cry I thought I would have when my daughter graduated from preschool a few months ago. I guess I had reasoned that her preschool graduation marked the end of an era and was therefore sad, while starting kindergarten represented the beginning of an era and should be primarily joyous. Not that I was naïve enough to think I might not cry, I just didn’t expect the emotion to hit me with that kind of momentum.

That weekend my daughter had also begun a cycle of grief that was much more intense than some in the past, and I think I had pushed my own grieving back in order to help her feel and understand hers. Though it would be several more days before she made the connection as to why she was grieving so hard during this particular time, she was able to communicate her feelings in a way that was different than she has in the past.

All in all, it was a beautiful weekend with some emotionally tumultuous spots, but we made it through together. This is just part of how life is for us now. Even the most exciting moments will always be marked with some level of grief and sadness.

And that is how we will continue to make it through. Together.

Due to a staggered enrollment process and a planned absence, which I will write about in a future post, my daughter only attended school on Tuesday that week. But when Monday rolled around she was ready to go back to school and try this kindergarten thing some more. But as is the case with us, Monday came with yet another first. About a year ago, my daughter decided that she wanted to ride the bus when she started “big school”, and true to her own desires, she readily climbed the steps when it pulled up in front of our house. Another day, another change.

I stood there briefly as the bus began to pull away, but there were no tears this time.

Only a big smile from my Proud Papa side.

On a Widower's Discussion

2009-08-24T23:08:00.002-04:00

As I mentioned in my two most recent posts (see here and here), I entertained some friends from college the weekend before last. This is the third and final post in a series regarding events surrounding their visit.

Mr. K and I became friends near the middle of my sophomore year (his freshman) in college. Mrs. K and I had been friends for nearly a year at that point. Ms. T had joined the fold about six months later. So it was a nice surprise when I was introduced to him and found that he and Mrs. K had known each other (in passing) during their high school years. He and I became fast friends and often spent time together without the girls. (He and Mrs. K would not become an official item until after our falling out almost a year later. And even then, he and I remained on good terms until they actually began dating).

After our falling out, his friendship was, in a way, that which I missed the most. While he had played a role in those events, his role had been much more passive than the others. He had merely accepted things as they had become, without making any grand attempts to change them. As it turns out, his role and mine were quite similar, although I was not in a position that would allow me to affect any sort of change in the matter initially.

A few months after my wife died, I received an e-mail from Mr. K. We had all resumed some contact prior to her death (and with her encouragement), but it was the first time I had heard directly from him alone. He simply wanted to check in and see how I was doing. Now, even immediately following my wife’s passing I found myself reluctant to talk about how I was doing. But typically if someone asked I took it as a clear sign that they really wanted to know. More so than the now rhetorical “how are you?” we lob back and forth at one another in passing conversation. So I sent a brief message back which included details of how I was doing instead of the vague generalities I used to appease the “how are you?” crowd.

And I never heard another word from him.

Fast forward to last fall when we got together for the first time since Mr. and Mrs. K’s wedding. When we saw one another we immediately picked up where we had left off all those years ago. And it was a wonderful feeling. His friendship was as genuine as the smile on his face, and we had a great few days together.

And I never heard another word from him.

Now, in the months between the visits, I came to realize something about Mr. K. In this age of e-mail and text messaging, he is not a written communicator. And though the telephone has been around since before our births, he is not a verbal communicator. While most of us use many forms of communication (sometimes simultaneously), it turns out Mr. K is primarily a face-to-face communicator. And now that I have come to understand this, we are once again as close as we ever were.

Which brings me to the story of what happened in the ocean.

As much as I enjoy going to the beach, I don’t typically spend a great deal of time in the ocean itself. When my daughter was younger, the majority of my time there was spent near the edge playing and building sand castles. As she has gotten older, she has become more interested in being carried out into the water and bounced along in the waves. But the vast majority of my sea-bound activities revolve around my daughter. So it is a very rare occasion when I am able to sneak off into the waves for a few moments alone (since I can only do this if another adult is present to watch her).

Such was the case on the Saturday of my friends’ recent visit. After spending a great deal of time bouncing my daughter over and under and in and out of waves, I took her to the shore and asked Ms. T if she would watch her so I could take a quick swim. (Mr. and Mrs. K were still minutes away from returning from a walk down the beach). It was wonderful to spend a few minutes actually swimming alone in the ocean, and I hated to see it end.

Just as I turned to head back to the sand, I noticed Mr. K making his way toward me in the water. When I met up with him, I glanced at the shore to see that my daughter was still okay (with both girls now) and decided to stay a few extra minutes to swim with my friend.

Since I don’t ever wear a watch and refuse to get sand in my phone, it is anybody’s guess how long we actually spent out among the waves. But the time was well-spent, with the conversation drifting in and out of a variety of topics you can discuss with close personal friends. But the best part for me was when he initiated a conversation about how my daughter and I had been doing without my wife. And he called her by name.

There is one thing that has come to mean a great deal to me over the past two and a half years, and I may have mentioned it here before: I love it when people use my wife’s name when they talk about her. Now, my family (both sides) is very good about this. Friends who are/were close to both of us are good about this. But very few others will dare to mention her name. When someone mentions her by name, it validates her existence and her importance in my and my daughter’s lives.

So by his unwitting utterance of a single, five-letter name, my friend advanced a few steps in my hierarchy of friendship. And by not only initiating, but carrying on a lengthy conversation about her, he advanced a few more steps.

But hierarchies aside, what was most important in that moment was that, unbeknownst to him, he provided a sense of comfort to a friend who is still very much in mourning.

On a Widower's Discomfort

2009-08-22T21:14:00.003-04:00

In my previous post, I mentioned that my daughter and I recently hosted some friends from my college days. And while my previous post centered on a situation that should have made me uncomfortable, but did not, this one focuses on a situation that should not have made me uncomfortable. But did.

Because of a falling out I had with these friends during my junior year of college, the reconciliation of which happened only a few months before my wife died, we did not spend any time together while I was married. And since the two currently wed friends in the group, Mr. and Mrs. K, were married a year after we were, I did not spend any time with them as a married couple until after I had been widowed.

During our first visit last fall, Mr. and Mrs. K would freely reference their sex life. Not in a way that was inappropriate, especially considering that my then-four-year-old was with us, but it still made me uncomfortable on a number of levels. Now, my wife and I made it a habit to keep our intimate life private, which is why you have not read even the slightest hint of a discussion about it on this blog. So I was a bit taken aback at the fact that they would make so many comments regarding their own. And during those moments, I opted to stay quiet.

But time has passed since then. And while I am still not going to divulge even the remotest piece of information about my own private dealings, I find that I am not as inclined to be quiet when others feel it necessary to remark on their own. Such was the case on the Friday night of Mr. and Mrs. K’s most recent visit. After my daughter had been put to bed, we all sat around my kitchen table to play a card game. Throughout the game, Mr. and Mrs. K made various comments about what goes on behind closed doors. Our single (never married or in a serious relationship) friend, Ms. T, was one part mildly amused, one part moderately repulsed. But I chose to take a different tack. I offered simple one or two word commentary, mostly in agreement or disagreement with the possibilities of whatever comment had just been made. We were all having a good time and no one was too uncomfortable. Or so it seemed.

As we were clearing our dessert plates and drinking cups after the game, Mrs. K made a comment to me in the kitchen to the effect that I shouldn’t be talking about sex since I presumably wasn’t having any now (I’m not). I retorted that while that may be true, I was married for five and a half years and left it at that. After I went to bed that night I thought about her comment, but could not put my finger on why the game-time conversation had bothered her so much.

It suddenly hit me the next day.

I am very sensitive about my house and yard. I go to great lengths to keep them up (weather-permitting with the yard) and maintain a nice home for my daughter and me to live in. And for some reason I am always nervous about what other people will say when they visit our home for the first time. Maybe even more so now that I am maintaining it alone.

Mr. K and Ms. T were very gracious guests and were at times even complimentary about my home (though they all three had something to say about the fact that the bedroom and bathroom accessories match a set of our dishes). Mrs. K had her own set of comments to make. She wondered why my kitchen and dining room (painted four years ago) were a less-than-masculine shade (they’re lavender). She got a lot more mileage out of the dishes/bedroom/bathroom combination than the others (it’s very outdoorsy. My wife picked the most masculine pattern she could find as a courtesy to me). She made comments about my furniture (which was all given to us. She would have really balked if I hadn’t sold the flowered couch and loveseat last fall). Ironically, she made no mention of the plants and flowers that adorn our front steps or the butterflies which can be found throughout the house and lawn, both of which are my own “feminine” touches.

It wasn’t until she made the comment about the place not looking or feeling like a bachelor pad (in a tone that clearly stated that she believed it should), that her comments began to make sense to me. I told her in no uncertain terms that there was no reason for my home to feel like a bachelor pad because it wasn’t one. It was our home, where I continue to raise our daughter. (And even if she had been a son, I would still not have suddenly transformed the house into some kind of bachelor pad just because my wife was no longer here with us. Regardless of gender, kids need to grow up in a loving home, not a bachelor pad, no matter how loving it may be.)

But the reason her comments made sense to me was as disheartening as it is disconcerting. Simply put, she is uncomfortable with my being a widower.

Now, I will probably never be privy to the reason or reasons she feels this way. It could be that she is upset about the way she treated my wife and me in the early days of our relationship. It could be that she sees that at this point there is no chance of me dating Ms. T and thereby closing the circle of friends. It could be that she doesn’t understand how I can live day-to-day in the face of such adversity and still make it all work.

It could be. But I really don’t think it is.

I think what’s going on instead is that she realizes how easily this could happen to her. It’s easy to read books or watch movies where a spouse dies and remove oneself from the situation. But when someone you know, someone you care about, someone who is too young to have already had and lost it all is widowed, it suddenly forces you to think about a lot of very uncomfortable what ifs.

And if there’s one thing I’ve learned on this Widower’s Journey, it’s that people don’t want to face their grief or those questions unless they are absolutely forced to.

And even then, the results are generally not very pretty.

On a Widower's Dance

2009-08-20T22:26:00.002-04:00

I am a nice guy. A nice, Christian guy. And while I’m certainly no Adonis, I’m also not exactly grotesque. I try to eat right and am in decent physical shape, even with the extra ten pounds I’ve put on since last spring. I’m fairly book-smart and possess at least as much common sense as the average person. I take care of all aspects of the house and yard. I recycle. I make sure the dog is fed and taken out. And I am a good father. Maybe even a really good one.

So it should come as no surprise that I am viewed as somewhat generally attractive to a certain thirty-something subset of single ladies. This actually does surprise me most of the time when it comes up, although I am learning to remember that the rest of the world has forgotten that I am still grieving and may not be thinking much about dating again at this juncture. But clearly there are certain afore-mentioned ladies that are.

Or at least appear to be.

Such is the case with my neighbor’s out-of-state sister. We’ll call her Ms. D. She and her daughter come for a visit each summer, and while our daughters have played together (said neighbor does not have any children), she and I have gotten to know one another a bit. I am always careful not to send out any unnecessary signals that might make a nice, young single woman think I am attracted to her when I am not, but I’m also not sure that I’m very good at that. And in her defense, I’m not sure she’s attracted to me either. But it certainly appears to be so.

The weekend before last, we entertained some friends from college who now live in two other states, neither of which being the one where we all attended said college. Two of the friends, Mr. and Mrs. K, are married to each other and the third, Ms. T, is single and seeking. Now, to set the stage, it is important to know that both of the girls in this friend group had self-acknowledged crushes on me during our college years, but I never dated either of them. In fact, I was virtually excommunicated from the group when I dared to date outside the circle early in my junior year. (On a side note, this girl was actually the one I dated before my wife. I did not date much, but I tend to refer to her as “the one who showed me what I didn’t want in a wife”). They still weren’t too happy when I started dating my wife about six months after that break-up, even though they knew and liked her. In fact, had we not reconciled the friendship shortly before my wife died (and with her encouragement), I doubt I would presently have any sort of relationship with these three friends.

Now, to be fair, I have good reason to think that Ms. T may once again see me as a viable candidate for her husbandry. And I have heard Mrs. K encourage such things, though in the subtlest of ways. How much is coming from Ms. T and how much is coming from the suggestions of Mrs. K is anybody’s guess. But needless to say, I was a bit apprehensive about their visit. Especially as it was to take place at my house.

As guarded as I try to be, however, I could not have been prepared for what happened when they arrived.

My friends arrived late on Wednesday. My neighbor’s sister arrived early on Thursday. Suddenly I was forced into a position where I would have to guard myself against sending signals to two very nice, very different women for whom I have no romantic inclinations. Normally this sort of situation would send me into a panic, complete with cold sweat and stomach knots. But not this time.

In a rare moment of widower humor, I instead stood back and watched the dance unfold.

There were several moments over the next few days when I would find myself talking to one of these ladies and the other would suddenly materialize as if out of nowhere, only typically in closer proximity to me than the other. It was like those scenes from “reality” dating shows where one woman cuts into the conversation/date/make-out session so as to get her own time with the man whose affection she is so desperately vying for. Only I was under no obligation to stop conversing with the one, simply because the other had made her presence known to us. So they joined in the conversation each time, but were seldom successful in drawing me completely away from the other. However, as we stood and talked, I was very aware of the body language and physical repositioning between the two of them and also with regard to me. It was a very slow and subtle, yet also seemingly very deliberate, dance.

Now, for those of you who have read even one of my previous entries, you will note that I am generally a very humble man. I do not attempt to blow my own horn and try to relate very honestly how grief over my wife’s death has affected my daughter and me. But during the course of the grieving process, I have also learned that it is okay to see situations for what they are (or at least appear to be). And if such situations call for humor and/or laughter, then so be it.

So during those few days, I stood and watched a dance that I believe was apparent only to me. And inside, I allowed myself to chuckle a bit.

Looking back on it now, I continue to chuckle, if but only for a moment.

On Her 31st Birthday

2009-08-13T00:16:00.002-04:00

A “side-note” before the post: Please note the new Important Dates section in the sidebar. This was borne out of a comment made by womanNshadows with regard to my previous post. (Thanks for spurring this idea on). I would encourage other widowed bloggers to do something similar, as it gets hard to keep up with all of the different specific dates, and it would be nice to pray for each other more fervently during those days that are likely to be the most difficult. That being said, keep in mind that many widow/ers in the sidebar are experiencing anniversaries yet this month.

One might be inclined to think that, due to my lack of posting in recent weeks, Grief has decided to leave me alone for a bit. It has been quite the contrary. We have managed to stay pretty busy, but there have been some significant dates (see sidebar), some major changes (see future posts), and some simple conversations (again, see future posts) during which it has managed to rear its ugly little head.

Not the least of which was my wife’s 31st birthday.

