Father's Day

Last Sunday was Father's Day.
A day that I try to put on a happy, life-can-still-be-good smile that doesn't quite reach my eyes.  A day that I try to acknowledge with the children in a way that is not morbid.  A day that always makes me feel sad.

Not long after I woke, I heard sobs coming from my son's room.  This is the child who was 5 when his hero died.  This is the  child who asks me to help him remember what his Daddy sounded like.  The child who loves being compared with his father.

These weren't the sobs I normally hear of "she took my xxxx" and "if I cry and whimper then I will get out of doing chore y that I don't want to do".
No..... these were the sobs that you feel in the pit of your stomach before you hear them with your ears.

When I went in to his room, my darling girl was already in there, comforting her brother.  Being a grown-up 11 year old.  Telling him that it was OK to cry.

Normally it is my girl who I think of as being sensitive.  She is the kid who has a melt down if something is not perfect (God forbid she gets a "B" on something).  She is the one who takes on every throw-away comment as being directed at her and every friendship hiccup as being the end of the earth.

Normally it is my boy who sings and hums his way through everything with a "she'll be right" attitude.  Who tells it how it is in an honest manner and who doesn't have a trace of malice in him. He takes a negative comment and either agrees with it as a matter of fact, or dismisses it as utter rubbish.

...and yet he is the one who surprises me with his grief.  He is the one who can barely remember his father but who treasures every photograph.  The child who is determined to follow in his father's footsteps.  He is the one who can go from Mr Happy-Go-Lucky to Mr Furiously-Sad because of a date on a calendar.

Navigating grief is hard, but sailing the waters with a couple of grieving children adds another dimension.

...but its a dimension that also allows for sharing and understanding of the loss of a person so loved by all of us.

Father's Day

Source

For the first time since my husband’s death, I’m struggling with father’s day.

Today it smacked me square in the face “Your husband will never be a father because he’s DEAD.”

My brain is full of trickery and really pisses me off.

I haven’t struggled with father’s day in the past because Seth wasn't a father and we never had children. It’s the one holiday I don’t struggle with. Until today.

Today my mind went back to his first suicide attempt (I wrote about it here)

We had been trying to get pregnant for a couple of months. Not trying - trying, but not using any kind of contraceptive and we just decided if it happens it happens. If it doesn't then it doesn't.

All signs pointed to that I was pregnant. Possibly a couple months along. But all the pregnancy tests kept saying no.

Then my world fell apart. My husband tried to kill himself, he was sitting in a psychiatric ward.

I’ll never forget getting the call that my husband was in intensive care due to a failed suicide attempt. I hung up the phone, and all I could think of is “Holy shit, what if I am pregnant??”

Being pregnant, with my husband sitting in a physic ward, wasn't the dream I had envisioned.

Three days into my husband’s hospital stay, I started my cycle. After three months of not having one. After three months of thinking the tests were wrong, because my cycle had always been like clockwork. I have never gone three months without it making its lovely presence. 

I assume I had a miscarriage. A miscarriage due to stress, or that the baby was never alive.. or that for some unknown reason, my body just stopped for three months leading me to think I was pregnant.

While Seth was still in the hospital, I went and had a 10 year contraceptive put in my body. I didn't talk to him about it. I didn't ask his thoughts. I just did it.

I wasn't willing to bring a child into what I was going through. I knew if I did have a baby, I would be a single parent.. but I thought it would be due to me divorcing Seth because of his suicide attempts, not that I would actually be a single widowed parent. I think my brain knew far more than I did of what was coming up for us.

Seth was mad at me until the day he died for having the contraceptive put in. I think he honestly thought having a child would fix everything and I didn't know what road he was heading down when I agreed that we could start trying to a baby.

As I look at father’s day today, I realized that I could have a 5 year child at this point.. and would be explaining to my child why his daddy isn't here. In a way, it was a blessing that I wasn't pregnant. I don’t know how I would take care of a child when most days I can’t take care of myself. I don’t know how I would ever explain to my child that daddy killed himself. 

But in another way, it reminds me that Seth might have been a father. And I might have been a mother.

Bipolar took my husband away. It also took away a lot of things that Seth could have experienced.. such as being a father.

So today I am thinking of all you widowed parents. Who play both mom and dad. Please give yourself a huge pat on the back, it’s a huge task, and you deserve a huge hug.

Today I will wallow in what could have been. I am saddened that Seth never got to experience being a father. I am saddened by the things that will never happen. 

Father's Day

It was Father's Day last Sunday.

Why is it that the days before every celebration day are worse than the actual day itself?

For the past 2.5 years, I've worked myself into a state of despondency in the days before birthdays, Easter, Christmas,  mother's day or father's day, and of course, the sadiversary, only to be OK-ish on the day itself.  Good even.

