Carry on Castle: Living with Grief

Long ago and far away. Well it seems long ago and far away I guess it's been about five years now. Anyway as I mentioned before we were in the process of adopting a baby. Five years ago we were filling out the stacks and stacks and stacks of paperwork you need in order to adopt. Seriously its worse then buying a house. Part of the process was you had to have a personal interview with your agency. So we went. One at a time we were interviewed by this lady. Dan went first. One of the questions she asked both of us was "what is the worst quality of your spouse" So I gave her my answer. Then she told me that in all the people shes ever interviewed those were the nicest worst qualities she has ever heard. That if that was the worst we could see in each other we would be together forever. That most people, even in love people, wanting to adopt can think of some pretty bad things they don't like about their spouses. Well I thought what I said was pretty bad but ok.  So after...

My baby sister is getting married in October. Her name is Minna (her real name is Melinda but we all call her Minna). Baby girl is the flower girl, I am a bridesmaid. Dan was supposed to officiate the wedding like he did for my other sister 4 years ago. Ever since Minna was a young teenager she wanted Dan to do her wedding. She meet Dan when she was 8 years old and he was very much a big brother to her. He called her munchkin (shes really short) and took her out driving before she had her licence. The night Dan died, After everything happened my family was sitting in the dark in the living room, it was somewhere around 3 am. We should have been sleeping but we couldn't so we were just sitting in the dark silently crying. I heard Minna whisper to her boyfriend "Dan was supposed to marry us, now what are we gonna do" I said "I heard that Minna" It's the first real thing I remember about that night. What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do without Dan? We cr...

I went to grief counseling today. I do that a lot because i'm grieving. We talked about my dead husband, which is mostly what you do in grief counseling. We also talk about my daughters dead daddy. I told her this story about this Facebook memory that popped up in my feed. It was about seven years ago. Baby girl was around 3. We went to a beach house for a week with Dan's parents. We stayed downstairs and they stayed upstairs. The downstairs door was stuck so every time you wanted to go outside you had to walk up the inside stairs, through the outside door and down the outside stairs to the car. This was a tad obnoxious for unloading luggage. When we were leaving at the end of the week I packed the car up.  Here is the Facebook post From July 2010: "This is why I love my husband: loading the car at the beach house and the downstairs door is stuck locked. Meaning you have to carry everything upstairs and then back down the outside steps. Dan goes "you already loade...

I got this card 19 months ago. I call it my dead husband card.  It gets you things. It gets you free drinks at Dutch Brothers when they ask what your doing today and after a very long pause you decide to tell them the truth "I'm going to the beach to spread my dead husbands ashes" It gets your freezer stocked with food you did not make for about six months. It gets you lots of looks. Lots and lots of looks. It gets your daughter toys and candy. Lots of toys and candy. It gets you extra moving help when you suddenly get kicked out of your house. It gets your friends husbands to move heavy things for you and fix broken things. It gets you your daughters favorite teacher. I think I try very hard not to use my dead husband card all that much. I don't want to over use it. I don't want people to start getting annoyed and saying "she uses that excuse all the time." I try to take care of me and baby girl with minimal help. The same amount of help we had when he...

I had a conversation with my dad a couple months ago. I have no idea what it was actually about but the essence of it was he asked me to do something, something small, trivial and I said "no I can't I'm grieving" and he replied "this has nothing to do with you grieving" to which I replied "The hell it does. Everything does it's all related." It's all related. All of it. When you lose your soul mate everything relates to that loss. EVERYTHING. Its not just a your thinking about him so your sad, or your favorite song just played on the radio. Or even that your mad at him because he's missing your life together. It is those also, but it is so much more. So I am going to list some things that perhaps other people think are random but are totally related to grief. You walk slower. So much energy is in grieving that you actually truly walk slower. It takes energy you don't have to walk at a normal pace. I sleep with a nightli...

The other day my Dad had a medical scope put down his throat to investigate some issues he has been having. I found out he was doing this the day before and immediately my brain said "Cancer, it's gonna be cancer, dads gonna have cancer, dads gonna die, crap I can't do this." Thank God it's just stomach ulcers. I'll take stomach ulcers any day over cancer. My friend called me today. After chatting for awhile she said "so I have some news" my brain jumped "Cancer, she's gonna tell me she has cancer. shes gonna die too"  Instead she was calling to tell me she was pregnant. Wonderful news, but she knows I'm sensitive about that whole baby thing like I'm sensitive about the whole dead husband thing so she was trying to break it to me gently. I love her, shes the best. I'm so glad shes having a baby instead of cancer. If people call me at a strange hour, or what I think is a strange hour I'm afraid they have bad news. If ...