It seems strange to refer to it as such, since she never got to experience her 30th. Or, for that matter, her 29th. But July 21 would have been her 31st birthday. If she had still been here to celebrate such an occasion.

Instead, we were left to recognize it alone, but with her family for the first time since her passing. I say recognize with purpose. Gone are the celebrations that we used to have - usually a quiet night out to dinner and a movie, or after our daughter was born, a family dinner out, with a birthday date to follow another night. No, these have been replaced by a quiet recognition on my part the last two years. But now that my daughter is old enough to understand dates and times, it has become appropriate to share what specific dates mean. Or should mean.

Or would have meant.

I woke up in the back bedroom at my in-laws home in the Midwest that morning, a home they did not own when she was still here. I wonder if the memories would have been more unbearable if the day had begun in their old house, the one in which she had done the majority of her “growing up”. I will never know that answer. But I do know that there were plenty of memories to go around that day.

I followed the scent of fresh-brewed coffee into the kitchen, and sat for a nice breakfast with my mother-in-law. My father-in-law had gone to the store and my daughter had long-since eaten and was watching tv in another room. I rather enjoy these morning chats with my mother-in-law over coffee on the days she doesn’t have to work. But today, she reminded me way too much of my wife.

For anyone who knew my wife, it was always a surprise to them when they met her mother. One just couldn’t help but notice the uncanny resemblance. When my wife would remark on this, a fact that she actually enjoyed (unlike most women!), I would simply smile and tell her that I enjoyed it too, as I had a good idea of what she would look like at fifty, and I was definitely okay with that. As my wife started to lose weight, first on purpose after our daughter was born and later from complications of her illness, the resemblance became even more unreal.

So on this, her birthday morning, I tried hard to carry on a meaningful conversation with a woman who was hurting as much or more than me, while trying to ignore the fact that she looked so drastically like the woman for whom we were hurting.

It must have worked. Or if not, she was at least gracious enough not to call attention to my obvious pain.

The majority of the day was to be spent at the local 4-H fair watching our nieces show their hogs. We had missed their steer show while I was at my conference, but had managed to make it back in time for their dairy beef show, fashion review, and (later in the week) livestock auction. Since it was the only day we could get together with a friend of ours (hers from high school, mine from college, then ours together once we realized we all knew each other), we agreed to meet at the fair. It was wonderful to see her and she was able to spend a good portion of the afternoon with us. She also arranged for us to see another friend of my wife’s from high school, who happened to be in town and had not seen us for a couple of years, so that was a nice surprise as well. The mutual friend and I are in the same field, so we always have a lot to talk about and the conversation flowed easily. It was really good to see her.

Sounds like a pretty good day, huh?

And it would have been, but for the blasted memories. You see, the last summer we visited family before my wife passed away, we spent some time at that very fair. In those very stands. Watching some of those very kids (my nieces anyway). This friend was not with us that day, but my wife’s best friend from college, who happens to have the same name as this friend, was. That year we were able to see the steer show before we went away for our first and last ever anniversary trip (our early school calendar had prevented us from doing so in previous years). We spent the day with our other same-name friend watching the girls win awards for their steers and showmanship and the like. Some of our best pictures of my wife and her friend and us as a family came from that day. They are some of the last pictures I have in which my wife looked happy. And healthy.

The summer after my wife passed away, this friend gave me a scrapbook of their friendship she had made. The last page is simply a copy of our family picture taken that day, with lyrics to a song I have since come to hold very dear (and will share in another post sometime down the road). The book still sits on the buffet just inside our front door.

That evening we went to dinner at the home of my wife’s older sister and only sibling. She is a tremendous chef, but her meal was toned-down this day. My wife’s birthday was not mentioned among us that night, nor would it be. Her mother and I had discussed it briefly that morning, and I discussed it privately with my daughter, but that was all that was to be said. Though we all knew one another was hurting, we opted to bear our grief in silence. Alone together, as it were.

Over the next day or two, my mother-in-law started to once again remind me only of herself, and I found that much easier to bear. I joined Facebook and found that both my sister-in-law and father-in-law had posted a subtle remark that would have let only those close to them know what the day would have been (if they had not known already). And I decided that I much prefer remembering this and other days like it alone with my daughter.

Which is probably how it will be remembered come next summer.

On the Other Hand

2009-07-30T23:40:00.003-04:00

Tuesday should have marked our eighth wedding anniversary. It is a date that I share with another widower, though we only know this now because of our widower status. My wife and I celebrated five of them together, and even took a trip for our fifth, though we hadn’t the slightest indication at the time that it would be our last.

The first anniversary without her came five months after she passed away and one week after her first birthday without her, which I will save for another post. Sitting here now, I can scarcely remember what we did during the day, but I am almost certain we went to the beach. I know that I planned something fun to do with my daughter, who was unaware of the date at that time, in order to take my mind off of it. Whatever we did, I remember dreading having to face the date that evening after she was tucked safely into bed.

Once my daughter was asleep that night, I did something that I should not have done then, and have yet to repeat since. I watched our wedding video. From start to finish. Part of me wanted to see her move, to hear her speak, to watch her smile and laugh. And the other part of me wanted to torture myself. I had spent a lot of time trying to run from my grief up to this point, but on this night, I opted instead to wallow in my misery. And wallow I did. For two hours.

Sometime during the video of the wedding itself, I took one of my hardest steps as a widower. I removed my ring from my left hand and placed it instead on my right hand. It was a planned moment, but that did not make it any less difficult.

The summer before my wife died, we attended a wake for a woman who had been her assistant two years prior. She had died within about a year of her lung cancer diagnosis, leaving her husband, and elementary aged son and daughter behind. That fall my wife came home one day and mentioned that the assistant’s husband had come in to eat lunch with their son. She then told me about how several of the ladies had taken notice of the fact that he was “still” wearing his wedding band and pondered as to how long he might continue to do so.

When my own wife died just a few months later, the memory of that conversation resonated with me. Since I also work in a school, I knew that people would be talking about me in the same way, even though I would surely never hear the words spoken. So I decided to change my ring on my own terms. But the idea to wear it on my right hand actually came from a friend and co-worker who had been widowed in her early twenties and has since remarried. I had never paid attention to the fact that she wore a diamond on each hand, but she told me that it was her way of keeping her first husband’s memory alive. I liked the idea, so when it came time for me to do so, I followed suit.

In retrospect, I wish that I had waited longer to move my ring. I knew I wasn’t ready, but it was the one time thus far in my grieving process in which I gave in to my perception of what other people expected of me. I thought I should do it before the new school year started, and I knew that there would be no more poignant day to do so that my first anniversary alone. So with hands wet with tears, I made the switch.

My second anniversary alone (the seventh overall) was rather uneventful. I worked in the yard during the day, then my daughter and I went out for dinner that night. I did not watch the wedding video, but I thought about her all day and into the night.

When my daughter and I visited my wife’s stone last week, she asked me to read each item to her as she always does. Our anniversary is written on her stone, and since my daughter has a much better concept of months and dates now, she realized that July 28th was coming soon. So she suggested that we go to my favorite Italian restaurant for dinner “because I needed to celebrate my anniversary”. It was a sweet and selfless gesture, especially coming from a five-year-old, but we ultimately did not do so.

The day started off on a sour note. We had haircuts in the morning, then were to head to her appointment an hour and a half away to have her ear checked. That’s when I realized that I had forgotten something.

Now, I am not someone who forgets things easily or often. Nor am I one who accepts that I am human in the rare instance that I do forget something. But typically when I forget something, it’s something big.

One week prior to this appointment, I was supposed to begin putting ear drops into my daughter’s ear to help clear out any packing left over from her surgery. I remembered this when I grabbed my book to take with me and noticed the prescription slip inside where I had placed it, ironically, so that I wouldn’t forget! I called the doctor’s office and rescheduled the appointment for next Tuesday, but I was pretty hard on myself about my mistake.

Due to a miscommunication with the guy who was supposed to mow my yard while I was on vacation, coupled with over a week’s worth of rain, my lawn was severely overdue for a good cutting. I decided that I would take care of this when we got home following our haircuts and errands. It was a fine plan, but for one problem. The beautiful, sunny day suddenly morphed into an angry, stormy day just about the time I was ready to mow. I’m pretty meticulous about my yard, so that fact that it was overgrown and had been for quite some time did not sit well with me. (I finally got it taken care of today).

These are two seemingly insignificant events, but nonetheless are two which irritated me greatly. Still, I managed to have a pretty decent day grief-wise. Until about five o’clock when someone called to chastise me about something I had posted on Facebook. It was all in good fun, but this was the one day I really didn’t need to hear how “lame” (his word) I was. I probably would have been able to take it if he hadn’t kept on about it. But for some reason it just really bothered me.

After I hung up the phone, I realized the reason it had bothered me. He is usually one who calls to make sure I am doing okay on significant days and he hadn’t mentioned it. He hadn’t even remembered it was supposed to be my anniversary. And sadly, neither did anyone else.

I always wondered when people would stop calling on those days, but I just assumed it would be sometime down the road, when I started dating or was married again. For me, it was the third anniversary alone.

So I spent the rest of the evening thinking about the unfairness of it all. My wife and I had a good marriage. We rarely argued, and when we did, we worked it out so as not to have to go to bed angry. We communicated well. Sure, we had our share of problems, but they were minor in comparison to what a lot of other people deal with inside of marriage. In this world of marital decay, we were the ones who were supposed to make it.

I went to a 50th anniversary party for a couple once, but found little reason to celebrate. It was well-known that he had cheated on her for the majority of their marriage. So what good was it to celebrate their marriage when we were in effect celebrating 50 years of bitterness and deception?

I think there should be a qualitative measure of marriage. Forget measuring it in months and years, measure it in honesty and love instead. My wife and I had more in our five and a half years of marriage than most couples have in a lifetime.

And that’s why I continue to wear my wedding ring. Because regardless of which hand it sits on, it continues to be a symbol of our love and a tribute to our time together.

On Grief's Latest Plan of Attack

2009-07-09T00:30:00.002-04:00

A brief note before the post: For those of you going to the widow/ers conference in San Diego this month, have a great time and enjoy meeting one another face-to-face. I would love to be there, but had already signed up for a landlocked conference for work in the center of the continent that weekend (what are the chances?!?) when I found out about it. I look forward to reading your posts later this month.

Lately I have been bludgeoned with multiple random memories and I’m not exactly sure why. Little things that should be seemingly insignificant will set off a chain-reaction of memories, feelings, emotions or a combination of the afore-mentioned. It has been going on for a few weeks, but only in the last few days have I begun to recognize it for what it is:

Grief taking a new approach with me.

It seems that every time I figure out what tactic grief will use to attack me, it changes course. This random-memories-that-elicit-subtle-behavior-changes track is just the latest in the sequence.

Ironically, it wasn’t a memory or emotion that first clued me in to this. It was a minor behavioral change. Anyone who knows me outside of this blog could tell you that I love ice cream. To be fair, most people do. But I love it like no one I have ever met. I would eat it with every meal if I could do so without suffering any consequences. I enjoy many flavors, but I tend to stick with some favorites at each place of business that specializes in ice cream treats. So it came as a surprise when I noticed that, within the span of a week, I had ordered two tall sundaes with hot fudge and Spanish peanuts. It’s a treat I enjoy, but one I very seldom order.

But it was my wife’s favorite.

I have since consumed two more.

On the Fourth of July, my daughter and I spent the day doing things around home. I refuse to go to the beach as the crowds on this day can only be rivaled by those on Memorial Day and Labor Day. I enjoy crowds like I enjoy jerks in traffic. But that evening we made our mostly annual trek (unless we’re in the Midwest over the Fourth) to a nearby waterfront town to watch the fireworks. There are two things I love about the Fourth – watching the fireworks over the water and eating a funnel cake. I will fight the crowds to do both, especially since the opportunity only presents itself once a year.

We arrived later than I had anticipated, so parking was a nightmare. The funnel cake line was even worse. Luckily we ran into a new girl from church who invited us to sit with her group nearby. I say luckily because we got our funnel cake at five till nine and would still have been walking the four blocks to our regular spot when the fireworks started had we not run into her. We sat down, and the kids began playing while the girl and her friends took pictures of both the kids and the fireworks. My daughter ate half a bite of the funnel cake and I was left to consume the entire plateful alone. Now, I won’t lie and say that I don’t like the taste of a funnel cake, but it’s really not high on my list of bad-for-me treats.

I had a professor in college, a former smoker, who allowed himself one cigarette a year because he liked to remember what it was like to smoke. I stood in that line for an hour because I like to remember how much my wife enjoyed her Fourth of July funnel cake. It’s a strange connection, but the physical behavior seems to enhance the memory for me.

Everything seems to be conjuring up random and seemingly insignificant memories of her lately. It even happened the other night as I was watching a special one-hour episode of that show about the teenage pop-star with a secret identity with my daughter. It doesn’t help that her on-screen mother died of undisclosed causes sometime before the show aired. But in this particular episode, the girl was having boy trouble, and the mother had taped a video to be played in just such an instance. And I found myself tearing up, thinking about how that won’t be happening for my daughter. I know it was written to be poignant, but it struck a far deeper chord with me.

I can’t even escape grief when I’m watching kid-tv with my daughter.

The problem with these and the many recent instances like them is that I can’t figure out what’s triggering them. Sure, there have been some significant events lately, and there are more to come, but I don’t believe that it’s any one event that’s causing this reaction. I guess maybe it’s a combination of a lot of different factors.

Like the fact that my daughter graduated from preschool and I had the gall to think I made it through relatively unscathed.

Or that she had more major surgery than she’s had up to this point in her life and the surgery itself went very well (though grief found it’s way to me by another means that day).

Selling the car may have even deserved more grief-credit than I’ve given it.

Maybe it’s the song I happened upon the other day that took me back to the summer before we got engaged. We had just attended one of the ten weddings we took in that summer (Yep, I sat through all of them and still proposed!) As we were leaving to embark on the nearly four-hour drive home, that song came on the radio. It was one of the artists “crossover” songs and one that I found moderately appealing. But as the engine rolled over and the car came to life, we looked at each other and said almost simultaneously, “Wouldn’t that be a great song for a first dance at a wedding?” (We actually danced to a different song at ours, but it was, ironically, a duet by that artist and her husband).

Such an obscure memory, but it took on a whole different meaning for me the other day.

