Sometimes I Flip Off My Dead Husband.




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 Might Make It, Maybe day. Today Baby Girl and I went to the river with cousins and other assorted family. Baby Girl loves to swim. Her daddy taught her to swim; he was a life guard in high school and it was crucial to him that she could swim well. And she does, I don't worry about her (much) swimming. I know, of all the things people worry about this is a common one, and the widow with anxiety doesn't worry about it because I know her daddy taught her well.

We had a fantastic time at the river. We swam and swam. We rode inner tubes and we caught crawdads. Through it all I missed Dan, and wished he was with us, but we were still having fun. You do both.You have to, to survive.

Then Baby Girl saw some other kids jumping off the side of a cliff. The giant piece of her that is exactly like her father, a daredevil in the extreme, said,

"I'm gonna do that."  And she did. She knew Mommy wasn't about to jump off the side of that cliff, so she convinced Auntie to do it with her. I didn't get a picture because I was too busy fearing for her life. It wasn't overly high, about has high as a diving board, which she has done many times, but it was rocks and cliffs and rivers.

She did it. She loved it. She did it again. I'm sure she would have done it a dozen more times if it hadn't been time to go home. It was awesome. Dan should have been there to do that with her. He would have convinced her to jump from even higher up, and I would have been shaking my head at the both of them.

It's times like these that I flip him off. Sometimes I do it mentally, sometimes I physically do it up in the air. If I'm in the car I flip off his ashes. Yes, I keep some of his ashes in my car, I am a crazy widow after all. If I'm at home I will flip off any one of the hundreds of pictures of him that are on our walls.

Why do I do that? It's a little passive aggressive to flip off the dead guy you're in love with. That's the simple answer. I'm mad at him. I'm pissed off at him. I am fucking pissed off at him. I yell at him more now than I ever did in the nineteen years we were together.

Friends and family do not really understand this. I have had several friends explain it away as being "stuck in the anger phase." I have had several friends say they don't understand why I'm mad at him, because of course he didn't want to die. I KNOW. And it doesn't matter.

I know with my entire being that Dan would have stayed here with us if he had a choice. That has nothing to do with my anger toward him.

I'm mad at him because he's not here and I am.

I'm mad at him because I don't get to sleep in anymore.

 I'm mad at him because I have to go to school plays without him.

I'm mad at him because he doesn't help with bedtime anymore.

I'm mad at him because I can't talk to him anymore.

I'm mad at him because I don't want to do this nasty, overwhelming life business without him.

I could go on for at least 100 more pages but I think you get my point. I'm mad at him because I miss him, and I want him here with me. Unfortunately, that's not going to happen, so I have to settle with flipping him off, while I watch our baby girl jump off a cliff.

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

Comments

  1. JourneyJuly 29, 2016 at 7:41 AM

    I think you're "stuck" in the always honest "stage". Right where you should be ��

    ReplyDelete
  2. RachelJuly 29, 2016 at 1:55 PM

    That is the most fantastic, beautiful thing I've read in a long time. KEEP BLOGGING. We need to read this stuff. We need to say this stuff.

    ReplyDelete
  3. EstherJuly 30, 2016 at 6:52 PM

    You're such a cool person. Xoxo

    ReplyDelete

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