Our Faults






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 the interview Dan and I did a i'll tell you mine if you tell me yours about our worst qualities. Are you ready? The're pretty awful. My worst quality according to Dan: I don't believe in myself enough. He wished I would believe in myself more. Dans worst quality according to me: He procrastinates more then anyone I've ever seen in my life. However I have since changed my mind and am going to state that dying prematurely is defiantly his worst quality.

I know I talk a lot about how Dan was fantastically wonderful and my prince charming, and he was. But he did have faults, he did do things that drove me nuts. So since he's not here and I am we are going to talk about his faults and not mine (whew, cause apparently I have issues with that).

He procrastinated. No joke Dan was the biggest procrastinator I've ever known in my life and I am a big time "J" personality, In case you don't know what that means it means I think pretty much everyone in the world procrastinates, and my husband was the worst.  When he graduated from high school he was walking down the aisle with forms his teachers needed to sign before he could graduate. The day we got married 20 minutes before we were supposed to be at the church to get ready he was mowing the lawn, because he promised he'd do it before we left on our honeymoon. All through college he waited till the very last minute to write and turn in papers. That due at midnight clause was for him. back when you had to mail your taxes in by hand he drove to the post office at 11:55 saying"don't worry I have plenty of time" He would make up his Sunday school lessons as he was driving to church.

He never worried. He never worried about anything. he would always say "Don't worry God has it under control" or "what ever is gonna happen is gonna happen so there's no point in worrying about it" I worry a lot. So when things would worry me I was so frustrated that Dan was not also worried about them. But he wasn't usually he would kiss me and hug me and say "it's going to be fine" I can only remember one time ever that I saw Dan truly worried. It was when I was in pre term labor with baby girl and we were being ambulanced to a hospital with a NICU. Dan looked worried then and I knew we were in trouble because he had never looked like that before or since.

He was a ginormous bathroom hog. Ginormous. We only ever had one bathroom and I was regularly pounding on the door for him to get out. It was infuriating when baby girl was potty training cause you know toddlers don't wait for their dads to finish reading to go. Dan had really long hair he was kinda obsessed with. I would tease him that he spent more time on his hair in the bathroom then I did. It's true. He would blow dry it all the time, took forever.

He was a paper hoarder. Stacks and stacks of paper were all over our house, All over his car, All over his office. Anytime he went to any kind of conference or workshop (which was a lot) he would save the papers from it. He saved every single paper from college. He saved church bulletins. I tried and tried in vain to organize them, to get him to sort them, to find places for them to go.  You know what else he saved? Every single note I had ever written him. Every single note he had ever written me. Every single card, every single scribble of "I love you" he saved them all. I have them all.

And I'm done writing now.

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