Perhaps it’s that, for the first time ever, I’ve been thinking about dating. Not in the “I’m interested right now “sense, but in the “it could actually be a possibility in my lifetime” sense. (Don’t get your hopes up Mom, but it’s a start). Up to this point, the idea of dating has seldom entered my mind, and when it has I have quickly thwarted its efforts. In fact, it has been so far from my mind that I am surprised when people ask me if I am or not. Someone once told me that they “could tell when a person doesn’t want to be hugged” which was presumably based on a facial expression of mine. I think that’s the look I give people when they ask if I’m dating (it’s comparable to the “mind your own business” look, but much stronger). When people go so far as to offer or attempt to set me up with someone, I tell them that I’m not ready to date yet, and when I am I will introduce them to her. (So far they’ve gotten the picture). Many of the other widowed bloggers have been writing about it recently (see here, here, here, and here for just a few), which is probably why I have entertained the thought when it has come to call as of late. But it seems to be adding to the muddy waters of my current grief status.

Maybe it has something to do with the post I read this afternoon, which I have been unable to escape. It was written by a man who lost his very young daughter fairly recently and it was a beautiful post. But it forced my mind to visit a place I have deemed off limits. I tend to spend my time fluctuating between “what was” and “what is” (i.e. looking back and moving forward), but this post drove me to think about the third dreaded possibility - “what if”. Partly because my wife died of medical complications and partly because I can’t find any benefit in dwelling there, I have cut off any mental notion of “what if”. But still I have spent the better part of the day thinking about it.

And it hasn’t been pretty.

As if all of this wasn’t enough (and I’ve barely scratched the surface here), both my wife’s birthday and our wedding anniversary are later this month. And for the first time ever, we’ll be spending her birthday with family. In her home town. I’m sure there will be a post about that when we return from vacation in a few weeks. (We’re supposed to be leaving in a few hours, but I wanted to get this off my chest before my computer access becomes limited). We’ll be back home by the time our anniversary rolls around, but my daughter has another follow-up with her ENT that day in that town I hate so much, so there will likely be a post about that as well.

And to top it all off, my daughter has been an absolute bear the last three days. Try as I might to chalk it up to too much time with Daddy this summer or the play dates she’s had this week, the real culprit (which I had begun to suspect) was revealed this evening. We were in the part of town where my wife taught and when she recognized this, she asked if we could “drive by Mommy’s school”. As we pulled into the empty circle drive, I asked what had made her ask to go there and she admitted that she’d been “missing Mommy a lot lately”. We talked some more about it, but since I can’t figure out what my own triggers are, I haven’t even begun to psychoanalyze hers.

But I do find it strange that many of our grief cycles coincide so readily.

I could sit here all night and ruminate on the possible causes and effects of these goings-on, but I’m supposed to be leaving for the Midwest in four to five hours and I still have packing to do (once the dryer stops). Plus, there’s a cup of banana pudding waiting for me in the fridge.

Again, it’s not one of my favorites.

But it was one of hers.

On the Last Major Piece

2009-07-06T22:37:00.003-04:00

It has been two years and four and a half months since my wife’s death.

For the first three months I merely survived and picked up the pieces - at least the ones that had fallen within my grasp. At the end of the third month, however, I had to begin the process of moving forward in that I had to start physically sifting through her belongings.

Beginning with her classroom.

A close friend who also taught at the same school came by and helped me pack up those items of hers that I did not donate to the school – mostly personal effects and some books from her classroom library to give to my daughter as she gets older. It was all boxed up and carted into my bedroom where it was transferred from box to box throughout the summer as I had the time and energy to go through it.

Thus began a process that was mostly finalized in November of last year. Yes, it took me over a year and a half to go through my wife’s classroom items, clothes, and all of the other things that she so enjoyed. I kept some pieces for my daughter, but there was simply too much for us to want or need to keep, so on an overcast Saturday last fall, I finally removed the last of her things from the house.

In a way it was a relief to finally have come to that point in this journey. Not because I was glad to have done it, but rather because I was glad to have it done. It had gotten to the point that the things I had chosen not to keep were an obstacle to overcome, while the things I had chosen to keep were in their rightful places, as they are to this day, where I could gain some sense of enjoyment from them. The house was finally a place where my daughter and I could live and move forward, while remaining filled with the accoutrements that my wife had used to turn our house into a home.

So the house was complete, but there was still one major piece left to deal with: my car.

In June of 2001, just a month before we walked down the aisle, we purchased what came to be known as “the blue car”. Which was ironic in that the car my wife brought into the marriage was also blue. In retrospect, I think we initially referred to them as “the Olds” and “the Topaz” until we sold the other car the next spring.

But I digress.

We purchased the car in my wife’s hometown, the same city we got married in (and ironically, the city we will be spending her birthday in later this month). We traded in my mid-80’s Mustang which was down to its last horse and bought it for a reasonable price for two almost newlyweds who were lacking full-time jobs at the time (I was finishing grad school and she began teaching that fall).

And it was a good car.

It took us on our honeymoon to what would become our future home state and back again eight months later to apply for jobs. It returned just a year after its purchase on a tow-dolly behind our moving van. It was the car that sat in the parking lot of our apartment complex, but looked so much more “at home” in front of our newly purchased house nine months later. It was the car that took our dog to the vet for his final visit and the one that carried our daughter safely home from her first day at day care. It transported me to and from work nearly every day for six years – at first when I worked five minutes from home and later when the drive increased to an hour each way. It took the brunt of more than its fair share of cheese crackers and juice boxes inside, but never required more than routine changing of the oil and spark plugs outside.

Like I said, it was a good car.

In April, 2007, it began what would become a two-year period of dormancy. I had decided to continue driving it until the current plates expired so as to rack up miles on it and not the newer vehicle my wife had always driven. So one afternoon after work I parked it and changed the keys on my key ring. Soon after, I began the process described in the first few paragraphs and the car was all but forgotten as it sat on my driveway. In a way it was the first thing I had to let go.

But it was also the last.

Even after my wife’s things had been sold, consigned, or donated, the car never seemed to take priority. So I had decided that I would deal with it when the school year ended, reasoning that I would be home more often if people wanted to come by to look at it. I was not even remotely excited about the prospect of the actual selling process, which I think is part of the reason I waited so long to pursue it.

But a situation arose in the meantime that would make it easier for both the buyer and the seller. Some relatives “back home” found themselves in need of a second vehicle, and while I knew they would not accept it as a gift, I thought they might take it if I made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. So I did and they did not (refuse, that is). The logistics were worked out, and when my parents left my house a few weeks back, they found themselves pulling a bit more weight than they had upon arrival.

I thought that I would be sad to see it go. I owned that car for eight years and drove it for six. It played its part in many memories – good and bad. It had become an almost permanent fixture outside of our house. And did I mention the memories?

But after my parents pulled out of sight, and even as I write this three weeks later, I feel mostly a sense of relief.

Not because I am glad to have done it, but rather because I am glad to have it done.

On Single Parent Surgery

2009-06-25T01:21:00.003-04:00

After a year of being followed by a local specialist, last week we were referred to a more specialized, but far less local doctor. After a thorough examination, he looked at me and stated that the problem was not apt to correct itself and inquired as to when I would prefer to schedule the initial surgery. We then met with his handler of all things related to surgical procedures and set a date and location, with the time to be determined only a day prior to the procedure itself. We next went to the outpatient surgery center and pre-registered. At neither location was I forced to reveal my status as a widower, nor did I readily supply them with that information.

Throughout these half-day proceedings in a familiar-for-all-the-wrong-reasons city, it became increasingly important for me to reassure my young daughter that this was a routine procedure of sorts and that things were going to be fine. It was understandable that she should be nervous given that this was the first time we’ve had to undergo surgery since it has been just the two of us. And increasingly important as this surgery was not for me.

It was for her.

As like as my daughter is to me, I cannot deny that she is equally, and possibly more so, like her mother. Sometimes even in ways that cannot be seen without medical instrumentation. While I had a relatively healthy childhood, consisting mainly of scrapes, bruises, stitches, and breaks that are not all that uncommon for a growing, if not somewhat clumsy, boy, I typically only found myself at the doctor or hospital for “normal” childhood ailments.

It was not so with my wife.

She was at the forefront of medical trends that are much more commonplace now. She had drainage tubes placed in her ears more than once, yet still had to undergo a right tympanoplasty at age seven when her twice-healed eardrum ruptured anyway. She also began wearing heavy prescription lenses around that time and it was often joked during her short adulthood that once she could see and hear she did much better in the classroom. As she grew older, her medical anomalies increased, but we’ll save that for another post.

Probably one entitled “Ways I Fear History Will Repeat Itself for My Daughter”.

Two days and a thousand fearful questions later, we received a call that my daughter’s surgery could be moved up a week as there had been a cancellation and we had already pre-registered. Once that call was made and I explained the situation, my daughter was much calmer about the whole idea.

So last Friday morning we headed to that city for the second time in a week so that she could undergo a right tympanoplasty. Yes, you read that correctly. A right tympanoplasty.

Just like her mother.

Only, not to be outdone, my daughter will also have to undergo a left tympanoplasty at some time in the (hopefully near) future. So not only is history repeating itself. It’s being taken a step further into somewhat new, but simultaneously familiar, territory.

My daughter, though, who had been understandably fearful about the prospect of this surgery when it was a week away had somehow, during the day on Thursday, found her brave face and attached it securely to her head. So much so, in fact, that I had to remind her on the drive to the surgery center that it was okay to be scared, during which time she admitted that she was, but remained my little trooper, nonetheless. This continued throughout the entire process that lead up to our separation at the actual time of surgery.

I had started the whole process with my brave face on in front of my daughter, but inside I was admittedly very nervous about the whole procedure. I have commented on other blogs that the one area of parenting that truly seems to frighten me is that of when my little one is sick. It’s not that I can’t handle her ailment(s) or that I have flashbacks to the medical nightmare I endured with her mother, but rather the fact that it seems to be the one area that I cannot control as readily as I’d like to. And though I don’t believe too many people would label me a control-freak, I do find that this single parent gig goes much better when I can plan, organize, execute, and adapt as needed. Illness seems to force the adaptation piece to the front of the line, with little to no room for the other elements, thereby thrusting me completely outside of my “comfort zone”.

I kept the brave act up for my daughter, because that’s what parents do. But in a rare moment of self-preservation, I attempted to pull a widow/er card. I actually called a friend to see if he would come sit with me while she was in surgery, but the voice mail message I left just said that I needed a somewhat important favor. I was surprised when I did not hear back from him, but it turns out he was out of town and did not get the message in time (and to his credit, when I called the surgery was still presumed to be a week and a half away. Had the schedule remained the same he would have been able to oblige my request).

But somewhere along the line my brave face stopped being an act and started being the real deal, so that by the time we were separated I felt as calm as we were both acting. I returned to the waiting room. But I did not have to wait alone.

A couple of things transpired during the seemingly infinite number of calls I ended up making and taking the night before the surgery. I phoned all three of my siblings, who I had planned to tell over the weekend during our somewhat regular conversations (both sets of my daughter’s grandparents having been duly informed after the initial appointment). I also received a call from a woman at church regarding some information I needed, during the course of which I mentioned my daughter’s surgery the following morning. Within an hour the senior pastor and the associate pastor’s wife had both called to see if we needed anything. And by the time I went to bed, a mass e-mail had been sent by yet another woman in my age-group asking for prayer for my little one.

In the meantime I had called to tell some other friends, who also happen to attend our church. They had been on my planned call list, whereas the entire church population had not. This was an oversight on my part. It was not that I didn’t want the church to know or that I did not want them to pray for my daughter. It just never crossed my mind to call anyone and tell them.

I guess that’s where being introverted and oblivious does not make for a good mix.

The wife of the friend couple I had called was off the following day and offered that she and her daughters could come sit with me (and, of course, see my daughter pre-surgery). I had decided I was not going to ask them to do that, so it was nice that they offered. It’s an hour and a half drive to this city, and they were there for close to four hours with us. On top of that, she offered to pick up my daughter’s pain medicine, as our pharmacy does not have a drive-thru and the doctor would not call it in ahead of time, when they returned to our town. When you live 800 miles away from your nearest family member, it’s good to know there are people you can count on when you need them most. Even when you don’t ask for their help.

I have decided that all single parents in this situation should have an unrelated friend come sit with them during their child’s surgery. When my daughter had her two sets of drainage tubes placed, at ten and twenty months respectively, my wife and I sat through both relatively short surgeries and unintentionally fed off of one another’s fear and anxiety. This time around, though it was a much longer surgery, the time seemed to pass rather quickly as my friend and her daughters seemed bent on making sure we talked about the same kinds of things we would discuss over lunch together. That’s not to say that I didn’t worry about my daughter during that time. But I definitely did not worry as much as I would have had I been alone with my novel, and I spent much less time imagining the horrors they were putting my baby through on the operating table as a result.

Still, the anxiety returned when I was called back to hear the results of the surgery. The doctor said everything went as planned and then proceeded to pummel me with a laundry-list of things she could and could not do over the next six weeks. He assured me that it would all be written in a concise handout that I would be provided with upon our departure, but in truth only about half of the information seems to have been presented there. Still, I think we have followed protocol accordingly, but we will find out for certain in about fourteen hours.

Though the surgery had gone well and we had both been braver than expected about it, I knew that I was not out of the woods entirely at this point. About fifteen minutes after I returned to the waiting room following my conference with the doctor, I was called back to my daughter’s bedside to see her for the first time post-surgery.

The room had a very hospital-like quality, much unlike the rest of the surgery center. No emotional upheaval so far. Once I found her bed number, I pulled back the curtain and saw the hospital bed and medical equipment. Still nothing. Even the sight of my little baby in her tiny gown seemingly consumed by that huge white hospital bed did nothing to send my flight response into overdrive. I just took her out of the bed, followed the nurse’s instructions while she took her medicine, and helped her fall back into a comfortable sleep. She was not a happy camper and kept repeating the three phrases “I’m tired. My ear hurts. I want this off of me” while tugging at her gown, but that didn’t last long before sleep resumed.

While I sat there holding her, my emotions completely in-check, the nurse started a conversation.

Are you all by yourself? (Here it comes).

Yes. (Maybe she’ll leave it alone).

There’s no one else with you?

Nope. (Not anymore. They’d gone after I went back to sit with her).

She gave a thoughtful pause while she attempted to formulate another way of asking the question that might elicit more information. In an attempt to ward off further questioning, I offered up this:

I’m a single parent. (Maybe that will do it).

Another thoughtful pause.

So does she stay with you most of the time? (Great. Now I’m going to have to spell it out for her. Just what I wanted not to do.)

Her mom died two years ago.

The next question threw me for a loop.

Are you a school teacher?

It seemed a strange segue way, especially when no condolences had been offered, but she asked further questions about where I lived and worked, none of which rang a bell for her. She said she felt like she knew me though and the fact that she knew my occupation (generally speaking) when it would not have been listed that way on the paperwork was enough to give me pause.

I wondered if she might just be a reader of this blog.

