Carry on Castle: Living with Grief

I was talking to a fellow young widow today and I asked her how she was doing with her widowness. It's the nice way of saying hows the dead husband thing working out. she replied "eh Life is good and everything sucks, you know how it is." Yes yes I know how it is. Life is good AND everything sucks. LIFE IS GOOD, I started working at a job I love, I'm getting ready to move into my new house which is going to be really cute. I have an amazing daughter. I have a fantastic family who loves me unconditionally, I have the most wonderful friends.  I am grateful for all these things. I do realize how lucky I am. EVERYTHING SUCKS. So I don't know if you heard but my husband, my soul mate died. I kinda tend to harp on it but it's a pretty big deal to me. It sorta makes everything suck. It's like a black could hanging over everything. Even in the happiest moments, your sad and you miss him. Life is good. The grand opening of my business was this weekend. It was

Baby Girl is learning to write in cursive. Very much a lost art (many schools don't even teach it anymore), Baby Girl finds cursive enthralling. She wrote her name in cursive and showed me, "wow you did a really good job on your name. Your hand writing looks just like mommys." That was it, that was all it took a simple comment made by myself. It hit me, her handwriting is just like mine. This child is 90% her father and 10% me. She takes after her father in so many ways that when she does something like me it always surprises me. Dan always said she had my facial expressions, since I don't often see my face I never really knew if he was right. She definitely has my handwriting, So what, who cares? This is why I care. It's my handwriting, not Dan's. Now I have some pretty distinct handwriting (read sloppy). Dan had very distinct handwriting too. He would have made a good Dr. based on his handwriting. I guess without even knowing it I always assumed Baby Girl wo

Baby Girl and I had the flu this week.  I'm gonna warn you. It was gross. The flu is gross. But hey death is way worse and I talk about that all the time so whats a little vomit. It started on Sunday. Baby Girl threw up all day Sunday. You know whats exhausting, taking care of a sick child all on your own. I remember the good old days when Dan was alive. Sometimes he would stay home from work if Baby Girl was really sick, so we could tag team the cuddles and the the cleaning up. Sometimes he would go to work anyway. Those times the second he got home I would NEED to run to the store for SOMETHING EXTREMELY IMPORTANT.  It was fine, he knew I needed out, she was perfectly content with her daddy. Two hours later I would show back up and he would ask what took so long. I would smile and say "I got lost" that was our phrase "I got lost" we would use it at times like these, when we needed a break from being a parent. We would also use it when we were out buying each o

So I finally got a job. I survived for two years and now I need a job. Technically I start next week but I've already been preparing for it. I am really excited about my job (and terrified but we will get to that later). So this is what I am doing, one of my besties and I are going to sell LuLaRoe clothing. They are a fun clothing line that is known for its crazy and wild, soft and buttery leggings. If you want more info on that there is a link on the side bar. But this is a grief blog so back to grief. Like I said I am super excited about this but the reality is that I was a stay a home mom whose husband went to work and made all the money. Honestly he had just got promoted to a really good position, we were excited about all the bills we were going to pay (not even kidding we were excited about paying off bills) And then he died. No more job, no more income, we wont even address the no more husband right now. I haven't worked at a job since Baby Girl was one, shes almost te

So in case you didn't know January was the longest month ever. Yes I know today is February 12, believe me I know. Today is 25 months since Dan died. Two years and one month.  I am really bad about remembering what the date is but I always remember the 12th.  January 12th was two years since Dan died. The first 12 days of February felt like January still. January felt never ending. Lost in grief. Lost wishing for the life I'm supposed to be having right now, you know that silly one where my husband is not dead. I really liked that life. January was a giant hole of emptiness like the 'nothing' from The Never Ending Story. Just blackness chasing me, devouring everything in it's path. It doesn't matter how hard I run it will get me anyway. Yup thats what January felt like on the inside.  Empty. I am trying to be brave and strong and fight it. It's not working. Baby Girl has her own 'nothing' chasing her this January too. She has been running from it

