Legos, grief, and good people




So last week was Christmas. We got spoiled. Baby girl got really spoiled. People like to spoil her these days, shes always been a favorite (cause my kids awesome). But ever since Dan died she has really become a favorite. People are always giving her presents, little stuffed animals, little toys that remind them of her or they think she would like. I know what there doing, I do it to. They either consciously or subconsciously are saying "I'm sorry your daddy is dead maybe this will help." As if a toy, any toy might make up for her dad dying. It doesn't and we all know it, and yet we all do it. Like I said I do it too. Because we will try anything we can to make her smile. to put that sparkle back in her eyes. If you don't know her as well as I do you may not think it's gone, but trust me it is, they are not the same. She has her daddy's eyes, same sparkle and all. Her sparkle left with her daddy. Sometimes I can catch a glimpse of it, usually when she gets a new toy, and thats why we do it, we are looking for a glimpse of her sparkle.

One toy she got for Christmas was a blue dragon from the lego elves dragons series.  She loves and adores this tiny blue dragon. As soon as we had it put together she started taking about how she needed more, and where there more, and could we get more. We looked them up on the computer, we discovered there are five dragons total and five dragon babies. Baby girl wants them all. She talks about making a dragon army and teaching the baby dragons how to fly. 

Well ok. there are worse things to want (like a live pig). I came up with a great idea. I went on a mad spree to find all the Lego sets with dragons in them. It turns out that the week after Christmas pretty much every lego set in america is sold out. I went to store after store after store. I looked on Amazon. You know your in trouble when the price on Amazon is twice as much as the retail price, there is a reason they do that, because you can't find them anywhere else.  Finally (you know after a whole week) I had acquired  all the dragons except one. As I got them I showed them to baby girl and told her my plan. She squealed with delight "good plan mommy, good plan." Was there a sparkle in that eye, I think there was just for a second. 

So the one elusive one was over twice as much on Amazon. In case you don't know legos are not a cheap toy to begin with, You have to be insane to pay twice as much for it. I may be a crazy widow but I am not insane. However I did figure I had nothing to lose and I posted on facebook that I was looking for the green elves dragon. You never know maybe somebody got two for Christmas, maybe there's a child out there that doesn't like legos or dragons. You never know. I got several suggestions of where to look. yup tried all those. Then a lady from baby girls school said "my son works at this one store that carries those I'll see if his store has any left." And then it was like this whole big secret plan. yes his store has exactly one left, he hid it, when can you go get it. ok when you get to the store let me know and he will bring it out. Ok he placed it back on the shelf, let me know when you've acquired it. It was like a heist scene from a movie for something I was willingly paying for. FOR LEGOS. Really though it was for an eye sparkle, and i'll do anything for one of those.

I never told the friend that helped me find the legos my plan for them. I just said baby girl wants legos, and she was going to help me find baby girl legos. Just like that, Just cause I asked. I think perhaps she remembers that sparkle too.

Next week will be two years since Dan died. Baby girl and I are running away to the beach with his parents. We did it last year and we all appreciated getting away from the real world for the days surrounding Dan's death. So we decided to do it again this year. I got baby girl a dragon army to build at the beach. She and I can sit and build legos and try (even though it won't work) to forget what that day means. We can spend the weekend building a dragon army and teaching it how to fly. Maybe just maybe the dragons can use their magic to help her with her grief. Maybe just maybe we will see her eyes sparkle a little bit. Just like they used to when daddy was alive. Just like daddy's always did anytime he looked at his lovely wife or beautiful baby girl. Besides doesn't everybody need an army of dragons?

I wrote a book about my grief, you can read it here: Carry on Castle

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

PTSD is not for sissys

Image
Do you know what PTSD is? Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I bet you think you do.  You might say something like "ya its what people that go off to war have" true. You might say "It's when people see really terrible things" true. A few really smart people might say "ya my friend watched her beloved husband die and now she has it" very true. If you are a mental health professional you might say "ya a child who all of a sudden has a dad who dies will have it" also true.  I was telling a friend once about how life is now without Dan and she said "wow it's almost like you have PTSD or something." No not almost, we do. But what exactly is it? Well it's complicated. I can't describe it for baby girl because I am not in her mind (unfortunately) but I can try and describe it for me. I am hesitant to do so; it's not an easy thing to talk about, But if we are going on a the point of this blog is to be therapeutic for me and h
Read more

The Floor

Image
I pulled him off of our bed and onto the floor. The 911 dispatcher told me to. She said it would help him breathe. I grabbed his ankles and pulled hard on his legs. He fell to the floor with a loud thump. I gasped at the loudness of it, but he didn’t move on his own at all. He didn't shake his head and say, “Ow, what’d you pull me off the bed for?” He didn't do anything. He just laid there. She told me to lift his neck up to help him breathe. I tried, but it was hard to move him, and I didn't want to hurt him.  I put my head on his chest again and again, I couldn’t tell if he was breathing, I couldn’t tell if that was his heartbeat or mine that I heard as he laid on the floor.  “Daddy! Wrestle with me!” she would shout, as she jumped into him and they landed on the floor. It was their favorite game. She would pound him and he would exaggerate the impact, clutching his stomach and lifting his legs in the air.  “You got me good, baby girl!” he would tell her. She would grin i
Read more

Milestones in grief

Image
                                                                Dan and I around 2011 I wrote this for a writing contest about milestones. Writing about every grief milestone would take a book and I had a word limit so I couldn't do that. I tried to do the really big ones. I have not had a particularly eventful life. When I was eight, my parents moved, but they took me with them. At ten, I had a pretty bad accident, but I came out of it fine. My husband and I met at sixteen, and at nineteen, we went against all good advice and got married. I gave birth to our daughter when I was 27.   I loved our boring, normal life. We were living our happily ever after. I was a stay at home mom, Dan was finishing up grad school. Everyone says this kind of thing at funerals, but Dan really was the most amazing person I’ve ever met in my life. He wanted to save the world: the people, the animals, the ecosystem. He wanted to make the world better, and he was. I loved our little family and couldn
Read more