But since I don’t make it a habit to put a face with this blog, I did not offer this option, but instead left her to her own curiosity (So if you’re out there reading this, kind nurse, please know that no harm was done and I mean no ill-will by writing about our conversation).

She left and I placed my daughter back on the bed as she was not having an easy time finding comfort in my arms. When that happens, it is usually a sign that she wants to stretch out, and sure enough, she fell into a deep sleep upon her return to the bed. I sat in the darkened area thinking that things had gone much better than I had thought they would, given that this was my first time in a hospital-like setting since my wife passed away in one. I was going to escape almost completely unscathed.

Almost.

But not quite.

Within a few minutes someone was wheeled into the bay next to my daughter’s. The curtain was only pulled partway and, judging by the hands and body size, it appeared to be an adult male of advanced age. I do not presume to know the details of his situation, but given what I could hear both from him and the nurses, it appeared that things had not gone as well as planned and that he needed additional care during the initial stages of his recovery. There were medical terms flying, medication names being rattled off, physical ailments soaring. There were hospital machine noises and each one seemed to be sounding right inside my ear. It was almost too much to handle. My flight response, which had been so completely dormant throughout the morning, suddenly found overdrive, and it was all I could do not to bolt out of the room, searching for the nearest exit from the building as I ran.

But you can’t do that when you have sole responsibility for your child.

So instead, I pulled my fast-paced FBI thriller, something with which I have no prior experience, out of my bag and tried my best to lose myself in the elements of the story while keeping a close, watchful eye on my still-snoozing daughter. I wish I could say that my emotional response immediately subsided upon drawing out my book, but it was a much more gradual fade than that. After about ten minutes the nurse came in with discharge instructions and by the time she was finished I was as close to being back to normal as possible. I took my still sleeping daughter to the van, buckled her safely into her car seat, and listened to the sounds of her breathing as I pulled out of the parking lot and started toward home.

While I was mentally preparing myself for this surgery, I went over every aspect I could possibly think of that might be an emotional trigger for me. I thought about the hospital-like setting. I pondered the effects of seeing my daughter in a hospital gown. I worried about the repercussions of her head-encompassing bandages following surgery. I even thought about the primal noises she might make when coming out of the anesthesia. But it never once occurred to me that the trigger might come from an outside source. And it never once occurred to me that my flight response would be as strong as it was.

But at the same time, I also never doubted that I wouldn’t give in to it.

My daughter woke up when we arrived home that afternoon and stayed awake until about 9:30 that night. She took a second dose of pain medicine, which I insisted upon, after dinner. She was asleep before her bedtime dosage and never asked for any more. We spent a relatively quiet weekend together at home, and she returned to her normal schedule Monday, just with limited activities until her next appointment in fourteen hours.

Actually, make that twelve hours.

On Father's Day and My Two Dads

2009-06-21T23:46:00.005-04:00

Unlike Mother’s Day, Father’s Day is not a day that causes me to miss my wife any more than any other Sunday might. That’s not to downplay the fact that I would not even be a father had she not carried our daughter for 35 weeks and assisted in her safe arrival into this world, a fact for which I am eternally grateful. But for the past three summers, it just hasn’t been a day when I’ve dwelt on the fact that she is not here to celebrate with us. For me, Mother’s Day is a kick in the pants. But Father’s Day? Well, it’s a time to celebrate me.

Due to circumstances which I will write about in an upcoming post, we were confined to the house for most of this Father’s Day. As a result it was relatively low-key. We weren’t able to attend church, but my daughter still woke me at 8:00 with wishes of “Happy Father’s Day!” I find it really sweet that she remembers these things on her own and, at five, tries her best to make it a day about me. There were a couple of cards from her (compliments of my parents and some friends at church), one of which had a gift card to my favorite local home improvement store (and garden center). She had already given me some flowers for the yard when my parents were here for her preschool graduation, so the gift card came as a total surprise. But who doesn’t love to get gifts before they even set foot out of bed in the morning?

After the cards and gifts, my five-year-old informed me that we were having eggs for breakfast with toast and bacon. She enjoys helping out when I cook and knew that this was a breakfast she could do the majority of the prep-work for unaided. So I fried turkey bacon and brewed coffee while she cracked brown eggs and loaded whole wheat bread into the toaster. Then we celebrated by promptly consuming all of our hard work.

I spent a lot of time reading during the morning and afternoon and ultimately finished the book I started just the other day. Reading is a luxury for me and finishing a 500 page book just a few days after I began reading it is a rare treasure indeed. But my daughter was intent on making this day what I wanted, so a relaxing day of reading seemed to be the perfect fit.

While I was reading, she was busy creating art work at the kitchen table and watching tv. And when I was not reading, we managed to get in a good deal of play time. It is a balance I rarely get to enjoy as a single dad, and having it on Father’s Day was wonderful.

I also had an interesting experience when we drove through one of my daughter’s favorite fast-food restaurants to grab lunch. It was another of the myriad slow drive-thru’s in which I regularly seem to find myself, and we had waited a good twenty minutes by the time we arrived at the window. There was a familiar face there as we tend to frequent this place many Sundays after church. While they were getting our order straightened out (people had left the line after ordering, further slowing down the process), we had this conversation:

Oh, and by the way, Happy Father’s Day.

Thanks.

You’re a single dad, right?

Yes.

I commend you. That’s a hard job.

That was it. Our food was ready and we drove off. But these kind words from a (mostly) stranger put a smile on my face. I tend to try my best not to draw attention to my “situation”, but we all enjoy a kind word or deed every now and again, and I truly appreciated her giving one to me at that moment.

The rest of our low-key day was just that. Dinner was pizza delivered to our door followed by ice cream from a nearby chain. They were out of vanilla, so I had my concoction made with chocolate instead. I liked it well enough that I may request they do it that way next time.

All in all, it was a nice day. I got to spend the entire day with my current best girl, and I managed not to grieve any more than normal for my former one.
___________________________________________________________

And now, I’d like to take a moment to wax philosophical about dads.

I’ve written a bit about my dad in previous posts. I have also mentioned my stepdad in several posts. But I wanted to take this moment on Father’s Day to talk briefly about them both.

My dad died when I was nine. It seemed strange as a child, but is all the more so now that I am raising a daughter without a mom. I have three siblings and while my dad was not hands-on, I think he did the best he could. I do have some good memories with him and my mom has been great about sharing things throughout my lifetime that I would not have otherwise known about him. When I refer to my dad, that’s who I have in mind.

Much to my displeasure, my mom remarried when I was twelve. I will be the first to (now sheepishly) admit that I was not my stepdad’s number one fan. Even though my dad and I were not close, I think I felt like I would betray him if I let my stepdad in. (Keep this in mind if/when you begin dating again fellow widow/ers). Plus, we had personality conflicts that got in the way of building a good relationship. So for six years we lived in discord.

It wasn’t until I started college that I began to see things differently. It turns out that the only conflict in our personalities was that we were too much alike. I had matured quite a bit as well, and we had both done a great deal of healing - me from the death of my dad at a young age and him from the break-up of his first marriage and all that it entailed. But mostly, we were able to relate to each other as men more than as a strained stepfather/stepson.

Which is odd, because that’s when his best dad qualities surfaced.

Over the last thirteen or so years, we have forged a relationship similar to that of most adult fathers and sons. We enjoy spending time together, both in working on projects and relaxing during leisure activities when we visit one another. We don’t talk on the phone much, but I always know he is just a call away when one of my mechanical devices isn’t cooperating (which is often). Plus he takes good care of my mom (and what son doesn’t want that?)

Even so, I have never called him “dad”. At first it was out of a sense of loyalty to my dad. But as time marched on, it simply seemed trite to make the switch. But at this point, the “step” is merely a formality; a weak syllable preceding the truly important part of this compound word.

Because regardless of titles, in this rare instance blood and water have achieved equal viscosity.

On Milestones Marked Alone

2009-06-15T00:30:00.003-04:00

On Friday, June 5, 2009, my daughter marked a milestone. That was the night of the first of (presumably) three graduations in her lifetime should we continue to live in the area in which we now reside. Where we live neither the close of kindergarten or middle school is marked with a ceremony, so this is the last time she will participate in a graduation ceremony of any kind until she completes high school. In thirteen years.

Many people here seem to think that the idea of a preschool graduation is overrated, an unnecessary waste of their temporal and financial resources. It is a burden to be borne and a nuisance with which to comply. I, however, have looked forward to this day for the last two years, albeit with mixed emotions.

Just a few months after my wife passed away, we were invited to the preschool graduation of the daughter of some very close friends, who also attended the same daycare/preschool as my daughter. Though I was still very much in no mood to celebrate, I put on the happiest face I possessed at the time and we (my then three-year-old and I) attended the ceremony. Had I not attended that night, I don’t believe I would have realized what a big deal is made over the ceremonies at this particular school and would therefore probably not have insisted that my daughter’s grandparents travel here when it was her turn to graduate. Suffice it so say, it is a very well-done program, especially when one considers that these children have not yet set foot inside an official public school building.

Thus, by the evening of June 4th, I had not only completed my final day of work for the school year, but had readied the entire house for enough company to fill all three of the bedrooms in my modest little abode. My parents arrived on Wednesday night, just about the time my daughter usually heads off to bed. I, of course, allowed her to stay up late that evening as they had traveled all day to see her. They took up residence in the official spare bedroom (which my daughter usually refers to as “Grandma and Grandpa’s room” even when they are not visiting) as they would be staying longer than the others. The following evening, my wife’s parents arrived and took up residence in my room as I thought that would be more comfortable for them than sleeping in my daughter’s room.

(A side note here: When I bought my daughter’s “big girl bed” last summer, I purchased a trundle bed with the specific thought that it would be ideal should both sets of grandparents have occasion to visit at the same time. The only trouble with this idea is that, even though the trundle pops up to meet her regular bed, I bought mattresses of two different thicknesses and thus there is a gap of an inch or two between the two beds. Not the end of the world, but not exactly comfortable for people nearing sixty, either. So I slept on the trundle at floor level and gave them my bed instead.)

I took the day off Friday, but had to send my daughter to school for the morning as it was the dress rehearsal for graduation and even a houseful of grandparents was not reason enough to justify missing it. So we arose as if it were a normal work day, with me dropping her off shortly before breakfast was served. I then spent more than twenty minutes in the drive-thru of one of my favorite breakfast chains, while they forgot my order and I eventually had to exit the vehicle and go inside to inquire about it. Breakfast finally in hand, I headed home.

On the way, I had what would be my first and only good cry of the weekend.

I managed to quit before I pulled in the driveway, and if anyone could tell nothing was mentioned and no looks were visibly exchanged. We all enjoyed a nice leisurely breakfast, then went our separate ways – her parents to the mall to find her mom a new dress, my mom and I to town to buy teacher gifts and pick up my daughter’s graduation gift from Daddy. My stepdad stayed home, presumably to make some work-related calls, but I think he really stayed to keep the dog company.

Mom and I picked my daughter up around noon. We managed to pry her out of her sobbing teachers’ arms only after I’d promised to bring her back to visit this summer. Once home, we all shared lunch, Then my daughter attempted to rest while the men checked and charged their camera and video camera batteries and the women ironed their dresses and fixed their hair. (It was very 1950’s except for the electronics).

We arrived at the preschool early, so there was actually a little time to relax before the ceremony started. I spent time talking to some friends and then the lights went down and a parade of children entered singing in very proud voices and waving small streamers. They were all dressed in their Sunday best, but none had donned a gown at this early stage of the ceremony. They looked like little grown-ups in theirs dresses and ties, but for the child-like adulation on their young faces. The group of forty or so children sang several songs that they had obviously practiced well before parading back out the doors through whence they had come.

This was followed by several specials, including two songs by a very talented young girl from across the state. Then more music was played as the children reentered, this time in their tiny pink and blue caps and gowns. If I thought they looked like little grown-ups before, I was definitely not prepared for this. They sang two more songs as a collective group, then each class was called up individually for the presentation of their diplomas. My daughter’s class was second and she was the second to last one called. But each child’s name was called and each was handed a diploma.

As I snapped as many pictures as possible, the gravity of my wife’s absence hit me in a way it hasn’t in quite some time.

I managed to hold myself together and continue smiling like the proud papa I was, but under the pride was an emptiness I had been naïve enough to believe I might not have to endure again. Now I know to expect it again when she starts school in a couple months.

After her class had been presented, she was allowed to come sit with me. So even though she sat mostly on my lap, the seat next to me was no longer completely empty. We waited and clapped as the other classes were presented, but my joy for the evening was complete, the fulfillment of which was perched on my left leg.

After the ceremony ended, we spent some time talking to our friends who had returned my favor of two years prior and come to see my little one walk across the stage. Then we headed to the fellowship hall for the reception. Most early childhood graduation ceremonies do not hold a reception of any kind, but I am certain none hold one quite like the one we enjoyed. Every table and wall in the entire hall was decorated – tablecloths, balloons, confetti - you name it. There was a full buffet line including some hot items and many (intentionally) cold ones and desserts as well. Every teacher my daughter has had in her five years there came and spoke to us, and most gave hugs as well. It was a joy to see the love that my daughter has experienced during her days while I was away at work. There is something comforting in not only knowing that your child is well cared for, but in seeing the manifestation of that love in moments such as this. It was a beautiful evening and one we will not soon forget.

Once we had eaten our fill and said our goodbyes, we piled back into the van and returned to my house. I’m not sure if it is customary to give gifts upon one’s preschool graduation, but I come from a family where giving gifts is one of the many ways we demonstrate our love for one another. So we capped off the evening by bestowing gifts on the new graduate. My parents gave her a beautiful cross necklace, which she has worn to church both Sundays since the graduation. My in-laws gave her some books about kindergarten (which she loves) and a bit of spending money (which didn’t last long!) She also received some gifts from some of her aunts and uncles who could not be here for the ceremony itself.

But everyone was gracious in allowing the biggest gift to be from me. In truth, it was something she was going to get anyway, but this occasion gave me a good excuse to do so.

As I mentioned before, it was a beautiful evening. And even though my wife’s absence was felt by us all in some capacity, I believe we did all that we could to make it the best celebration we possibly could.

And in the end, that is what truly mattered.

On an Inspiring and Heartbreaking Story

2009-05-31T22:36:00.003-04:00

This week has been hectic, to say the least. Some contractual issues at work have had me putting in longer than normal hours, both there and at home, and we have both been feeling the effects of the decreased “Daddy time”.

But this story is not about me.

When I walked into my office Wednesday afternoon (yes, I work at both a school and an office, but its all part of the same job), I was greeted by a colleague with “So have you heard my news?” Her expression did not leave any hint as to whether the news was good or bad, so my mind immediately jumped to the latter and I thought she was going to tell me that she had taken another job. This was (thankfully) not the case. She instead informed me that she had been granted temporary custody of a student who is now at my school, but used to be at her school. (I will give details somewhat sparingly as this child is in foster care and though I do not generally give names and locations, I would not want anyone reading this to be able to figure out who the child is, should they happen to live/work in my community.)

