The 12




This will likely be a disjointed blog. Why? Because today is the 12. I hate the 12. In case you don't know the 12 is the day Dan died. January 12, 2015. It was the worst day of my life and I pray I will never have a day worse then it. 20 months today.

Now I have a confession to make, and it feels very strange saying it. For the first time since Dan died I did not wake up on the 12 and go "crap today's the 12" It was not the first thought in my head even though I knew yesterday that it was coming. The first thought in my head was "Crap (or maybe perhaps fuck) it's 7:30 we're going to be late for school" and then I thought "well that makes sense today's the 12"

You see things always go wrong on the 12, always. Things that seem random and non related to grief. Things that in a normal life wouldn't be that big of a deal, but in grief they are because you know you just can't handle one more thing on this day. It's like the world knows it's a terrible day so thing after thing just goes wrong. Your body knows what day it is too, and it doesn't like it either, so you are extra tired and scatter brained. Your grieving child who likes to pretend shes not grieving also knows what day it is, even if her brain doesn't know today is the 12, Even if her brain doesn't know daddy died on the 12, her body knows.

I am happy to say with much rushing we did make it to school on time. Then I went to work on my new house. Upon getting there I realized I had forgotten to wash the paint brushes out the last time I was there. So trying to salvage them I took them to the sink. After about three minutes of the sink running I notice water pouring out of the cupboard below. Apparently my new house has some pipe issues. Of course it almost had o because today is the 12. So I sat on the floor for awhile and watched water dribble all over and thought "today's the 12, I should have known better" Then I cleaned up the mess and worked on finding a plummer.

I bought a new mail box for my new house and decided I would go take the old one off and put the new one on. 20 minute task that will make me feel like I have accomplished something today. It was not a 20 minute task. It's not even done and I worked on it for hours. Whats so hard about putting on a mailbox you ask? Well nothing except today is the 12 so everything.

I am painting my room green. last week I got a sample jar of paint for it and put some on the wall, it was ok but not perfect, so today I went and got another sample of a different green. It looked really nice on the swatch at the store, calm. I put some on my wall. It looks like baby poo. Of course I have baby poo paint on my wall, today is the 12, really it was inevitable.

I picked baby girl up from school. A few days ago she was invited to go with her two best friends after school today to a golf class. Baby girl doesn't like golf, she didn't want to go, she has no interest in it. Until she saw her besties get picked up together to go have fun without her, then she figured out it was about being with them not golf, but it was to late for her to sign up. So she cried all the way home instead. Because it's the 12.

Every 12 is the same, just a day of everything going bad. The first 12 an army of vicious vicious ants attacked my kitchen. I always wonder why I haven't yet learned to just stay home and lock the door and watch tv all day on the 12. I try to tell myself it's just another day, stuff needs to be done, a physical date has no bearing. But that is all a lie, it does have bearing, it's not just another day.

20 Months Dan. Every single night I go to bed wondering how I made it through another day without you. Every single night I go to bed without your kiss, without you telling me you love me. 20 months is forever, 20 months feels like it was just yesterday. 20 months of Carrying on with a broken soul.


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

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
Read more

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

My therapist told me to start a blog

Image
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...
Read more