Carry on Castle: Living with Grief

Can you imagine the most guttural intense painful cry you've ever heard? Maybe something out of a movie where someone is being tortured?  The pain is so real it makes your shoulders tense, your eyes squint and your face grimace. You may even move your body back at the shock.  I've heard that cry before and not in a movie, and not because someone was being tortured, well not physically anyway. I have heard that cry in my own house, it has come out of  my own lips. The pain of loosing Dan is that intense. The only thing worse then hearing this sound come out my own lips is when it comes out of my 11 year old daughters. That pain is utterly indescribable. Yesterday was three years, four months, and two ish weeks since Dan died. Horribly, suddenly he was gone. Then those guttural cries came out of everyone except Baby Girl. I don't think she knew how to make them, she was in complete and utter shock. She learned pretty fast though and we spent three years with both of us sc...

   Dan and I in high school I feel like I haven't written in 20 years.  Spring has come and I have actually been enjoying time outside. Add to that birthday parties and trips and it doesn't leave any time for writing.  Then the weirdest thing has been happening to me lately, I have been sleeping. Sleeping like a normal person. It is taking away serious writing time because thats when I write, thats why I started writing because I couldn't sleep. I think most of the last month I have slept a straight seven hours, haven't done that in three years, so its different. I also found that I miss my writing. I am going to have to find a way to incorporate writing time into daylight hours, what a challenge. I did something else that was 20 years later last night. I went to a party. It was a retirement party for my favorite teacher. Despite my insistence that I graduated high school like 10 years ago it was actually 20 exactly. The party in itself was awesome, it was a giant...

Yup they actually have that apparently. That's ok I didn't know either until someone told me. May 3rd is National Widows day. What do you think of when you think of a widow? I can tell you exactly who I thought of when I heard the word widow just over three years ago.   My grandpa was a widow, my grandma died of cancer when she was in her late 60's. My other grandma is a widow, her husband died from old age when he was 90.   There are several old ladies at church who are widows, they totter around with canes and gray hair. They tell stories about their spouses who 'have passed' and know it wont be too much longer till they see them again. Then there is that one, that one tragic tragic story, you only know of one because it is so rare. Likely it is a friend of a friend of a friend, someone you can't possibly personally know, because stuff like that happens to 'those people over there.'   You've heard this widow thing can happen to young people, ...

I went to therapy today. One of her usual questions is "How is baby girl doing?"  "Fantastic and completely screwed up" This is one of those times when my therapist flat out refuses to indulge me "Baby Girl is not screwed up...But why do you say that"  because she is, because shes both just like me. Doing fantastic, kicking ass and taking names, but shes completely screwed up. I proceeded to tell my therapist about how fantastic she is doing. We had school conferences and everything is great, she is doing great at school. She is playing with friends, she is talking to people. She is being a normal kid. Except that last Monday she didn't go to school at all because she had a giant anxiety attack about leaving mommy. Except last night when I walked out the back door to unplug our fountain. Before I even got to the plug approximately two feet away I heard screaming from in the living room where a moment before she was peacefully watching t.v. "MOMM...

It's my birthday, happy birthday to me.  I turned 38. That makes me a 38 year old widow instead of a 34,35,36,or 37 year widow. I was all of those once too, the years just keep on going I guess. I was 34 when Dan died. Four months later I was turning 35. I didn't want to, I didn't want to have a birthday without Dan, after all he had been with me to do something special for my birthday ever since I turned 17. I also knew my family who loves me fiercely would realize this and try to overcompensate for my now lack of a husband and I didn't want them to. What I wanted to do was run away, distract myself. So I did. Baby Girl, my sister and myself went to Disneyland for my 35th birthday. It was a pretty good distraction although you can never really run away from grief. The next year I turned 36. I was in the same spot, I didn't want to acknowledge my birthday without Dan. In fact the only good thing about my birthday is that it brought me one year closer to seeing D...

We had spring parent teacher conferences today. Dan was always really big on going to parent teacher conferences. He wanted to be involved, he wanted to know what she was doing in school. He would always ask the teacher questions about new teaching styles and new state testing, he wanted to be up on it all. I would just shake my head and think "Come on babe she has like a million parents to see today stop bugging the poor woman" But he was generally interested in that kind of stuff. I have been to more conferences without him then with him now. One more thing I thought I would never do. I remember one of the first conferences I had after Dan died. I don't remember if it was the first because ha, I didn't remember anything those first couple years. I remember this one because Baby Girls teacher was telling me about how great she was doing in school, but then she started talking about how better then having good grades was having good character and she started naming ...

Baby Girl and I went to see 'A wrinkle in time' with some friends tonight. They invited us and I thought oh ya I read that book in Jr High, it was pretty good this will be fun.  Uh ya apparently I don't remember what it was actually about, more likely I didn't pick up on the massive grief theme when I read it because hey I was in jr high and both my parents were alive and well. If I had remembered this I don't think I would have taken Baby Girl to see it. Or maybe we're over sensitive to that kind of stuff these days. Now I am going to spoil the movie so if you don't want to know what happens you may want to stop reading. The movie opens with a beautiful little girl who is about seven or eight playing with her daddy. You can see the light and the sparkle in her eyes, her daddy is everything to her. She helps him work and he teaches her that love is all around them. They spin around the room and they are both so happy. It even shows how in love the mom and ...