I asked her tons of questions, not the least of which was “How in the world did this come about?” She answered me calmly and gave me the details that I unfortunately cannot share. What came through was a sense of excitement. Not in a selfish or prideful (look at me) way, but excitement that she and her husband were going to be able to do something to keep this child from being bounced around from one foster home to another, which had unfortunately been the case during her short time in care. Through an unusual set of circumstances, they had been allowed to take her in and provide her with the love and support she was apparently not getting at her previous foster home.

At this point I will take a moment to mention that there are many very good foster homes in this country and specifically in the area where I live and work. It just appears that in this situation, the child had not felt welcomed or wanted in her current placement and was excited about the change.

This whole situation with this child and my colleague represented the epitome of the way the foster care system should work. Here was a family who got it, (even though they don’t know about this blog and therefore did not read this recent post). And here was a child who was finally going to feel welcomed in someone’s home while she waited for her family to get straightened out enough that she could return to them. It was a beautiful picture in my mind and I found myself very happy that they would all be together during this time. It almost seemed too good to be true.

I received an e-mail the following afternoon that said they would be moving the child to another home that evening.

I was upset, so I know that my colleague must have been devastated. I could not imagine why they would have taken the child out of her home when the situation was so right on so many levels. As it turns out, I discovered the reasons the very next day when I saw the student. When I talk to my students I am very careful not to ask questions of a personal nature, especially when I know there are extenuating circumstances as there were in this case. But this child is very forthcoming and told me the information of her own accord.

What it boiled down to was that social services did not like the way the situation had played out in the first place (the decision had been made by the courts) and used a series of very flimsy reasons to remove the child from my colleague’s home. I know this because the child told me as much.

What I also know is that talking about her one night stay at my colleague’s house was the only time the student perked up during our time together that day. When she talked about her other foster homes and her current placement, she did so with her head down and her tone subdued. But when she talked about being at my colleague’s house she looked directly at me, smiled, and spoke in an enthusiastic manner. Had this woman not been a friend and colleague, I still would have noticed the unmistakable contrast in her demeanor when speaking about her home and the other homes she had been in.

It was unmistakable. Undeniable. Unfortunate. Unnecessary.

It was one of those heartbreaking stories that you hear all too often regarding the US foster care system. Now, in my own defense, I had fully planned to sit down this weekend and write a post about how well the system had worked in this case (since I knew I would not have time till the weekend), but I never expected it to turn out this way. Neither did my colleague.

And neither did the child.

I had the opportunity to see my colleague later that afternoon. I did not mention that I had spoken with the student or what she had told me. I hadn’t planned to say anything about it at all, mostly because I didn’t want to pour salt in what was sure to be an open wound. But she opted to speak to me about it, and I was able to convey to her that the child had been truly happy with her (she was worried that the child would think they did not want her, when the decision to move her was out of their hands). She added details the child would not have known as to why she was moved, which made it seem all the more like a power play instead of a decision based on what was best for the child.

As I mentioned before, it was one of those heartbreaking stories.

But perhaps the most heartbreaking part came just before we parted ways when I asked her if she thought she and her husband might try to foster another child someday. Her response was that they both felt like they had been burned by a system that did not make decisions with the child’s best interest at heart. And that they did not want to do that to themselves, their own children, or the child/ren they might foster again.

It’s a sad truth in American society today. Many families who want to foster have been burned by or are afraid of the system and therefore choose not to get involved with it in the first place. It’s the very reason my wife and I had chosen to pursue international adoption instead of domestic. We had even talked about fostering kids who were not available for adoption, but neither of us felt like it was something we could do for reasons such as what you’ve just read. Unfortunately, there are many people/families who foster for the wrong reasons and end up making the child/ren feel unwelcome. This is not to negate all of the wonderful families out there who demonstrate everything that is good about the system. But it does add one more story which perpetuates the image of a broken social services system in this country. If we don’t step in to help in some way, it will never change.

And the children are the ones who will suffer most for it.

On Our Magical Experience

2009-05-25T01:11:00.003-04:00

In some of my recent posts, I have alluded to an upcoming trip, a “magical adventure” if you will. The adventure has now come and gone, but we will have the memories of it for a long time to come. (Warning: This post is really long!)

On Saturday

We arose at an hour that would be considered normal during the work week, only this day’s routine involved packing the final few items (like out toothbrushes) and getting in the van not for the short ride to daycare, but for a much longer ride to the magical place. There were portions of the drive that I have not taken before, so we made a couple of stops along the way. The drive along I-95 was not nearly has stressful or heavily-trafficked as I had been told it would be, so other than the increased time it took to get to our destination, it was a rather pleasant drive. I did encounter more than my fair share of jerks in traffic (like this line-hugger), but I managed to keep my road-rage to a minimum.

We also got to see the ocean from two new states, with very different results.

We arrived two hours late to meet some friends for dinner, but they were understanding and unexpectedly took care of the entire bill, which was more than generous, especially after having waited so long for us to arrive.

After a long day, we passed through the gates and found our way to the resort/hotel that would be our home for the next three days.

Thus began my daughter’s first visit to Disney World.

On Sunday

This entire trip came about as a result of some very dear friends of mine from college. I have mentioned them briefly in posts past, primarily by mentioning the fact that they are the one set of friends I have with whom things have truly not changed over the past two-plus years. He and I were friends (and for two semesters roommates) in college and are very much alike in both our personalities and our outlook on life. His wife and mine were ironically very alike in the same ways. He and his wife were high school sweethearts who married fourteen months before my wife and I did. We stood in each others’ weddings. We had the privilege of visiting them in the hospital following the births of their two daughters, even though they still live close to where I grew up, 800 miles away. They have spent a week with us most summers since we moved here, both prior to and since my wife’s passing. They are true friends in every sense of the word.

Still, it somehow caught me off-guard that they would invite us along on their family vacation to Disney World. When we first started planning this, he worked for a company that had connections to discounted tickets and hotel rooms, which is how this trip became so easily affordable for me (he has since changed jobs). The planning just sort of worked itself out. Including the fact that this is the only time we could have gone during the school year, since my daughter (the oldest of our three combined children) will start school next year and I would not likely pull her out for something like this.

They flew in late Saturday night from the Midwest, so we did not see them until Sunday morning, when we met to go to Disney’s Animal Kingdom (the friends we ate dinner with Saturday night were friends from high school who live in Florida now). We took what should have been a short walk to their adjacent resort/hotel and met them out front where the buses arrive and depart.

A note to anyone considering a trip to Disney: If you can possibly afford it, stay on the Disney property. The biggest travel concern we had once we arrived was having to take the bus to the monorail to get to dinner one night. It took all of the stress out of traveling! (And on another note, consider the meal plan. We did not and now I kind of wish we had.)

We hopped on the bus during what would turn out to be the only sunny day of our stay. The first characters we met upon arrival were Lilo and Stitch, of which my daughter is a big fan, and thus began our three days of frustration. Almost every time we would approach a character for an autograph and photo-op, they would suddenly have to go on a short break. These breaks normally lasted only 2-5 minutes, but it was still inconvenient to have to wait, sometimes in the Florida sun, while they did this. What was even more irritating is that they gave a verbal warning, then randomly cut off the line. There was no point that allowed you to know whether you would see the character before or after their break until their break actually began (for us, it was always after). My disappointment with Lilo and Stitch was that the park had only been open for thirty minutes and Lilo had to go “run an errand” for her sister and would not be back til later in the afternoon, so my daughter only got to meet Stitch (initially. We stood in line again later so she could meet Lilo too).

I will not bore you with a complete list of the characters we were able to see that day, but I will tell you that we missed nearly as many as we saw due to these “breaks”.

The Animal Kingdom is a beautiful, well-shaded park, and I would recommend it to anyone visiting Disney long enough to see more than one park (assuming you have small children and the Magic Kingdom has to be at the top of your list). Again, I won’t bore you with a list of the rides we rode and the shows we saw, but I will tell you one of each that are simply must-see/do.

If given the chance, ride the African safari ride. I don’t recall the actual name of it, but you’ll know it when you hear it. It played out much like I believe a real safari would, only the animals were much closer and easier to view than I imagine it would be on a real safari ride (plus it beats the plane fare to Africa and I got to sleep in a resort/hotel that night). The only caution is not to sit in the back seat or two. The terrain is fairly rugged, and the four of us in the back seat were bounced around a bit too much for my daughter’s safety-meter.
The Lion King show there is also must-see. It is what I believe is called a “theatre in the round” format, so there is action from every side and a bit of audience participation thrown in as well. And my daughter got to meet Timone afterward, which was a bonus for her.

The Animal Kingdom closes at five (at least on Sundays), so we made plans for that to be the day we went to eat dinner with a princess. There is a multiple-princess dinner at the Magic Kingdom, but it is hard to get into and the kids apparently don’t actually get much face-time with the princesses, so we instead opted for the Cinderella dinner at the Grand Floridian Resort on the Magic Kingdom property (this was the dinner that required riding both the bus and the monorail). Once we were seated, it was nothing short of wonderful. Seating was the problem of the day, it seemed.

When we arrived for our previously reserved time, we were told the computers were down and were handed a buzzer and little to no assurance that we would be seated in a timely fashion. Knowing that this dinner was buffet-style, we had eaten a light lunch earlier in the day. It had started to rain, so the computer problem seemed legitimate enough. But we continued to wait. And wait. And wait. After about forty minutes, I convinced my friend that we should go back and remind them that we were still waiting with three hungry girls (and three equally hungry adults). We did. The troubling thing about it was that no one could seem to give us any answers other than “our computers are down. We’ll seat you when we can”. Now, it’s been fourteen years since my last trip to Disney, but I know that above all else, Disney is a well-oiled machine. So the fact that a computer problem could create such havoc with their reservation system is still quite lost on me. I think there was something else going on (like being short-staffed perhaps) and they were content to blame it on the computer problems. All told, we waited over an hour for what was supposed to have been a reserved time slot.

But as I mentioned before, the dinner was nothing short of wonderful. We ended up with a table in the center of the room and were greeted first by Prince Charming, who instantly had my five-year-old swooning. He even made a proposition to the two older girls (the youngest would have nothing to do with the characters, even if they looked like real people), which he made good on later in the evening. His visit was followed by Cinderella’s stepmother and stepsisters and Cinderella herself. And in the midst of all of that, we finally managed to partake of the wonderful buffet we had heard so much about.

The Prince’s proposition had been that he would like to ask the girls to dance, which he did toward the end of dinner, on the dance floor which happened to be next to our table. Cinderella came too and the girls were able to dance with each of them.

I think if the vacation had ended there, I would have come home with one happy little girl.

We took our separate buses back to the hotel and I carried my sleeping daughter across the vast expanse of the property to our room in a lightly falling rain.

On Monday

We met our friends at their room this time, which proved to be much closer than meeting them at the front of their hotel. Each resort property had ten or eleven separate buildings on it, and ours were both near the back of our respective properties. It allowed us to see their hotel and was a much shorter walk from ours. It was cloudy, but the rain had not officially started falling at this point.

We rode the bus again, only this time our destination was one we had chosen more for the adults in the party – Disney’s Hollywood Studios. For those of you old-schoolers like me, it used to be called MGM, but has undergone a name change sometime in the last fourteen years. None of us had ever been to that park either (it was the same with Animal Kingdom), but of the three, it was quickly deemed my favorite. There were plenty of great characters to meet (including two of my favorites from the Toy Story movies), as well as more rides and shows.

Again, I won’t bore you with the lists, but the Beauty and the Beast show was excellent. I rather enjoy musicals anyway, but for an amusement park, this one was top notch. Plus it got us out of the rain for half an hour. I really enjoyed the Toy Story ride, which puts you into a video game scenario and actually tabulates your points at the end (I didn’t know this and was consequently beaten by the other adults in my party). The ride itself is a bit jerky, but well-worth it. Other things I enjoyed were the Muppets 3-D Vision show and the Hollywood back lot tour, though the latter proved to be a little too realistic for my five-year-old and was thus a bit frightening.

Oh, and I can’t remember what the place was called, but if you get a chance find the place where they discuss animation and take a look around. My mother’s artistic ability all seems to have gone to my younger brother, but I still managed to draw this there:

While at Hollywood Studios we also enjoyed our second of two character meals (if you get the meal plan, I’d schedule as many of these as possible as they count as one regular meal), this time with some characters from Playhouse Disney. These were not characters from shows my daughter has ever really watched, but we knew she would have fun anyway, and the other girls are into the shows. My daughter, polite as ever, actually said as much to a character from Little Einsteins. As the character hugged her, she leaned in and said “I don’t really watch your show, but I like your dancing”.

Another benefit to staying on the Disney property is that certain parks are open late on certain days for resort guest only. This week it happened that Hollywood Studios was open late on Monday, so we enjoyed an extra three hours of time that night with about a third of the crowd. Since I hate crowds and during this trip added “stupid tourists” to my list of jerks (which also includes people who cut me off in traffic, people who abuse others, and people who have an absurd number of children and subsequently flaunt them on reality tv), this was also a highlight of my day.

My daughter managed to stay awake on the bus ride home, which was nice as she was able to hold her own (kid-sized) umbrella on the walk back to our room.

On Tuesday

The morning began with an unpleasant work-related call, about which I had been given warning during out visit to Hollywood Studios the day before. It was no reflection on my work whatsoever, but rather was regarding a decision being handed down from the higher ups that affects all people in my position. But I was able to put it in the back of my mind and face the cold and rain for our third and final day’s destination – the Magic Kingdom.

Our friends were actually staying through the end of the week, so this was the mid-week climax of the trip for their girls, whereas it was more of a grand finale for mine. (Hindsight and the morning’s phone call told me I should have stayed the rest of the week, but that would have cost a lot more). This time they met us at our hotel as they wanted to check out our room too, and we boarded the bus from there. The Magic Kingdom was the furthest of the three parks from our hotels, but the kids had grown accustomed to the rides and actually seemed to enjoy them.

Today the rain beat down relentlessly, so we sought out as many indoor activities as was humanly possible. The one exception was the Dumbo ride, which was the only ride all three girls had asked to ride. We were all cold and wet when it was over, but it as worth it.

Ah, the things we do for our children.

This was the day my daughter got to meet three of the other princesses, so that was at this point, the icing on the cake for her. The line to meet them was half as long as the line to meet the fairies (they’re side-by-side), so we only met the princesses that morning. We also rode the Peter Pan and Pooh rides, both of which were big hits with the kids.

