Flat tire





I did about five million things this week and it's only Wednesday. It's the Wednesday of Spring break and we tried to make the most of our vacation by going out of town. Twice. Yes it's only Wednesday.  So it's hard to figure out what of those five million tings I should blog about (I didn't have good internet access so I didn't do it at the moment.)

Really it boils down to the same old thing, Dan's still dead. I miss him. We went out with friends this evening. They wanted to know how our spring break was and how my new job was going. I told them. I fought back the urge to say "and also Dan's still dead."  They know Dan's still dead. They've known just as long as I have that he died. Yet I want to tell them, you know least they forget, maybe they will think he's at work, maybe I need to remind them that he's dead. I don't. They know, they didn't forget, my logical brain knows that they know and yet something in me (my crazy widow brain) compels me to want to tell them. Not just them but anyone. "Yup had a great day, went to a movie with friends, Dan's still dead" Just tac it on to the end of the sentence, I don't even really know why, so you don't think that I forgot I guess. Believe me I did not forget.

Everything we do ends with 'Dan's Dead.'  On Saturday we drove about an hour away to a little touristy town with my siblings to do little touristy things for my brothers birthday.  Baby Girl, my sister, my brother in law, and I were in my car and went to find some lunch. To make a long story short I got a flat tire. To make it longer my brother in law was unable to put the spare tire on and we had to get it towed to a tire store. I asked my brother in law to come with me so he could explain to the tire store exactly what the problem was. I love my brother in law but I wish Dan were dealing with all this and not him and I. We get to the tire store, it is a big chain, all our information is still under Dan' name and Dan's phone number. I've asked them to change it before, it seems they didn't. I was in no mood to say "look my husband has been dead for two years and two months and two weeks could you please take his name off our account." So I just let it go. Then they call his name when they need to talk to us about the car, yup thats me over here, no this is my brother in law not Dan, Dan's dead.  Ok I didn't say that out loud but I wanted to.

Then it gets fun. The tire guy quoted me an extremely high price. Then I don't even know what happened, my brother in law looked at him sideways and maybe shook his head slightly, maybe. The tire guy said he'd be back, he came back with a lower price. My brother in law did the same look and maybe a slight nod and the tire guy went away again. When he came back the next time he handed us the key and said "all fixed no charge"  Uh wait, what just happened, my brother in law didn't even say anything. They wanted to charge me a million dollars and now it's free. I do not understand. So this naturally pisses me off, because it felt very sexist and very cheated. If I hadn't of had him with me I would have spent a ton of unnecessary money. Yet another thing that makes me go 'seriously it's 2017 and I need a husband to not get cheated with cars'. This naturally makes me mad at Dan yet again for being dead. The ironic thing is Dan and I knew exactly the same amount of stuff about cars: You put gas in them and they go vroom vroom. Good car. So I kinda think if Dan were here we would have ended up spending all that money anyway cause we know nothing about cars. Yet I'm mad at him for not being here. For putting me in that spot, because I have to deal with it. Because for the 10,000 time I had to ask my brother in law for help because Dan is dead.

Thats just one thing, one little thing, to most people a flat tire is a minor inconvenience. To me it makes me realize for the zillionth time how lost I feel without Dan. How much I depended on Dan. How much I need Dan. How much I miss Dan.

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