So Friday was the daddy daughter dance at school. It was renamed the "young ladies winter ball" Baby girl wanted to go but didn't want to go, you can rename something but everyone still knows what it is and calls it by its old name. You can read about her genius plan to get herself there by clicking   here . So we went. I volunteered to man the greeting table, Baby girl got a new dress and shoes. I tried to have grandma take our picture before we left and Baby Girl didn't want to. At first she just wanted to stay with me at the table, which was fine. Then her friends came and she ran off and played with them. A couple times she came back to me "Mommy my friends won't dance with me they just want to dance with there daddy's" What do you do with that? Of course they want to dance with their daddy's. It's the daddy daughter dance. Baby Girl doesn't have her daddy to dance with anymore. "Can mommy come dance with you? Mommy would lov

I went to therapy yesterday. I'm trying to figure out how to put into words what we talked about and it's not coming. We always start therapy the same way, she asks, "whats new" and I reply "Dan's dead" I wonder if shes waiting for the day I will give a different answer. I will be surprised myself if I ever do. Then we go on to talk about how Dan being dead has affected my life this week. We only have an hour so we never get finished. Generally it revolves around two things: how am I doing and how is baby girl doing.  Again we only have an hour so we never get finished. Is this writers block? I don't consider myself a writer so I don't think I can have writers block. I think more what it is is stress. I am so stressed I can't really think straight. I can't concentrate, I can't remember what I'm doing or supposed to be doing. I wonder how many hours I've wasted the last two years wandering around aimlessly because I couldn

We had a house warming party yesterday. In case you don't know the backstory; 15 months after Dan died, the house where baby girl felt completely happy and safe, the house Dan actually died in, our home where we wanted to stay forever was, in short, taken away from us. After five years of living there our landlord decided he wanted to sell it and kicked us out. Just like that, just because he could. I guess his conscious was ok with kicking out the young widow and her small child. It wasn't really ok with my conscious but there was nothing I could do. I wanted to buy that house and stay there forever but we couldn't afford what he was asking. So we had to move. We had no where to go. As I've said before, we have an amazing family, the second I told Dan's parents they said "move in with us, let us take care of you" so we did. We then bought a house which is a complete fixer upper and have spent the last five months fixing it. It's taken about three

I wrote this about a year ago. Unfortunately life is still like this. January was soooooo long, and soooo hard.  He is always there. Always. He doesn’t have a form yet he is unmistakable. Reminds me of something you might see in a Harry Potter movie. A ghost or a spirit, all swirly and smoky, about to take form, but never solid always flowing. Just when you think hes going to materialize and show you his true shape he changes again.  Most of the time his swirling mass, always on the verge of form, is about my size. And always he is right beside me. Handcuffed to me with invisible handcuffs but I can feel the pull on my wrist. He is always with me always. He is always talking to me always. Sometimes we have decent conversation. “remember when” he says “wasn’t that nice when” he says. Most of the time he is annoying “see that there, He’s not here to see it” “O look he would like that, but you can’t get it for him he’s not here” “He is missing this.” “He would love that, but he

There's so much grief running through my head right now that I can't decide which thing to write about. Which thing needs processing the most I guess. I don't really know which thing that is. I think it's a grief thing to not be able to prioritize. Or perhaps we just prioritize differently now. For instance I should be sleeping but I'm rambling about grief instead. I'm taking this parenting class right now. We were supposed to go through a list of mistakes kids can make and decide if they were "acceptable" mistakes or "non acceptable" mistakes and then discuss it with your table group. Not the first time I realized I have a different perspective now. Not doing home work; acceptable. wasting money; acceptable. picking on your sibling; acceptable. Other parents did not necessarily agree with me. Crashing your car when your a teenager; I put my x in the middle for that one. it depends on the circumstances, did you total your car? so what. As l