At this point, it might be important to mention that my friend’s wife had had matching outfits made for all three girls to wear to the Magic Kingdom. We had received more than our fair share of stares at the other two parks, but the matching outfits really threw people for a loop. I’m used to people sometimes giving me a second glance with the “poor divorced dad” look. I’m pretty certain people don’t automatically jump to the conclusion that I’m a full-time single dad, and definitely not due to being widowed. At the very least, I figured on this trip people might think I was the single uncle who had tagged along and that all three girls were my friends’. Whatever people thought, it did not stop them from staring. In fact, one young woman did so repeatedly and unabashedly while we waited in a character line so much so that I was tempted to say “I’m with him” just to really throw her off (I didn’t).

It amazes me that in this day and age, people still want to know what people’s “situations” are for no other reason than the pure gossip-factor it might bring. (I’ve had this happen before only the other time I was with a same sex couple. That really threw people off! They all wanted to know which of us was my daughter’s daddy.) We decided next time we vacationed together we’d get shirts to help the process. Our two favorite ideas were as follows: “I’m with him” on the front of the shirt, “I’m with her” on the back or one that says “We’re just as confused as you are” (my personal favorite). If you’re still reading at this point, feel free to send other ideas!

Of the three parks, the Magic Kingdom was my least favorite, but the kids all really enjoyed it. We did go to the Monster’s Inc Laugh Floor, which was an interactive show and fun for the whole family. It kept us dry, but I’d recommend it anyway. And we did get back to see the fairies that afternoon as the rain was really coming down at that point. It turned out to be worth our wait. For anyone with little girls, they were by far the most interactive of all the characters we met. My daughter is not really into them, but she was captivated during the brief time we actually got to see them (though this was the line of the staring “situation analyzer” I mentioned before and even the fairies themselves seemed a bit confused, referring to all three of the girl as “sisters”).

That night, my friend found us the perfect spot to watch the fireworks. Cinderella’s castle sat directly in front of us down Main Street and our “spot” kept us sheltered from the continuing rain. Despite the rain, they managed to put on a spectacular display, and it was a great way to end the trip.

When we headed to our respective bus stops, our friends realized that this was “it” for us and seemed genuinely sad to see us go. I have often said that the sign of a good trip (anywhere) is that you are not quite ready to go when the time comes. And so it was with this trip. We exchanged hugs and the night ended once again with me holding my sleeping daughter under an umbrella against the pouring rain.

On Wednesday

As this post has already waxed long, I will keep the remainder brief. I dreamed about the situation at work and woke up thinking about it that morning. I guess I was making up for all the time I had spent not thinking about it the day before. It was pouring rain, so we picked up a quick breakfast and some last minute gifts as we checked out of the hotel, then headed for home.

The torrential downpour continued across Florida and into Georgia. Within twenty miles of crossing the Georgia border, the rain dissipated and we barely saw a trace of it the remainder of the drive home. The trip home proved to be a bit faster than the trip there, though we did stop for a few minutes in one southern city I had never visited. I think I was a bit more confident with the route, though the traffic on I-95 still did not bother me, even in the rain.

The fact that I had now completed this trip my wife and I had dreamed of taking our daughter on since before we knew she was our daughter, also did not bother me as much as I thought it would during the trip, although it has in the days since. Perhaps it is another sign that I am finally healing.

Neither of us were quite ready to leave Disney World, but we were both very glad to be home. It will be a few years before we return there, but we’re already looking forward to our next installment of the Magic of Disney.

On Signing In

2009-05-16T00:23:00.005-04:00

Fresh on the heels of our Mother’s Day activities earlier this week, we celebrated an important milestone in the life of my young daughter – the day of kindergarten registration. Early in the school year, I had determined that I would save a “sick” day if at all possible and make this entire day about her. It is not often that we are afforded a whole day of uninterrupted time with one another, as the mundane but necessary tasks of life and single-parenting tend to encroach on our time whether they are invited or not.

But this was a day devoted to my one and quite possibly only child, and I intended to make the most of it.

There have only been a few occasions in my five plus years as a father when I have awoken before my daughter without the assistance of an alarm clock. Most Christmas mornings fall into this category. And usually the morning of her birthday. And sometimes a random day here or there.

I didn’t expect it to happen on this day.

I woke up at 8:00 without an alarm. My living-breathing alarm usually wakes me before 7:00 on days off. Then I laid there, completely unsure of what to do with the fact that she was still asleep and it was 8:00. I reveled in a few minutes of morning solitude, which I am usually accustomed to getting only after the sun has set and my daughter is tucked into bed, so it was a nice change. After about fifteen minutes, when I had convinced myself I should go get her up or at least check on her, I heard her door open and she bounded into my room in her usual chipper manner.

Forty minutes later we were in the van headed to what was supposed to be our first stop (breakfast at her favorite doughnut shop) when she asked if we could stop by the school and “sign-in” first. Once I was convinced that her hunger for a chocolate doughnut could stand the delay, we pulled into the school parking lot and headed, for her first time on two feet, through the front doors.

She had actually been to the school a few times before, when she was much too young to remember, and I was still gainfully employed there. For the first two years we lived in our new Southeastern home-state, I was part of a family that my daughter will soon get to join. It was my first real job out of college and it was truly a family to me in many ways, from the first day I set foot on the job to the day I handed in my keys. (I left on good terms to pursue my current higher-paying contract job in an adjacent county.)

Truth be told, I was more nervous about the absence of that family atmosphere than I was about registering my daughter for school when I walked through those doors. But it was all for naught. We were greeted with a cheerful “hey girl” (for my daughter, of course) from the secretary with whom we have remained friends through church and beach outings. After telling us we were the first ones to register, she directed us to a room down the hall (which had been a first-grade classroom when I worked there), where we were greeted with another “hey” and the first of many hugs of the day from “long-time, no-see” friends. We spoke with two teachers - one male, one female - neither of whom were employed there when I was, but both of whom seemed very happy to see us, nonetheless. The female teacher handed me a stack of forms to whittle down, while the male teacher gave my daughter an educational screening, all of which took place at a small round table with chairs intended to be used by people under four feet tall.

As I buried my head in the forms, I tried to do so in such a way that my beaming smile was not completely obvious as I listened to both teachers comment on how smart my daughter was and how impressed they were by her. I believe that every parent should think his child is the smartest, prettiest, bravest, fill in the blank-est. And I do. But my daughter is starting school with above-average academic skills, thanks in large-part to the wonderful teachers she’s had in daycare/preschool (from her first day as a five month old till now), and in small-part to my (and her mommy’s when she was still here) reinforcement of these concepts and skills.

It was just really nice to hear someone else go on and on about how great my child is.

Our visit with the teachers culminated with the two of them “arguing” over which of them should get to teach my daughter next year. I would have thought they were putting me on, but they were ahead of us in the hallway and I’m not sure they realized we could hear them. Unfortunately for them, they are only two of five or six kindergarten teachers there, so odds are that neither of them will get her. But it was still nice to hear that they both wanted her in their class.

As we passed back through the double doors we had entered only thirty minutes before, we were greeted with a spattering of raindrops on our faces. So we made a mad dash for the van, since the sky had been cloudless when we arrived and thus the umbrellas were in said van.

We headed to the doughnut place, where we waited in line for ten minutes behind one family who was at the register when we walked in. Normally that sort of thing gives me line-rage, but today it just meant that those ten minutes with my daughter were spent in line instead of one of the various other locations we would inhabit briefly this day. We eventually ordered and consumed our breakfast - a chocolate glazed doughnut and hot chocolate for her and one double-chocolate, one blueberry doughnut each and coffee for me.

When we left the doughnut place the rain had not yet subsided, so we went back home to wait it out. We made phone calls to the grandparents to let them know “how things went” at the school. My daughter was very excited to be able to recount her adventures at “the big school” not once, but twice that morning. The rain was becoming intermittent, so we took a chance, changed clothes and jumped back in the van. After an errand run entirely to buy time…

We drove to the beach in the pouring rain.

And we sat at the beach in the pouring rain. At one point when the rain abated, we even got out of the van and ran out toward the water. We got back in just as quickly as it was still sprinkling and the wind was a bit more biting than I had anticipated.

After about thirty minutes, with our fast food drive-thru lunches long-since consumed, the rain stopped completely. Then the sun came out. Then the sun stayed out. I tentatively opened the door and it felt at least five degrees warmer than it had been on our brief jaunt to the water fifteen minutes prior. So we took a chance and went down toward the water again. Only this time we kept walking down the beach for the final event of our daddy-daughter day.

There is a pier about a mile down the beach from the main public access point, which I have always loved to walk to. I have, on occasion, walked to it alone. But more often I like to walk to it with one of my favorite ladies.

As a young child, I walked to it with my first favorite lady, who gave me life and a home filled with love.

As a young husband, I walked to it with my second favorite lady, who gave me joy and a home filled with love.

As a young father, I walk to it with my third favorite lady, who gives me hope.

And a home filled with love.

On Things Maternal

2009-05-11T00:00:00.003-04:00

It is not unusual for me to be awakened at an early hour. After all, I live with a five year old. She sometimes climbs in bed with me in the middle of the night. More often, she wakes me up “when it’s light out” to tell me she wants breakfast (the “light” cue is when she knows she can watch tv. If it’s still dark she assumes it’s the middle of the night). So it was no surprise when she climbed onto the side of my bed at 6:00 this morning, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

The surprise came when she wished me Happy Mother’s Day.

This is our third Mother’s Day without her mommy, and each one has taken a different turn. Apparently this year, she decided that the day was going to be about me. The first year we had the good fortune to be able to spend the entire weekend at a friend’s beach house. She was only three, and I elected not to mention why we happened to be going that particular weekend. So we spent two days playing on the beach during the day, and I mourned the occasion while sitting on the ocean-front porch each night after she was tucked safely into bed.

My memory is not quite as clear regarding what we did last year. I know that we went to church and suffered through the traditional sermon about mothers. Don’t get me wrong, I love my own mother more than I can say, and have been blessed to know several other good mothers in my lifetime as well. But as a widower with a young daughter, it’s incredibly hard to listen to a sermon like that, knowing what said daughter has been and will continue to miss throughout her lifetime. I think that we also spent the afternoon at the beach then too, but we could just as easily have spent it at home playing on her swing set. I do know that she understood the day better than the year before and that it was definitely about her own mommy. I’m pretty sure we both shed some tears that day too.

The Mother’s Day for Daddy theme she’s seemed to embrace this year actually began earlier in the week when her teacher handed me an invitation to the Mother’s Day breakfast scheduled to be held Friday morning. I half-expected something to be sent home, so I took it and told her thanks. Then she mentioned that I was welcome to come. Hmm. A dad at the Mother’s Day breakfast. Last year I would have found that to be an incredibly sad thought. Two years ago, I would have been devastated to think about it.

This year, for the first time, I actually found it to be humorous.

I had this vision of myself surrounded by all of these mothers and grandmothers and it just struck me as a bit funny. I have read on some of the widow blogs about finding humor in their “situations”, but had not understood that until now. Please do not take this as disrespect for my wife, but after two and a half years, I have finally been able to look at a situation directly related to my widower status and react with humor.

I took it as a sign that I’m finally starting to heal.

Thursday I received two phone calls from school regarding the occasion. The first time, the teacher mentioned that they were making something for Mother’s Day and asked me how I wanted them to handle it. Now, my daughter’s teacher is a wonderful, kind woman and I applaud her for calling to ask instead of making that decision on her own. So I hope she did not take offense when I told her to ask my daughter who she wanted to make a gift for. I told her it was fine if she wanted to make it for me or one of her grandmothers, but trailed off before saying she could make it for her mommy. She could have and it would have been fine, but I wanted that decision to be hers without any influence from her teacher or me.

During the second call the teacher asked me if we would be going to the cemetery on Mother’s Day. This teacher is new at the daycare and did not know that my wife is buried 800 miles away. So I had to explain all of that while she offered her apologies for not knowing. I told her to continue with the project the way she had planned and that if it was something we needed to take there, we’d be sure to when we visited this summer.

On Friday afternoon when I picked my daughter up from school, there was a big basket for me with the card she had made and a small “yard stake” with a laminated poem for us to take this summer when we go visit the stone. My daughter was very proud of it, and that is when she first declared that Mother’s Day was about me this year.

After my 6:00 am wake-up call this morning, I went back to sleep for a bit while my daughter watched tv (what did I ever do before she could navigate the remote independently?). Then we went to church, where I made it through an entire Mother’s Day sermon on a virtuous woman (Proverbs 31) without crying and checked off all the qualities of said woman my wife had matched.

So it just figured that this song, which I posted here a few weeks ago, would come on the radio on the way home and I would spend of the rest of the sunny drive home looking through the windshield as if it were spattered with rain drops.

If only my eyes had windshield wipers...

Those were the only tears for the day though. We went on to have lunch, then spent the rest of the day shopping, which, ironically was my wife’s absolute favorite past time. I’m not a fan of it myself (I shop like a true man on a mission), but my daughter needed some new summer clothes and it seemed like a good way to pass the time on Mother’s Day.

I was a little concerned about being so publicly solo father-daughter on a day that is dedicated to all things maternal, but we did not afford the stares I had expected. At least not where I could see them. In fact, we almost made it through three hours of shopping without it being mentioned at all.

Almost.

As I finished paying for our purchase at the last store we visited, the very well-meaning cashier said “and tell your wife we wish her a Happy Mother’s Day”. I just said”thanks” as I folded my receipt and took my shopping bag. But my daughter had heard her and said “My mommy died”. These are the times when I’m glad most people don’t pay attention to little kids. The woman didn’t hear her and thus didn’t respond.

Now, I suppose it would have been fine if she had, but it’s already awkward enough being a young, widowed, single father at times without the added guilt of thrusting our “situation” on some unknowing, but well-meaning person. So I have found it easiest to handle things the way I did this afternoon. When we were out of earshot I explained to my daughter why I had not told the woman. I do not ever want her to think it’s not okay to tell people about her mommy, but I also wanted her to understand why I did not do so just then. She understood and as we continued walking out of the store, she wished her mommy a "Happy Mother's Day in Heaven.” If she had been crying, I would have too, but she said it with a smile on her face.

All in all, I think this Mother’s Day turned out fine. My daughter seemed very content in making the day all about me, the one who does all of the mommy duties now, while still remembering her real mommy, the one who would gladly be doing them now if only she could.

And she seems content in knowing that there will be two days to celebrate my parenting this year. This evening she asked me when “Daddy’s Day” was. When I told her it was in June and she realized that’s just next month, she jumped up and down excitedly.

Ironically, she gets that from her mommy.

