Profound conversations with Baby girl

I don't talk about how Baby girl is doing in this whole grief thing. I don't talk about it a lot because she doesn't talk about it alot. She kinda avoids it as if it were zombies, actually I'm pretty sure she likes zombies better then talking about her dad. She has her reasons. Shes only 9, 7 when Dan died, she doesn't know what to do with all these crazy emotions so she pushes them away. I however embrace them (in case you couldn't tell) and find the more I talk about it the better I feel. I wish she would do that but it's not her way. Every once in awhile like every 5 months or so she will have a really deep 5 minute conversation with me about Dan. Then just like that she will change the subject again. The other day we had one of those conversations. I'm still in a little bit of shock about it so hey why not tell the world.


So the other night we were driving home from our grief support group. At group the kids go downstairs and play and talk and the grown ups go upstairs. So I  don't know what Baby girl does unless she tells me. As I'm driving she says "Mommy it's not fair!" "Whats not fair I say?" "Well we always go around the circle and say how our person died and then we get to say our favorite movie or color or whatever the theme is. Well I always have to say 'pass' because I don't know how daddy died so I never get to tell anyone my favorite thing and thats not fair"  uhhhhhhh. Ya. That's what my kid said, in the car, as were driving home in the dark. No, I did not crash. Play it cool play it cool. "O well I can tell you how daddy died, would you like me to?" "ok I guess" "Daddy died of a seizure, so when people ask you just say he had a siezure and died" Baby girl "well I don't know what a siezure is but ok" "Oh I can tell you what a siezure is, would you like me to tell you" Baby girl, "nope" and she instantly changes the subject.

All this time. 21 months, and she didn't know. She said pass at every single grief group because she didn't have the right answer. Now, I know I didn't flat out tell her he had a siezure. The night he died I told her we didn't know why daddy died, which is true, we don't know why he possibly died from a siezure, it still doesn't make any sense to me. She has never ever ever asked me a single thing about him dying, this is the first time. I didn't tell her because she didn't ask. At the same time I didn't hide it from her either. I would talk about it with other grown ups in her presence, it wasn't a secret. I guess I just assumed or rather wanted to assume that she picked up on it when she overheard me talking. She hears everything else I say. I guess not that one. That's all, I have no profound insight from that conversation.

In another conversation I had with Baby girl recently she told me how she was scarred about moving into our new house. How there could be monsters there and she didn't know if they were nice or not. Monsters come around pretty regularly when change comes. They hung out for a long time after Dan died and they came back again when we had to move out of our house. Now they are coming back. It's a sign of her nervousness.  I'm with her. A new house is new and scary, and different, We don't know what kind of noises we will here when were trying to sleep. We won't be used to going out to the living room when we wake up. Everything will look different. Everything will be different. We won't have grandma and grandpa there to help us. We won't have Dan there. We will be on our own again and thats huge. HUGE. I don't know if I can do this on my own again.  How do you reassure your child when your not sure yourself?

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