 I couldn't adult today. I just couldn't. I think adulting yesterday on our anniversary was too much work and my body said stop it. I woke up wanting to go back to bed. I completely ignored my niece who I was babysitting (sorry sister). I ignored baby girl as much as possible but shes a stubborn one and wont let me ignore her too much. I put away our stuff from church camp which we got home from on Friday. It's a good thing we live with my mother in law and she offered to do our laundry or it would still be stinking up the suitcases (it's making me second guess this moving out thing, We have it good here). And I laid on the couch. I laid on the couch and waited for it to be bedtime. I didn't even watch tv. Baby girl was watching a show we've seen a million times and I had no interest in it. I laid on the couch. I tried to take a nap three different times because I was so exhausted my head hurt, but inevitably baby girl would need something just as I was drifting...

17 years ago today I was 19. Dan was 20. It was my best friends 18th birthday. And we were all in a wedding. My wedding. Against all comments of "your so young" "there's time you can wait" "young marriages don't last" and my personal favorite a co worker of my dads bet him $100 we wouldn't last 2 years. That guy still owes us money. We knew all this and we got married anyway. We were too in love not to. We knew we were going to be together forever so we didn't see why it mattered if we got married now or after college. We were so happy you could see the joy oozing out out our pores. It was a simple wedding with tons of family and friends. I accidentally hit a four year old girl in the face with my bouquet.  We danced to our song, the song Dan heard on the radio after he dropped me off at my house on our first date. "It's your love" by Tim McGraw and faith Hill. "Better then I was, more then I am, and all of it happened by...

I'm at church camp this week. The internet connection is awful and I'm not sure if this will even post, but here goes. I met Dan at church camp. Not this one, but a different one. I was sixteen, Dan was seventeen. I remember exactly what I was doing the first time I saw him. I was sitting on top of a picnic table by the lake talking to people. I looked up, and saw Dan walking toward us, going over a tiny hill. I thought he was cute. He came over to our group, stood around and talked to us for a moment, and then we all dispersed to go to some activity.  Dan always said, "It wasn't love at first sight, but sometime between the first time I saw her and the very next breath, I  fell in love." That night at campfire everyone brought their blankets with them. I didn't have a blanket, so Dan offered me his because I was cold. Then he let me take his blanket back to my cabin with me. I have had that blanket ever since. It's on me right now, as I t...

Baby Girl and I are moving. Technically, we've already moved. At the moment we live with Dan's parents, who spoil us and insist I do crazy things. Like nap. And rest. I saw this thing the other day that said something like, "When people lose their spouse, they also often end up losing their homes, income, and friends." It's so strange, I know exactly how we lost our house, but I can't yet figure out how this happened to me. Five years ago, Dan and I started renting this little starter house in an adorable neighborhood out in the country. It had a huge yard. It was quiet, there was a hiking trail nearby, it was a great school. Except for the small size of the house, (which would never do for the four kids we wanted,) it was perfect.  It was our Plan A, with the intention of moving up to Plan A+. I loved our house. I loved it more than Dan did, but he loved it too. Baby Girl loved our house. We had always planned to buy a bigger house one day when we w...

We have a consolation kitty. As in, "I'm sorry your dad died. Here, maybe this kitty will make you feel better." Really, that's pretty much how it went. After Dan died, Baby Girl was afraid of everything. Everything. When a car door slammed, she jumped. If she heard a loud noise outside, she would scream. When a dog barked she would cower behind me. She was terrified of dogs. Even friends' dogs that she knew and played with before, she would not go near. One time we went to a friend's house, and Baby Girl refused to get out of the car because she was afraid of the dog. The summer before, she ran through the fields with that dog, and used her as a pillow while lying in the sun.   Every little noise scared her. My daredevil Baby Girl, who wasn't afraid of anything, was now terrified of everything. I understood. I got it. I mean, one second your world is happy and perfect, and the next your daddy is dead. Of course she's afraid, and all that ...

Warning: You will need a strong heart and mind to read this one, because it's going to suck. My own Baby Girl is not a baby anymore. She is a big girl of nine, practically an adult. All of my friends are still in the "having babies stage" of life. I am still in that stage. I have five friends, yes, FIVE, who have had babies since Dan died. I have a sort of secondary grief, if you will, over babies. Dan and I wanted babies so badly. I wanted four and he only wanted three. We would tease back and forth about this, and why one was better than the other. I would always end it by saying,  “You just wait and see. I’m going to win this one.” We also knew that we wanted to adopt someday. Even before we were married we talked about how adopting was something we were meant to do. We weren’t entirely sure what that looked like. Maybe we would have a couple of kids, and then adopt a couple. Maybe we would only adopt one. One way or another, we knew we would do something throug...

                                                                                           This is the picture we used for the funeral program Well, it's midnight and I can't sleep, because I'm thinking about my dead husband, and that, after all, is what this blog is for.  I wrote a few days ago about the night Dan died. I'm going to pick it up from there and write about the aftermath. It's going to be choppy, because I'm pretty sure I wasn't all there, and I remember it in chunks, which are not necessarily in sequential order, but I will do my best. "This is not my life, this is not what happens to me. This is not my life, this is not what happens to me."  I kept saying that phrase over and over and over. I think it was the only thing I ...