On Social Responsibility Even in Trying Times

2009-05-07T23:04:00.003-04:00

In a few of my previous posts, I have alluded to the idea that my wife and I were “working toward” adopting another child when she passed away. We were in the early stages of this process. We had done most of the preliminary research and were saving money for the myriad expenses adoption often entails. It was exciting to look forward to and it was a dream of mine that died when she did.

Since her death, I have been compelled to keep up with information pertinent to adoption. I have continued to educate myself on processes, programs, country requirements (for international adoptions), statistics, foundations… the list goes on and on. For any of you who have wondered about the adoption-related links in the sidebar, things should now be somewhat clearer.

I realized soon after my wife died that the fact that I was no longer in line to adopt did not mean I should give up any sort of involvement in it. There are so many children out there who are need of a loving, stable home that it didn’t seem right not to do something to help. The easiest thing for me to do was begin to financially support adoption-related organizations. I’m not rich by any means, but I do alright and I seem to have navigated the spending/saving tightrope pretty well up to this point, so I started giving what I could. Then I began to find more organizations and found I simply could not give to all of them.

I thought supporting them financially was all I could do.

Then, after work today, I was listening to my new favorite radio station and I heard about this online report. They talked about the huge number of children who “age-out” of foster care every year without finding a permanent family, as well as how people can donate their time to help, even if they cannot donate financially.

Apparently May is National Foster Care Month. I’m guessing that if I didn’t know that, many of you didn’t either. I’ve worked with and known a few foster kids through my job and have gotten to know some of the foster families as well. Most of the situations I’ve observed have been good ones – loving parents/families providing for and meeting the needs of their foster children. At least two of these families have gone on to adopt their “foster” children.

But not everyone can adopt. Not everyone can foster children. Not everyone can give financially. Not everyone can give of their time.

But everyone can do something.

I’ve included some links to encourage you all to get involved in one way or another. Ironically, I’m not the only one out here reminding people to give of themselves this week (see here and here). I think that it’s important for all of us to help each other, especially in our time of need. We’ve been doing so online and through the llf. Now it’s time to branch out and help orphaned and/or foster children as well if at all possible.

Because if we don’t find ways to help them, who will?

Please take a few minutes to check out these links:

http://www.fostercaremonth.org/Pages/default.aspx

http://www.nationalcasa.org/

http://www.adoptuskids.org/

http://www.showhope.org/

http://orphan.org/index.php

http://www.adoptioninstitute.org/index.php

On Conjuring Tears

2009-05-05T23:37:00.003-04:00

I have never been much of a crier. Even as a child, I don’t remember many times when tears would surface, let alone actually expending the effort necessary to roll down my cheek and drip onto my shirt. After my dad died, I can honestly say I cried even less than before. Not initially, of course. During those first few days I cried like a nine-year-old who had just lost his father. And rightly so. But after that, I tended to suppress the tears. I think it was my way of dealing with the pain.

Ignore it and it will go away.

Ironically, the moments when I most often allowed the tears to at least surface typically occurred during a particularly sad song or an emotionally charged tv show or movie. (There’s still one domestic overhaul show I refuse to watch for that very reason). You know, those times when I couldn’t see it coming ahead of time. But by age 29, I had gotten pretty good at forcing my tears into submission.

Now, lest you think I am some sort of heartless monster, I did cry during some momentous occasions in my lifetime. I bawled like a baby when I first caught sight of my bride at the end of that long church aisle almost eight years ago. I cried unashamedly almost three years later when the doctor announced “It’s a girl” and the nurse called me “Dad” for the first time. And, of course, I cried at the funerals of three grandparents, an uncle, a close friend/neighbor, and a favorite teacher during the course of those years as well. But other than that, my tears were mostly reserved for music and movies.

All of that changed one day in February, 2007, when my life was turned upside-down. Suddenly, the man who kept his emotions under lock and key in a sealed room with a barricaded door, wept uncontrollably for all to see. And because of the way the arrangements were made, it went on for a week with seemingly no end in sight. Though I quickly learned how to cry safely (every time I stepped to the bathroom or took a shower worked well), I wasn’t sure that I wanted to go back to being that emotionally-stilted person I had once been.

Over time, the tears have come less often. And when they do appear, they are less reflective of the raging torrents they once were. But they still come. Usually in the car. And most often on Mondays.

And to reassure those of you who are concerned that this must indicate that I am not allowing my daughter to see me cry, rest assured. There are plenty of occasions with her where I allow my tears to not only well up, but to gently spill over as well. Usually when I am reading her scrapbooks to her. Day of the week varies.

Still there are times when I know the tears are there, but it’s as if they’ve gone into hiding. My emotional state is outwardly composed, but inwardly in tumult. And I know that a “good cry” would help balance them out.

That’s when I turn to my old stand-by: music.

There are several songs that can conjure my tears, but one in particular is so emotionally gripping that I can scarcely keep them in. The cd is close-at-hand in my car for those moments when I just need to cry. Which I still do from time to time. But always alone.

That’s why I was caught completely off-guard last week on the way home from daycare/preschool. We were listening to a cd her uncle had sent her, when she asked me to play a certain song. It’s a particular favorite of mine (and one I have posted here before), so I sang along.

It wasn’t until the song ended that I realized she was crying.

There was no forewarning this time. We had not been talking about her mommy moments before. We had been listening to some other, more upbeat songs on the cd.

No warning at all.

But afterward, we did talk about her mommy. We listened to the song another time before we reached our house. And by the time we got inside, she was ready to play and watch tv.

Listening to that song had done for her the same thing that listening to other songs does for me. It helped her conjure her tears so that she could move out from under the veil of her emotions, grieve freely, and return to her more “balanced” self.

The ironic thing about the whole situation is that my daughter has no way of knowing that I do this. This is something she has figured out on her own, just as I did. I can’t help but think that this came about because we are a lot alike.

I always imagined I would have a daughter who was like a little female version of me.

I just never imagined it would extend to how she grieved.

On Comfort in Dreams

2009-04-30T23:17:00.004-04:00

Among the many frustrations brought about by my grieving process has been my lack of dreams involving my wife.

I tend to have random periods of about ten days or so when I have vivid, often bizarre dreams on any number of topics. I have also had a few rather endearing dreams, the most recent of which involved some really great bonding time with my two brothers. These dream cycles are often more frequent than not, so it’s not the lack of dreams themselves that frustrates me.

It’s the fact that she is so clearly absent from them.

In my conscious memory, I can recall two dreams involving her and both were very similar in nature. She is here. Not back-from-the-dead here, but instead not-yet-dead here. We are generally traveling in some sort of vehicle and I have the distinct impression that we are running errands around our town. It is a seemingly normal day and not at all like our actual last day together.

But it is our last day together.

You see, in both of these dreams, I have somehow been given the knowledge that she is going to die, but am completely powerless to stop her from doing so. And I am suddenly aware that our seemingly normal errands are actually my vain attempt at finding a way to save her even though I know it is impossible.

There was a tv show when I was younger that I used to love to watch. At the beginning of each episode, the main character would receive what appeared to be a normal daily newspaper. Its contents, however, foretold a tragedy that would occur the following day. So he spent each day of his life attempting to avert the next day’s tragedy. What I loved about that show was precisely what has plagued me about my dreams. He was able to stop his tragedies, while I was left to sit idly by and watch mine unfold.

Helplessness is an awful feeling, even in slumber.

I could spend paragraphs (and hours) speculating as to why my dreams have turned out this way. My best theory is that it is my subconscious mind living out the helplessness and guilty feelings that I refuse to give a voice to during my waking hours.

Aside from the feelings of helplessness these dreams have awakened in me, I can’t help but be upset by the sheer lack of dreams about her. For two people who had as good a marriage as we did, it would stand to reason that the surviving spouse (and how often are we doing well just to survive?) would dream about the other more than a couple of times in as many years.

But that may have finally changed.

Sunday morning I awoke feeling more contented than I have in a very long time. After another night of vivid dreams, I typically feel restless and irritable. But Saturday night’s dream was different.

It started with me flying into a European country. I believe it was initially Germany, but I think it somehow morphed into France along the way. For some reason I had to land there, then rent a car and drive across another country before arriving at my final destination in a third country. The second country was the Czech Republic, with my final arrival being in Italy. Geography has always been a strong suit for me, so I’m pretty certain that those three countries are not connected in a way that would allow me to drive from start to finish without crossing more than one other border. Ah, the idiosyncrasies of dreams.

I have never been to Europe. I have never flown across an entire ocean. I have never stepped foot off of the North American continent. I have only left this country twice. Once to visit a town we share with our northern neighbor; the other time to pay a similar call to our neighbor to the South. I at least understand the Italian connection. Last week I finished reading the second of two completely unrelated books that contained significant plot-lines which occurred in Italy. My current car book takes place, again by sheer coincidence, almost entirely in Italy. (My current house book is set on a boat in the Pacific Northwest). But I digress.

In the dream I had to head to an airport in whatever Italian city I was visiting to pick up my wife. (How she got a direct flight into Italy, I’ll never know). So I have vivid memories of the anticipation of seeing her mixed with the excitement of exploring new countries by land, albeit alone. In this dream she is also not-yet-dead, but we have apparently not seen each other for some period of time due to circumstances that were left unclear throughout the dream.

Apart from the outlandish circumstances of this dream, the rest of the dream was very normal. I don’t exactly recall the moment we met at the airport, but I remember another extended journey by car to wherever we were staying, only this time it was together. We boarded in a very expensive hotel and spent the entire weekend doing all of the normal things a normal couple would do on a normal weekend away in a foreign city.

Keyword: normal.

The most vivid memory I have in the dream came upon checking out of the hotel, which was also where the dream ended. We were rushing around the room frantically as it was past time to check out and I was concerned about being charged a fee. I distinctly remember picking up what must have been our dirty clothes from the weekend and stuffing them into a suitcase. Then I looked around the room and made a statement about how I couldn’t understand how we had accumulated so much over the course of a weekend and wondered aloud how in the world we were going to get it all back home. Then I reminded her that, at this rate, there was no way we were going to be able to avoid the late check-out fee. The entire time she was patiently reminding me that it would all be okay.

It was such a completely typical moment in our marriage. Though we didn’t travel to exotic destinations, we did do our fair share of traveling and the pattern was always the same. I would get completely stressed out about how I was going to get everything home (it mattered not whether we were traveling by car or by plane) and that we were going to be late leaving. She would do her best to remind me that things were going to turn out fine and that it wasn’t worth letting my blood pressure reach its boiling point.

Although it has taken over two years for a dream like this to manifest itself to my subconscious mind, I think it was just what I needed. I have become accustomed to my new normal, as I like to call it, and am generally fairly content in the lives my daughter and I now lead. But it was so nice to be reminded of the comfort and joy and sheer normalcy of the time I had with my wife. I tend to miss different aspects of our relationship at different times. But I always miss the comfort we had with one another.

I guess that’s why I waited a few days before I posted about this dream. I was hoping against hope that I might be able to post about more than one such dream, but alas, they have eluded me the past several nights.

But tonight is a new night.

And if not tonight, then perhaps tomorrow night…

On Visiting the Stone

2009-04-27T23:03:00.003-04:00

One of the many difficult decisions I had to make in the days surrounding my wife’s death was where she would be “laid to rest”. She had unwittingly made her wishes regarding this known to me in a conversation one day as we were driving around town. Simply put, she wished to be buried in her hometown. So in a way, it was a no-brainer when the decision actually had to be made.

What I could not know at that time was how living 800 miles from her “final resting place” would affect me, and more importantly, my daughter.

From our very first trip back to the Midwest following her funeral and burial, I have always made it a point to sneak away to the cemetery for at least a few moments of unadulterated grieving. Prior to that first trip back, there were some questions I had to mull over regarding the cemetery visit.

The first question was whether or not I would take my then three-year-old daughter with me. We visited twice that summer, and the headstone was not placed until mid-November, so I opted not to take her or mention it to her during those summer visits.

This, in turn, answered the second question: that of what, if anything, I should tell my in-laws I was doing. On the first visit my daughter fell asleep during the two hour drive between my parents’ house and my in-laws and continued to sleep soundly while I stood at my wife’s graveside for the first time in the absence of other mourners. So that solved the problem initially. But when we returned later that summer, I was left to ask them to watch her for a few minutes. I felt awkward explaining that I needed to go to the cemetery for a little while. Then, between waves of tears and emotion, I worried about what they were thinking knowing I was there at that moment. I tend to over-think things a bit sometimes, but burying her there denied me the luxury of visiting whenever I wanted, unbeknownst to everyone else.

The next visit was a bit less awkward, but I again went alone as there were several inches of snow on the ground and it was the first time I would see the stone I had designed for my wife at 29 years of age. Of all the things I could have been designing at that age – baby furniture, a piece of anniversary jewelry, an area for entertaining outdoors – somehow a headstone wasn’t even on the list.

Our next visit was spring break a year ago. It had been about thirteen months since my wife had passed, my daughter was a year older, the stone had been placed, and there was no snow on the ground, so I explained what going to the cemetery entailed and asked if she would like to go with me this time (I did this a few days in advance so that we could revisit the topic and she could opt out if she changed her mind). She decided to go with me, and thus began our current ritual of visiting the stone on the journey between the grandparents’ homes.

I refer to it as visiting the stone, because essentially, that is what we do. The term “paying our respects” would suffice as well, but we’re not doing that. That seems like something you do when an acquaintance or co-worker’s family member passes away. Not your wife. Not your child’s mother.

Yes, we’re remembering. But we’re also grieving.

My daughter understands more of this process than any child should, especially at such a young age. She understands that Mommy’s body is under the ground there. But more importantly, she understands that Mommy is not there.

Sometimes when we go she looks reverently at the stone. Sometimes she runs her fingers along the engraved words, my attempt at capturing the highlights of a short life well-lived. Most times she cries, but not always.

This time, for the first time, she did something different.

When we walked over to the stone, I stopped at roughly the same point I always do at first, but she continued and walked right up to the stone itself. I had resolved that I would be strong for her while she was with me, then would likely sneak back later in the week to cry more heavily on my own. But after what happened next, I could not have held my own tears back no matter how hard I tried. She stopped as she stood right in front of the names, the dates, and the symbols.

Then she leaned over and hugged the stone.

She didn’t say anything. She didn’t cry. She just stood there for a few moments with her head resting atop this rose-colored stone and a forlorn look on her face. Then she came over and reached for me to pick her up, which I did as I half-heartedly attempted to push back my tears.

The rest of that visit went like the others. We cried. She asked questions. I answered them. We stayed until she was ready to leave and could look once again with excitement at seeing her grandparents in a few minutes.

After that, I thought this would be the only visit for me that week. I had been able to realize my own grief for a few moments, and really, that’s what visiting the stone is for me. It’s the one place and situation where I feel free to let all of my anguish surface and spill over unashamedly. That’s not to say that I don’t still cry at other times, though those times are fewer and further between than they once were. But those times are random and inconsistent. Visiting the stone gives me the license to grieve fully each and every time I am there.