...and so it was this time.

Of course, there were some annoyances - I was annoyed that H's teacher had made things that clearly stated "Dad" on them and H insisted on filling it in because "that's what everyone else was doing".  ...except of course for the other child in his class whose father died in 2010. (Meanwhile, I was mindful that I have a first-timer for a fatherless father's day in my classroom and we chatted about what *she* wanted to do over what I'd had organised for the rest of the class.)

But  this time, THIS father's day,  I had a bit of a plan to get through the day.....

When I discovered that the kitchy solar light the kids had put on the grave back in March had been removed (by whom, we don't know), I had plans to replace it with another (named) one.  .....and as father's day drew near, it seemed be a fitting activity for a day that would be sad anyway.

So out we trotted to the cemetery ... only to have a middle-aged man splash a beer onto the ground right next to us as we were hammering the little lamp-stands into the ground, so we got to sit with stinky beer annoying the ants two graves over...... shortly followed by a middle-aged woman who Went Out Of Her Way to Step On Greg's Grave because apparently the entire 5 acre lawn plot was so small she had no other way to walk to her family's grave.O.o
(People are RUDE..... add that to the "annoyances"list ...... but then again, I realise that while I can't choose who occupies the neighbouring graves, I can choose who to put a curse on ..... so WIN!  That's my black sense of humour btw - I don't actually go around cursing people).

Anyway, after that, we went out for pancakes and milkshakes which made everything OK .... almost celebratory.  ...and then dinner at Mum and Dad's which was both delicious and accompanied by good humour.

....only to have to drive past a very recent car accident on the way home.
We sat at the traffic lights for a full 3 minutes, waiting for the  light to change, while the children stared, wide-eyed, at the fire engine, tow trucks, ambulances and wondered aloud whether anybody had been killed; debating whether the doors of the T-boned car were destroyed so badly that the occupant would have died on impact.


Meanwhile silent tears slipped down my cheeks and prayers to that God I don't believe in, left my lips. I fervently hoped that the person driving the car was able to go home to their father ... or that the father driving the car was able to go home to his children.

I really hope he did: Happy Father's Day.

"Happy" Father's Day

For me, it’s a reminder that I'm a parent raising children without my wife.

 For others, it’s a symbol that their children’s father is gone.

 For those without kids, it’s a reflection on what isn’t or what will now never be.

 For all of us, it’s a trigger that reminds us of our situation, another day that is awkward as it puts us out of place for a 24 hour period, another day where we don’t want to face questions from our kids or conversations with our relatives and friends, another day where people will tell me all day long to have a “Happy Father’s Day”.  A wish where I would love to respond, “It’s really not that happy for me as it’s not the same since my wife died.”  But knowing that response would draw a, “Look, dude, I’m just reading off the cue cards here.  The calendar is telling me today is a happy day for the fathers.  I really don’t have any interest in your true happiness, so just say ‘Thanks’, collect your change and leave my store.”

 The past few years I’ve been able to let the day fly under the radar without acknowledging too much my “special” day.  But now my kids are getting older and they too are able to read calendars and the calendar today is telling them today is my day to be happy – whether I want to be or not.

Mother’s Day is easier for me.  I can be sad and reflective as I release balloons into the air with my children, remembering my wife and their mother.  I can talk fondly of her throughout the day and tell the kids with a tear in my eye that she was a good mom and we will do our best to follow her love.

But today is about me.  Crap, I’m still alive which means the spotlight stays on me and my girls will be looking for me to show them how great of a day this is.  Switching that around and showing them this day sucks would only confuse them.  This year they have picked up on the Hallmark Holiday and my eldest has told me something is planned today.

 Okay.  Maybe I’m not ready to be happy today, but I am grateful.  I have beautiful daughters who are excited for me and want something good for me.  In their world, it’s as simple as, “Today is your day dad, so you must have been waiting for this for awhile.”

I think I will take this day and use it as an opportunity to let my children know how proud I am to be their father.  I’m going to go out and buy them each a Father’s Day card and hand it to them as they look at me like I read the calendar wrong.  But on the inside I will write a short note telling them that as a father, I couldn’t ask for better children, and how proud I am on this day with how they have dealt with the loss of their mom.  A day to check in to see how they are coping and give some positive reinforcements – have I done that lately?

 Happy Father’s Day?  Don’t think I’m there yet.  Proud Father’s Day?  I’m all in.

Dreaming of Art

I dreamt about him. I was coming out of Pallas and Ezra's room and he was standing in the hall. "Hi!" I said, thrilled, as if he had come home early from work.

And we stood there for a moment, smiling at each other.

