Carry on Castle: Living with Grief

                                                                                                 Dan pretending he's in jail at an old museum My sister had a dream about Dan the other day. Dan and I started dating when she was eight years old. He was very much an older brother to her. They were very close. Here is her dream as she posted it on Facebook: "I had a dream last night that my brother-in-law, Dan, who passed away a year and a half ago, was in jail. For some reason, I have no idea what he was there for. But he was there and alive. My sister, my niece and myself went to visit him. And you could sit there in this big open room and talk to him or play bored games at a table and then towards the end of my dream him and his daughter, were t...

You may have heard of the five stages of grief. I'm going to assume you have and not list them because basically, they are a giant pile of crap. That's not just my opinion; lots of counselors and grieving people agree with me. Grief has no straight line. There is no sequential step or stage. It just sucks. All your feelings are everywhere, even at the same time, and it's not just a soft "I miss him, but I know he'd want me to be happy," sigh.  It's a screaming rage, and you don't know why until you're lying on the floor. It's being so sad you don't know how you will survive the day. It's a moment when you think we just might make it, maybe. It's a constant fear that somebody else is going to die or something is bad is going to happen. It's anger like I've never known, anger at him for leaving us here, anger at God. And it's all at once, back and forth, all day long. It can switch in an instant. Today was a We Just Mi...

If today the mountains crumbled And fell into the sea And the breath of life God gave Was taken back from me If all the world was ending And there was nothing I could do Do you know that my last thoughts Would certainly be of you And don't you know if time would stop It would not be a pain to me If my last vision upon this earth Was your face that I would see For in your eyes I saw A world that was so at peace And that thought would be on my heart If today all things would cease If today's the day I meet The only God above I'll be certain to speak of you And how I fell in love. My husband, Dan, wrote me that poem while we were dating in high school. It was almost 20 years ago now. No wonder I fell in love with him, right? I found it when I was cleaning out our things, framed it, and put it on our wall. I look at it every day. I say OUR things because after falling in love in high school, and getting married when we were nineteen and twenty, everyth...

Most people can imagine (or they think they can imagine, but really have no clue until it happens to them,) what grief is like during the first couple of months. They think it's crying non stop, and being unable to go out in public. Many people have told me, "If that happened to me, I would just lie in bed all day," or "I could never do that, I don't know how you do it."  But what I know is that each person handles life differently. Typically, though, my response to those statements are, "No you wouldn't, you have kids to take care of," and "Yes you could; you wouldn't have a choice." People have also told me I have "handled this so well."  Every time I hear that, I laugh loudly in my head. Many times I laugh loudly out loud. Your tact tends to go out the window in grief.  "Handled" what, exactly? My husband dying? My soulmate dying? My grief? My child's grief at the loss of the best father in the wor...

I wrote this a while ago for family and close friends. Even as I'm typing this, I'm unsure about posting it for the whole world to see. I couldn't even write it out until about 9 months after he died, and it was very very painful. It still is. But its reality. WARNING : This is the story of how my husband, my soul mate, died. You may not be up to reading it AND THAT'S OK. You may just not want to read it AND THAT'S OK. You might want details about what happened AND THAT'S OK. This is the story of what happened the night Dan died. I wanted to write it for myself and thought I would give others the opportunity to read it if they choose (maybe baby girl will want to know someday).  If you don’t want to read it DON’T. IT’S OK . But if you want to know the details here they are.  Maybe it will help give you closure or something.  There is nothing overly gruesome but it is the story of exactly how Dan died which isn’t sunshine and lollipops. It’s death. ...

Not sure what to write. Do I tell the story of Dan's death? Do I want to go there tonight? Usually when I do I have to stop in the middle and take anxiety pills. Just thinking about it makes me want to take anxiety pills. I guess I won't go there tonight. Lets talk about anxiety instead, both mine and Baby Girl's (who is no longer a baby but a big girl of 9). Her dad always called her Baby Girl, so I think that is how I shall refer to her here. I never used to have anxiety. In fact I thought people with anxiety just simply couldn't get their shit together. I felt bad for them, but I really didn't understand it at all. I have learned my lesson. It's like,  before you have kids and you think you know how to parent, but once you have your own you learn real quick that this is not what you thought it was. Anxiety is not what I thought it was. I have no control, I can not simply get my shit together, it doesn't work like that. I can be logically thinking in my...

My therapist told me to start a blog. She thinks I have something worth while to say. Something? Yes. Worth while? I guess we will find out. I mean, everyone and their dog has a blog, right? What makes me so special? At the very least, I hope it will be cathartic. Here is the short story, which I will elaborate on in future blogs. Eighteen months ago, I was 34. I had a 7 1/2 year old daughter. I was married to my high school sweetheart, and we were still madly in love with each other. It was like a fairy tale; we liked to compare ourselves to Wesley and Buttercup from The Princess Bride. We were in the process of adopting a baby. And then we weren't. And then it was gone. In a second, literally one second, he was gone. My husband Dan died, extremely suddenly and unexpectedly. All day long he was fine. We went downtown to our favorite bookstore, we ate lunch, we had dinner, we went to bed at 11. At 11:15 I called 911. At 12:01 am on January 12, 2015, Dan was pronounced dead on...