Carry on Castle: Living with Grief

You don't get to be me. You don't get to try and hold in tears as your Baby Girl is crying and crying because neither of you can remember the story just as daddy told it and she realizes her storyteller is never coming back. You don't get to walk down the beach by yourself asking God over and over "Why?" and never getting a response. You don't get to tell every new person you meet that your husband is dead. You don't get to try and decide how long you can avoid the topic before you tell them. You don't get to be the last one to pack up because your doing it all on your own, knowing that everyone is waiting on you, knowing that when he was here you never had this problem. You don't get to sit by yourself wishing you had someone's shoulder to lean your head on. You don't get to wonder how you will possibly go on. You don't get to worry about how your Baby Girl will turn out know that her daddy's gone. You don't get...

I have always had cats, my whole life. Anyone who has had cats can tell you they do whatever they please. My cats have always done what they pleased. Dan only kinda sorta had a cat when he was a kid. I say kinda sorta cause I'm not sure who the cat officially belonged to. If it was their cat or a neighbor cat that came around all the time. I know it lived outside because Dan's dad was allergic to cats. Her name was Big Momma. Dan had fond memories f that cat. When we first got married I wanted my cat that I had since I was a child to come live in our apartment with us (it stayed with my parents when I went to college). Dan didn't really want her too. Which was odd for Dan because Dan is an animal rescue person. However I prevailed and with the following 'rules' made by Dan she came to live with us. Rule 1: she is not allowed to sit on the couch or a lap unless there is a towel down to collect all the fur. Rule 2: she is not allowed under any circumstances to sleep...

I don't wanna talk to you people. It's not that your not perfectly lovely people, I'm sure you are. It's just that right now I don't want to talk to you. Right now at this very second I just want to talk to Dan. I have so much I want to talk to him about. I've been wanting to talk to him all day, all week, all month, for the last two years and five months I have wanted to talk to Dan. When he first died my therapist told me to start a journal where I wrote letters to him. Honestly, I thought it was kind of dumb, I mean whats the point in writing to him, he's not going to get any of the letters, he's not going to see anything I write, he's dead. Since I really didn't have any other options I started writing to him in a journal. Ya umm, I wrote stuff. I wasn't very consistent at it because I never really saw the point. Then I started blogging and that was better then writing to my dead husband I guess. Sometimes I talk to him.  Mostly in my...

It's 3:30 am. I am awake. Bay Girl went to bed at 10pm, I was so tired then I probably could have fallen asleep on the hardwood floor. I stumbled into bed and immediately went to sleep. Now it's 3:30am and I've been awake for an hour trying to will myself back to sleep. I guess this is anxiety. I guess this is grief. still. I will admit I occasionally did this sort of thing before. It was ocasional, now it's regular. In the before it was usually because there was some big event the next day. A wedding or a party, I was thinking about, trying to order all the things I had to do to get ready. It was usually closer to midnight and I hadn't gone to sleep yet at all. "Dan, Dan, I can't sleep Dan, talk to me" snore snore snore is what came from Dan.  Not deterred I would give him a little nudge "Dan, Dan, what are you doing I can't sleep, Dan"  mumble mumble mumble "go to sleep Jennifer, worry about it in the morning" mumble mumbl...

"I think you've really been coming out of the fog these last few months, both of you" one of my besties said last week. Fog? What fog? Was it foggy today? I didn't notice.  OH THAT FOG!  You mean the giant all encompassing fog, where I feel like I'm stumbling around in a foggy graveyard called grief and I can't see the end of my nose much less figure out what were going to eat for dinner or remember what I'm supposed to do that day. The one where the only thing you can see is that nothing is right, that the fog is everywhere, that you are lost and you have no idea where to go now or even what direction to turn in. THAT FOG! The my husband died suddenly fog. My Husband died, I say that a lot. Dan died, dead. Gone. Lost. I hadn't really thought about it, but her comment made me do a quick evaluation "You know what I think we have too. We are really doing well, I feel like I can remember stuff better and I can handle stuff better. Baby Girl is ...

I went to Therapy (I start a lot of blogs like that). We talked for a long time my therapist and I, about an hour.  Generally I tell her how my week went and how it relates to grief.  Then we discuss it.  This week one of her comments was "Your fucking kidding! That actually happened!" Yes yes it did, but guess what internet readers, that is not what I am going to talk about right now, you will just have to use your imaginations. All in all it was a pretty mellow week as far as grief was concerned. I was telling her how we had had a good week, how Baby girl had had a good week.  it's a bit um I don't know that this actually falls under the category of good news but it did. I told her about this evening we had. Baby Girl and I went out to a diner with some other family members, we ate kinda early so we were done kinda early. It was a nice sunny evening. Afterward Baby Girl asked if we could go look at the new library, it got remodeled about a year and a half ago and...

Did I ever tell you that I have a contrary daughter. That I'm pretty sure about 80% of the stuff she does is because I want her to do the opposite. "Baby Girl go but on your tennis shoes" "No I'm wearing flip flops today" "But it's raining" "Ya I'm wearing flip flops today." Purple is my favorite color, Baby Girl has decided that she hates purple, and hates it with a passion, she won't wear anything purple, wont use anything purple. NO to purple. Awhile ago Baby Girl's therapist sorta gently suggested that maybe I was trying too hard to "push grief" on Baby Girl by constantly reminding her of her Dad. It was one of those things where I didn't realize I'd been doing it until someone pointed it out to me. I was constantly reminding her about her dad because I am constantly reminded of her dad and I just say it out loud. "you roll your eyes just like your daddy" "you have the same eyes as ...