Conversations with my niece




I baby sat my niece today. Shes in kindergarten but they didn't have school today. Shes what you would call a firecracker, always pushing the limits. Don't worry parents she was perfectly well behaved today. I'm just saying in general.

Baby girl did have school today so it was just me and my niece. We worked on our new house. She mostly played on her tablet, I moved stuff from our rented pod to our shed so we could send the pod back.  But for a little while she joined me and followed me back and forth across the yard.

"whew Aunties tired"  I say. "ya auntie you should take a break" Sweetie says "O I wish I could but I have to get this done sweetie"  Sweetie "well, if uncle Dan were here he could help you and then you could both take a break" Yes indeed IF uncle Dan were here. What I wouldn't give to be doing this moving project with Dan, and then we could take a break together, Sit on the couch with Dan while he holds my hand, watching our favorite tv show. IF.

Sweetie continues, "Auntie do you miss uncle Dan?" "Yes sweetie, Every single second (very heavy sigh) How about you, do you miss uncle Dan?"   sweetie. "hmmm sometimes, But I bet you and baby girl miss him a lot, because he was her daddy" Yes baby girl misses him a lot. "And grandma misses him a lot because he was her son" "Yes sweetie grandma misses him a whole lot"  "But if he were here, then he could live in your new house with you, then he could help you move all this stuff and you could take a break. But he died"   There she goes with that if again. IF IF IF. O sweetie IF only IF.

It was a bit refreshing to have this conversation with sweetie niece. She is very good at telling it like it is. She has asked me several times "why did uncle Dan have to die" I always tell her I don't know why. I'm certain it's not an adequate answer for a curious five year old but it's the truth at least. I can only imagine what she asks her parents about Dan dying.

Baby girl and I don't have conversations like this. She doesn't like to talk about daddy dying or being dead. She pretty much avoids it at all costs. It's interesting to hear what a small child thinks of death. Sweetie niece is very matter of fact about it, baby girl is sill in flight mode.  Sweetie nephew usually ends up smiling at you and giving you a hug, but thats what he does for everything.  We have a little friend with autism and the other day he said something about how he thought we would stop being sad by now but he can tell that were not. Recognizing emotions is big for him, that he recognized that we were still sad was profound for him.

Thanks for spending the day with me sweetie niece. Thanks for wanting to talk about your dead uncle, I like to talk about him too.

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