Carry on Castle: Living with Grief

This may be a redundant blog. Redundant in that I know other people have written about it before. However I am a part of a lot of grief groups these days and this question gets asked a lot.  So in the attempt at being helpful this is going to be a different kind of blog.  It is going to be much more practical as in "what the crap do I do with Facebook when my loved one dies" This is by no means conclusive, or official, or true for every person every time. Everybody is a little different and it always seems like Facebook has different rules for every person.  So this is what I did, right, wrong, Facebook kosher, I don't know. just my experience. Sooooo...... What the crap do I do with Facebook when my loved one dies. 1) Uh Nothing. I did nothing. That's not precisely true, I did all kinds of things, but the important thing I did not do was make sudden decisions. Just leave it. If you have access to your loved ones account, thats awesome, your going to want it. If...

It's that time of  year again.  About a week left until school starts for Baby Girl. She is going to be in fifth grade this year.  FIFTH GRADE.  I don't know how she keeps on growing.  Dan died in January of her second grade year.  When I say it like that it sounds like a long time ago but it wasn't, it was just the other day.  Baby has been in the same school since kindergarten.  I have loved her school since day one, they are just all around awesome.  They became even more awesome ever since Dan died. Her little public school has been nothing but supportive for both me and Baby Girl, from the principal, to the teachers, to the staff and parents, none of them are going to let us fall through the cracks and get lost. I'm gonna be straight up honest; I hated fourth grade. Baby Girl was not a fan either. Fourth grade sucked in almost every way. I don't remember third grade being this hard, or the last half of second grade. It must be because ...

                                                                                 Me speaking at Dan's funeral, my Dad is standing behind me. I was in therapy the other day (I get so much writing material from therapy). Very rarely there are times when neither I nor the therapist have anything to say.  In these times I'm usually staring off into space, letting the corner of the room get blurry. Then she asks a very common question, "what are you thinking about right now."  HAHAHAHAHA. You guys think I'm honest here, you should see me in therapy. Crazy widow stuff of course, stuff that makes no sense, stuff that you can't change and you shouldn't dwell on. But you do because you are consumed with grief. I didn't like the outfit I wore to my husbands funeral.  I used to l...

Baby Girl and I spent most of this summer traveling. We went on so many trips I probably can't remember them all. Most of them were crammed into the last half of summer, making the time we were home in between trips as many as three days and as little as one.  Hence the very little blogging, I've been gone and often had little or no internet.  never fear I have a whole list of things to blog about that came up while we were traveling. Dan didn't come on any of our trips. I suppose technically he did because I carry around a small jar of ashes in my car (why yes I am a crazy widow and I do weird things like keep my dead husbands ashes in my car, but just some of them). I suppose you could say he was there in spirit, I'm undecided about what I think about that but let me assure you it is not the same as a actual alive person. We came home from our last trip, last night. My dad picked us up from the airport, he brought my car. I saw him pull up to the curb and the firs...

It's 3:30 in the morning, I'm awake, for no reason what so ever. I miss Dan I guess. Two years and seven months and sometimes I still wake up at 3:30 in the morning just because he's not here. It's much better then it used to be, better meaning that for a long time, the whole first year at least I would wake up at 3 in the morning every single night. I guess thats when grief catches up to me. Now it's only occasionally, but probably still more then the average person. Yesterday was our 18 year wedding anniversary. I got married 18 years ago. I'm relatively young still (37) although I feel old, after all I'm a widow, doesn't that automatically make me at least 65?  I'll save you some math and tell you I got married when I was 19. Dan was a whole year older then me, he was 20.  We were babies, we were crazy and nearly everyone told us so. We also knew, we just knew, this was true love, this was fairy tale love, this was forever. We didn't know fo...

Baby Girl and I just got back from church camp. It's a week up in the mountains and it's beautiful. It was a great week. We had a great time, I love camp.  Amazing things always happen at camp. I was not supposed to be there.  It's not that I don't belong there, because I do, they are my people, my church family, they love Baby Girl and I to no end.  They loved Dan too. Camp falls under the category of Dan's job. Dan went to camp with our church for years, he was even the director. I stayed home and took care of Baby Girl.  The plan was that when Baby Girl was old enough for camp he would go with her and I would stay home with our other kids. Eventually when all our kids were old enough I would probably wind up at camp too.  Dan died before any of that happened. Last year was the first year Baby Girl was old enough to go to camp. I went too. There were several reasons for me to go, they needed another counselor, Baby Girl's anxiety was too high for her to ...