"Can I touch you?" I asked, for the last time I dreamed about him I had tried to hug him, only to touch cold air before he could tell me it was too late.

This time he nodded.

And when I reached out my hand, his hand was warm and firm, just like it used to be. Our hands together, his large white one, with my small brown one reminded me of those photos of the white worker holding the African child's hand.

I woke before I could place my cheek on his chest. I lay still, breathing slowly attempting to remember that feeling, to push it into my physical memory so next time, when I want to, I can remember it with ease.

My grief was shallow, suffocating fits of hysteria. Now it's thick, mournful moans and longing. The longing is like, is like a cord that is coming from me and reaching, stretching, tugging at me, different force of pull at different times. Sometimes it pulls me over. Along this line is my desire to hear him, to touch him, to see those deep blue eyes looking back at me. The longing is bearable, resonates with a low, almost imperceptible hum. It causes me to feel like something is missing only I can't figure out what exactly it is.

As it tugs, it detaches my skin from my muscles leaving this hollow space. This empty place. Nothing to fill it. It's not his immediate presence that I miss so much anymore, it's his lack of presence throughout the future years that make me wish him back. How is it possible he won't see Langston play volleyball or football, Pallas win an art award or Ezra get kicked out of class for telling the unwanted truth to a teacher's face. I don't understand how he can miss all that is coming.

And in this new emptiness, in this longing, I can see how I can go on.

And that just makes me sad.

the impending father's day

It's actually 3:28 a.m. as I write this. Unpacking from our move and working at the clinic have kept me so busy that I haven't spent any amount of time ruminating about what thought of loss has most taken up my mind this week.
But as I've driven to work, opened boxes of photo albums and placed Jeff's dresser in the corner of the room, the thought of the impending "Father's Day" has popped into my head briefly and painfully.
I have come to fear this day for my kids. I worry that they'll begin to notice other 'normal' families out for Father's Day breakfast. That the flyers in the mail advertising copious amounts of tools for the other kid's dad will highlight their lack of an alive one. That the ties or other seemingly useless items that kids make to mark the day that they celebrate their dad will cast little shadows on my little one's hearts.
On Sunday, you'll find me at work. My kids will be babysat until I return to them. There will be no special brunch, fancy formal wear accessories or tool belts to give to Jeff to mark what a kind, funny or loving daddy he was.
So in the afternoon, the kids and I will practise our own father's day tradition. We'll head to the beach with helium balloons clutched in hand, tiny folded notes tied into the strings and send Jeff the father's day messages we wish we could hand over with a huge and mushy hug.
I hope he'll get them. I hope he will know that we remember what a fabulous daddy he was and will never forget his part in making our lives as special as they were...and are.
Thank you, my Jeffrey, for our little ones. Thank you for your giant love. We love you right back. Happy Father's Day, my love.

Just A Step Dad

Phil was my second husband, and not the father of my three children. Though not biolgically related to my kids Phil was what I like to think of as their Everyday Dad.

After he died my kids were often told, "At least your real Dad didn't die." Once in awhile I heard people make the comment, "Oooohhhh, he was their Step-Dad," as if this revelation meant that the pain of his death was lessened by the fact that Phil's relationship to them was not created by genetics. Over the years my kids have been slighted repeatedly by friends, relatives, and kindly strangers...because these well meaning people didn't know the importance of my kids everyday dad.

Our Everyday Dad would run to my youngest son's baseball games in order to fit the kids sports schedule into his workouts.

Our Everyday Dad made up ridiculous names for household objects like dorks, wifes, floop floops, and dippers.

Our Everyday Dad liked to surprise our mother with the feats that the kids could accomplish like hiking to the top of a very high rock, doing wheelies off the curbs on our street, or riding the dirt bike in the backyard.

Our Everyday Dad would slip us an extra $20 when we were going out with our friends.

Our Everyday Dad took us to movies, roller rinks, and out for rides on ferris wheels.

Our Everyday Dad bought a trampiline and bounced on it as much as we did.

Our Everyday Dad was silly, fun loving, and always jumping out from behind things to scare us.

Our Everyday Dad took us trick or treating on Halloween.

Our Everyday Dad taught us the meaning of hard work, personal loyalty, and service above self.

Our Everyday Dad got mad when we left socks in the living room, forgot to put our dishes in the sink, or used one of his tools without returning it.

Our Everyday Dad explained things to us in words we could understand.

Our Everyday Dad loved our mom, and we knew it.

So on this week of Father's Day I salute the many men who are raising children that came to them because they loved these children's mother. Love is love and being a parent is more than just the ability to trace your genetics to a particular family tree. My children were, and continue to be, blessed to have their lives shaped by a man who loved them everyday.