As it turns out, I needed to realize my grief twice that week. As I left to fill the gas tank the night before we headed home, I felt compelled to go visit the stone again, even though I knew it would soon be dark. My daughter was with her grandparents, and though I knew they would figure out where I was when I didn’t return within a reasonable amount of time, I have also grown past the feelings of discomfort I once had with them knowing when I am there.

So off I went. There really wasn’t anything unusual about this visit. It was just necessary for me to go again, alone.

Something I try not to think about when I am there is the patch of grass to the right of the stone. When I purchased my wife’s burial plot, I purchased my own as well. So at 29 years of age, I decided where I would be “laid to rest” too. It is not my hometown. It is two hours from there and 800 miles from the place I call home now. But I have many happy memories in that town. And someday it will be my “final resting place”.

This time I took note of that patch of grass a bit more than usual. Now that I am a single parent, I take even fewer unnecessary risks than I ever did, not that I took many before. But I simply do not like to dwell on my own mortality. I no longer have that other parent to count on to raise my daughter if something happens to me before she is grown. And while her godparents are fully capable of raising her, I just can’t allow myself to imagine her growing up in a world without either of her parents in it. So I try hard not to.

When I was designing my wife’s stone, I sought my mom’s advice, as she was also widowed at a young age. My dad’s stone is a shared one. My mom will be buried beside him and her name is already engraved there (my stepdad will be buried on her other side). The one thing I distinctly remember her saying was that it was very hard to see her name on the headstone when she went to the cemetery. So my wife’s stone is a single one. My name is only engraved on the back as her husband.

Still, there is something sobering about looking at that patch of grass, knowing that someday your body, when your soul has parted from it, will be buried below it.

But I know that ultimately I will not be there.

Just as she is not there now.

Only a stone and a patch of grass remain.

On Spring Break

2009-04-21T23:39:00.010-04:00

In an attempt to recover from our 15 hour drive on Sunday, I slept 10 hours last night instead of posting this, as was my original plan for the evening. We had such a good time during our trip to visit family in the Midwest that I thought I would share some of it with you all. And with pictures, to boot.

On Saturday

We spent 13 hours driving to my parents’ house and arrived within two hours of the start of my nephew’s 14th birthday party. My nephew has Down syndrome and attends a special needs class at his middle school. He has a best friend and a girlfriend in his class who also happen to be brother and sister. We were able to meet them both for the first time that night and they seem to be really good kids. Since his birthday falls during the school year, this was the first of his parties I’ve been able to attend in the seven years since I’ve lived in the Southeast and was the very first one for my daughter. I think she, quite possibly, had the best time of all.

On Sunday (Easter)

We got up earlier than I wanted to after staying up way too late talking to Mom the night before, but not any earlier than we do on a normal Sunday. This day was different in that we all got a little more dressed up than normal. There’s Sunday Best (which at my church is dress-casual) and there’s Easter Sunday Best, which means a fancier dress for her and a new shirt and tie for me. My younger brother and his wife showed up just as we were leaving for my sister’s church in a nearby town (big brother only comes home for Christmas as he lives in New England), so we were all able to ride together. I was more exhausted than I realized, and while I stayed awake throughout the service, I didn’t really pay as much attention as I should have.

Note to self: Don’t drive all day and stay up too late the day before Easter next year.

After a delicious lunch or ham and many wonderful sides and desserts, my brother’s wife hid the 150 plastic eggs my sister had filled for the Easter egg hunt. My sister usually coordinates the Easter egg hunt at her church, but did not this year and I think she missed it. Reason being, there were only three children in our family to find all of these eggs (and the other two are hers)! The kids all had a good time though, and my students will love all of the extra candy when I remember to bring it in for them.

Just before the egg hunt, we saw this guy resting under my parents’ car.

I think maybe he had an even longer night than I did…

On Monday

My mom loves to work in her yard and garden. I can only assume that’s where my passion for this originated. She has a beautiful yard and spends weeks each year working to make it look just right. One of the things she most enjoys is the opening of the local greenhouses. There is one that she is particularly fond of (there are actually 13 separate greenhouses to go through there) and she waited to go this year until we could be there to enjoy it with her.

It rained the entire time.

But we managed to make the most of it, and I even managed to remember to take a picture without my daughter in it so I could post it here.

That night I got to take my daughter to her first live sporting event – a minor league baseball game. Now, it is important to note that I am not even remotely a sports fan. I watch the Summer Olympics every four years, but even then I only watch selected events. I do, however, enjoy a good live game/match. I just don’t get to them often enough. So it was a nice surprise a week earlier when my brother called and said he had scored six free tickets to a game. And it was dollar food night, which appealed to the miser in me as well.

Although it was really cold, it was a pretty day for a game.

There just weren’t very many fans in attendance.

After 6 ½ innings, this is how the game ended.

Yes, that’s the infield.

But the game was not a total bust. Our seats were just far enough back that we did not have to move when the rain started. And the first baseman for the opposing team tossed her a baseball, which she later had signed by the third baseman of the home team, who came out of the dugout in the rain to sign it for his newest fan. We didn’t have the heart to tell him we live 800 miles away.

On Tuesday

We spent another day running around the town I where I went to college and met my wife. There is a bakery there that is almost unmatched (there’s one in my older brother’s city that rivals it, but thus far it’s the only other one I’ve found that even comes close). Whenever we are home, my mom makes sure we have doughnuts from there and we usually manage to find an excuse to stop for cookies or cupcakes during our visit as well. A few months ago, the bakery opened a café and coffee bar in a different location, so my parents (again) waited to try it since they knew we would be visiting soon. I think it was worth their wait!

That evening we went to another town a bit further away to see my friend and former college roommate and his wife. They are the only friends with whom I feel like my friendship has not changed/suffered as a result of my wife’s death. Which is ironic in a way, since he and I are much more alike than my brothers and I, and his wife and mine were as well. And not just in the greater aspects of our personalities, but in the smaller, quirky aspects as well (they were even known to be dressed alike when we would meet somewhere for dinner). If anything, our friendship probably should have suffered the most, based on all of our similarities, but it did just the opposite, and I think that is a true testament to their character.

This was also the night of the big reveal, so after dinner we gathered the girls in the kitchen so that their older daughter could tell mine about our upcoming trip to a very kid-friendly place next month. She was not quite as expressive as I thought she would be, but now that things have sunken in a bit, she cannot stop talking about it! It will definitely be a memorable trip for us both.

And since it was too cold and rainy to work in the yard together, my mom and I made small terrariums when I got back from dinner with our friends and stayed up way too late doing so (again).

On Wednesday

After digging up several pots’ worth of flowers to plant in my yard and packing up all of our stuff (how do we always manage to leave with more than we brought originally?), we had a quick lunch and bid farewell to my parents, (who I would later find out took a nap all afternoon) and drove the almost two hours north to spend the remainder of the week with my in-laws.

This school year, they volunteered to cook dinner for the church youth group and their families, so we spent the evening there seeing many familiar faces and several new ones. They still attend the church where we got married (but had the good sense not to hold the funeral), so it has always held fond memories for me, and I enjoy any chance I get to go there.

On Thursday

My mother-in-law had the day off, so I slept in a bit and was treated to a nice home-cooked breakfast. We met my father-in-law for lunch, then spent some time in a larger city nearby buying my daughter some new outfits and a couple new dresses for our trip (at least in her mind. She needed them for church anyway).

My daughter rode the first of two of these this week at the mall.

That night we went out for some of the best Chinese food I’ve ever had. There is a place where I live that my daughter and I frequent and the food there is excellent. When the egg rolls came (as an appetizer), I started talking about how the food there rivaled the food at the one in my town. After about my third comment , my father-in-law looked at me and said very seriously “Is your egg roll the same as ours?” He kept a straight face when I said “yes” and proceeded to tell me that they contained shrimp! It is a well-known fact that I do not like nor do I eat any organism that can survive underwater. But this shrimp was virtually undetectable and I had already consumed ¾ of the egg roll, so I finished it. But I did let a few obvious bits of shrimp fall to the plate during those last few bites.

On Friday

Both in-laws had the day off, so we ate a late breakfast, then headed to the nursing home to see my daughter’s great-grandma, who had returned a day earlier from her most recent hospital stay. Last month she had to have emergency brain surgery and her hair is just beginning to grow back, so before we left I took my daughter aside and explained that Grandma would look a little different when we saw her. She did look a little different, but the shortened hair was the least of it. When we saw her at Christmas she was not at all like herself. She was somewhat despondent and had trouble holding her end of a conversation. Since I’ve known her she has been a fiery little woman, and though she’s lost too much weight, her spark has definitely returned (hopefully for good).

The rest of the afternoon was spent tending to my nieces, whose mom had to have outpatient surgery that day (dad’s a doctor, but stayed in the role of husband this time). We had all three of them at my in-laws’ house overnight, so it was a fun time for my daughter. And they were all in bed asleep by eleven.

On Saturday

The two older girls were picked up by their dad to attend to some 4-H obligations. While they were doing that, the rest of us drove to an Amish area to meet my wife’s best friend (and former college roommate) and her husband for lunch. (A side note here: If you ever have the chance to eat real Amish cooking, take it! Just be sure to bring your appetite along for the ride.) It was good to see our friends, and we made plans to get together again when we are “home” this summer.

Oh, and my daughter got to ride her second merry-go-round in as many days.

Saturday afternoon and evening were uneventful. I almost finished a book (which I took care of Sunday night) and packed the van for our return journey, while everyone else watched tv and tried not to think about the fact that in a few hours we would part.

On Sunday

We spent 15 hours making that return journey and it was one of the most enjoyable car rides I’ve ever had with my daughter.

It’s always nice to visit family and friends.

But it’s always good to be back home too.

On the Limiting Effects of Grief

2009-04-10T22:22:00.003-04:00

Before I launch into the main post, I want to take a moment to wish everyone a happy Easter. Also, please check out the polls to the right of the screen. You have come to know quite a bit about me – now it’s my turn to get to know a little something about you! Since I’m a technological dinosaur (which I’m working on, but the new gadget I desire is currently out-of-stock at my local cell provider), I will not be posting for somewhere in the neighborhood of ten days or so. Who knows what posts my thoughts will provoke in the meantime…

Following a large-scale disaster or tragedy by any number of means, it is common for the news media to throw around words like “aftershocks”, “fallout”, and “aftermath”, to name a few. Each conjures up a similar image, none of which is pretty. But one thing we don’t hear people talk about is how these words can be applied to personal tragedies. Again, the images are not pretty. Nor are they the same for everyone. Nor are they confined to the few I feel compelled to discuss in the paragraphs that follow. But they are real. And they are painful. And they are crippling to some extent, be it large or small.

I have always had a passion for the written word. Whether my skills are average or superb has always taken a backseat to how I personally feel I have conveyed my thoughts, feelings, and viewpoints regarding a given topic. There is a certain thrill in engaging the pen and paper (or now, more often the computer screen and keyboard) and seeing a composition come to fruition literally before my eyes. Being the word-nerd I am, in high school and college I excelled in English classes and struggled to do well (though I did for the most part) in math classes. My hard drive holds a plethora of poems, stories, essays and the like and I have notebooks full of them from the “dark ages” – that time I can scarcely remember before I owned a computer.

But very few of those writings are from February 2007 to January 2009.

It seems that along with my wife, death also consumed my ability to express myself through the written word. My thoughts and emotions often came to my extremely organized mind in a jumble and try as I might, I was more often than not unsuccessful in unscrambling the mess they had become. The rare occasions when I was able to do so usually consisted of a serious crying spell and an extreme level of raw emotion, much more than I was comfortable allowing myself to feel on a regular basis at that time. But for the most part, I was unable to produce much of anything.

Over the past few months, these skills have slowly begun to reinsert themselves back into my conscious mind. And I have felt a sense of release that I have been building up to for two years. I do not, at this time, believe that my writing has returned to the state it was when my wife was alive, (and this is not a cheap ploy to fish for compliments, so please do not take it as such) but it’s starting to. And it is.

And I hope it will continue to.

Another great passion of mine is reading the written word. I wish I could say that I was into reading great classic novels or profound works of literature as I have enjoyed the ones I’ve had the pleasure of reading, but that’s simply not the case. When I read, I like to escape into someone else’s life for a while, even if things in mine are going just fine. So I tend to stick primarily to authors whom I believe are good at writing fiction. I will spare you the boredom of reading a listing of them here, but I tend to like legal, political, and psychological thrillers and have found more than one author whose new releases are hard to pass up.

For over a year after my wife’s passing, I found it incredibly hard to concentrate on almost every work of fiction I put before my eyes. I managed to sob my way through several books on death and grieving, but much like reading the blogs of other widow/ers does now, they served to ease the sense of loneliness and abnormality I felt during those early months. Ironically when I was visiting with family, I was better able to concentrate, but even then I found myself reading biographies and works that leaned toward descriptions of real people versus fictional characters. About six months ago, I was able to finish a book by a favorite author completely for pleasure. And it was completely fictional. And it was a completely wonderful feeling. Now between reading blogs and the subsequent works of fiction through which I’ve plowed, it’s a wonder that I find the time to do normal things like work and clean house and play with my daughter. But I do.

And I’m certain I will continue to.

The loss of my ability to concentrate on reading and writing left me with an excessive amount of time to fill once my daughter went to bed each night. Since I was also largely unable to sleep at night (which I’ve found is extremely common among widow/ers), it was hard to know what to do. Some nights I would talk on the phone, which served to help me reconnect with other friends and family members I cared about in addition to taking my mind off of things. But on the many, many nights I refrained from conversation, I generally found myself staring mindlessly at the tv.

Even then, the limitations of grief were evident.

I have never been particularly drawn to shows with a medical theme, but I have not often shied away from them either. Even before my wife’s death, especially just prior when we found ourselves spending an increasing amount of time in doctor’s offices and hospitals, I would skip past them and continue to search for something that did not take place in one of those settings. (This holds true for books as well now, which is why this genre was not listed among my favorite in the previous paragraphs.) It mattered not if the show was a comedy or drama or if it was real or fictional, if it had a medical theme, I wanted no part of it.

This became increasingly true for me after her death.

Nowadays I still skip them and continue my search (though my nighttime tv viewing has decreased drastically now that I’m spending so much time writing and reading blogs), but every once in a while I’ll have the fleeting thought that I actually used to enjoy this or that show. It’s not enough to make me flip back to it, but I think it may be a sign that someday I’ll be able to look at one without replaying real-life events simultaneously in my head.

One day I hope I’ll be able to. But I’m just not there yet.