Thanksgiving Hangover (the grief kind not the alcohol kind)





We spent Thanksgiving with family as most people do. Wednesday night we had thanksgiving with my family. Thursday we had Thanksgiving with Dans family. This has been our tradition for many years now. Last year at both family gatherings I spent time in the bathroom crying. This year I didn't do that. An outsider might say that that makes this Thanksgiving better then the last. That's not necessarily true. Not better, just different, perhaps better at controlling crying.

In truth we really had a wonderful thanksgiving with both families. As always there was the weird non presence of Dan. It didn't belong at thanksgiving, Dan belonged at thanksgiving not his missing hole. However it is always good to be with family.

Baby girl especially had a great time. She was surrounded by one of her favorite people groups: UNCLES. Baby girl loves her uncles, they kinda love her too. She spent two days of being picked up and spun around and tickled and chased and and pulled through the house on a blanket, and wrestled on the living room floor and laughing at her ridiculous uncles. These are all things she used to do with her daddy and she doesn't get to anymore. As much as I try to play with her I am not a rowdy boy and she's grown so much I can't even pick her up anymore. As much as her uncles love and adore her and spend lots of time with her other then on holidays, it does not make up for the daily presence of her dad. Nothing can make up for the daily presence of her dad.

That brings us to today and the grief hangover. Many times we tend to push through the big holiday or event and it catches up to us the next day or days when we realize everything he missed and everything we missed without him here with us. Hence the grief hangover.

We stayed home today and watched tv. A good way to spend the day after thanksgiving. Baby girl was in a general cranky mood. You would think I am smart enough in grief by now to realize today was going to be a hard day. But no I wasn't.

We were painting fingernails and baby girl wanted me to hand her something. I told her I couldn't because my nails were still wet. That's it. so small, so insignificant, But it was the straw that broke her camel back. We spent the next half an hour with her screaming, crying, throwing things, and of course telling me I was a mean mean mommy.  For awhile I ran to my room and hid, pretending she wasn't out there so angry and upset. Then when I found a thimbleful of energy I came out. I was able to calm her down by sitting with her and ripping up paper and throwing it. It worked, it helped, it didn't solve the real problem.

Now let me be clear: my child is not a brat, my child is not spoiled (well maybe just a little). I have a very intelligent well behaved child. HER DAD DIED. DEAD. He kissed her goodnight like he did every single night and when she woke up he was DEAD.  Her best friend was GONE, Her playmate was GONE, Her hero was GONE. I hope that you can only imagine what this would be like for a seven year old and that you don't actually know what it's really like because it's never happened to you. If it has happened to you I don't need to explain it, you get it.

This is the result of a dead daddy, my nine year old throws giant massive grief tantrums. That's what they are grief tantrums, not spoiled brat tantrums. Shes not crying because I wouldn't hand her the finger nail polish. Shes crying because she spent two days with her awesome uncles and now she wants her dad. He's not here. She doesn't know how to express this "oh ya mommy I had so much fun with my uncles, it made me really miss all the fun things I did with daddy and that makes me really really sad so i'm going to cry about daddy for a little bit, will you hold me while I do that" Uh nine year olds don't talk like that. I mean she is very intelligent but really, adults can't even figure those emotions out how can you expect her to.

This is what we do, this is a regular occurrence, this is how she is handling her grief. Ya it sucks. It sucks for her and it sucks for me. But she doesn't know how else to cope, most adults don't know how else to cope. She's nine and her little heart has been broken into a million pieces for almost two years now. It's not fair to her.

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

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