Carry on Castle: Living with Grief

I called my sister in law today, I had something very important to say, "You tell your husband that he is a giant asshole"  I think she was taken aback by this, I don't generally call her husband (Dan's brother) an asshole, he's a pretty decent guy.  Nevertheless I was pretty pissed off at him.  I think she could tell by my voice something was up. When I called her I was standing in the middle of my bathroom, still dripping from just taking a shower,  and sobbing my head off.  "Whats going on?" she said.  My brother in law got a 3-d printer about a month ago (he's a nerd like that). So he decided he would make Christmas presents with it.  He made his parents and I each an image of Dan's face. It looked rough and was cut out of plastic, flat like an ornament you would hang on a tree. Honestly not much to look at. He said you hang it in the widow and the light shines through and it's an image of Dan.  Ok thanks. Dan's mom went and hung he...

Yesterday was Christmas. Probably everybody knew that. I have celebrated Christmas more or less the same way for the last 20 years. Dan and I would have Christmas with my family and Dan and I would have Christmas with his family.  I haven't missed a Christmas in 20 years. When we were in college we flew home. Sometimes we have celebrated on different days to accommodate everyone's schedules, one year there was a giant snow storm and we celebrated the next weekend. We have always found a way to make Christmas work with both our families.  This year was no different, we celebrated with Dan's family in the afternoon and then we went to my family in the evening.  I've been to 20 of these. Dan has only been to 17. He has missed the last three Christmases because he was dead.  We miss him every day but we miss him at Christmas too.  Baby Girl jumped on me at 5:21 AM. "come on mommy, get up, it's Christmas"  she didn't jump on daddy, he didn't roll ov...

"Mommy tell me a story, a daddy story"  "I always tell you stoires, you tell me a daddy story. Tell me a story about you and daddy going Christmas shopping for mommy" "No I don't remember" "Well I bet it was fun, you got to spend the whole day with daddy"  I hear sniffling in the back seat.  "I bet you went to lots of stores, and out to lunch, can you remember? Tell me about it" "NO" she throws her toy against the seat "I don't remember ok, I don't remember Christmas shopping with Daddy I only remember Christmas shopping for you with auntie"  Shes sobbing in the back seat as I'm driving.  It's two days before Christmas. She hasn't had a grief attack like this since summer. I just blogged about how well she is doing.  "Talk about something else mommy" "ok Baby Girl, ok." Baby Girl and daddy always went Christmas shopping for me. They did it for my birthday to...

It's the middle of the afternoon and I'm drinking coffee out of my cup that says "Dying is easy, Living is harder." It certainly feels like it today. Have I written about this mug before? I don't remember. Its a line from Hamilton, I liked it so much I made myself a mug. Pretty purple swirly flowers and fancy handwriting. So that you have to try hard to actually read it. So many times I feel like Dan got the easy way out. We were supposed to go out together, with a bang even. Always together, we would have never ever left each other. So far the first two days of Christmas break have basically been really crappy. I went into the christmas season telling myself I was going to make myself happy this Christmas. This will be the third Christmas without him, it's time I guess. I can do it. I'm stubborn as hell I can make myself happy if I just try hard enough. That's what we are going to do, we are going to have a good christmas this year. It's more ...

  At the beginning of the school year I told Baby Girls new teacher (5th grade, seriously) our story. You know the one about how in the middle of second  grade I woke Baby Girl up in the middle of the night to tell her that her daddy was dead. That's always a great story to start off with. I guess I figure its better to get it over with, maybe it will create less awkwardness later. I told her about how hard life has been since than and how this grief thing is worse then anyone can possibly imagine.  I told her about how Baby Girl (and I) just basically shut down for the last two years. She responded with "well how could you not"  It was then that I knew this teacher got us. We had had a really good summer.  I finally felt like ok maybe we could deal with this grief thing. I relayed this information to her teacher and how I wanted to keep this good momentum going. How above else we could not have another year like last year where Baby Girl came home from school...

I think my computer is dying. It runs really slow and keeps telling me the memory is full and I need to delete programs. It's missing a key and the number pad doesn't work. Baby Girl spilled my coffee on the keyboard the summer after Dan died so a bunch of the keys stick.  It's about four or five years old which I suppose is ancient for a computer these days.  Dan and I bought this computer,  at the store, by ourselves.  We are not tech savy people, and are content with things like two year old phones and hand me down laptops. It was not the fanciest computer by any means, in fact I think it was the cheapest one the store had.  But it was the first computer we actually bought by ourselves and we were proud of it. It was kind of like buying a new car, for us anyway.  Dan set the computer up, again we are not tech people so that was also a big accomplishment.  He named it Klaus after a character in a TV show we were watching at the time. I don't really...

Blogging is not working for me this week. I start a blog and I erase it. I write half a blog and I go to sleep and realize in the morning that it is total garbage. That's probably what all my blogs are but when you push the post button at three in the morning you don't realize it. I didn't realize it but this has been a tough week. I think I spent so much energy telling myself it was ok that I didn't make any room for it not being ok. I guess really it started with last week. Last week: I am going to be happy about Christmas damit. I am going to like Christmas again damit. I am going to put up my decorations damit. I am going to buy all the presents damit. I am going to wrap them damit. I am going to have fun doing all these things damit. I am going to make this work damit. I am going to be happy damit.  I did it. I got all those things done. Some of them I did actually enjoy. Some of them I forced myself to do while I was cursing my dead husband under my breath. ...

Tomorrow is Dan's Birthday. I guess in a couple hours, though I don't know what time he was born. I wanna say the middle of the day, but that doesn't really sound like Dan, it's not very exciting. Baby Girl, who if you haven't heard is exactly like her father, was born at exactly 5am.  On a Thursday.  Back then Wednesdays were awful days for Dan. He got up early and went to school, then he went to his internship, then he went to work.  He was gone about 13 hours every Wednesday. He said "Whatever you do Jennifer please don't go into labor on a Wednesday night." Well it wasn't my idea, it was Baby Girls. Anyway I imagine his birth more like that. I will ask his mother when I see her.  39. He died six weeks after he turned 36.  Three years, almost. not quite. This is his third birthday without him.  We are all going out to dinner, my family, his family, I'm thinking about bringing him along, that will definitely get some crazy widow looks.  ...

"Hey Dad are you busy? I need you to be a witness to signing my will. You know, then it will be ok if I die prematurely."   "Jennifer"  thats his way of saying he's not amused, calling me by my full name. he drags it out "Jennnnnnnniiiifffffeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrr" He doesn't always appreciate the young widow humor.  Like he doesn't want his daughter to die. He didn't want his son in law to die either (he was after all his favorite son in law) but look what happened there. I finally got around to writing a will. It doesn't say much, please don't pawn our wedding rings. My sister gets custody of Baby Girl.  Baby Girl of course is why I wrote it.  It has been on my to do list ever since Dan died.  "Holy crap what if something happens to me? What if there's a car accident?what if I get cancer? What if I just up and die out of nowhere? Who will take care of Baby Girl?"  In a way it's a ridiculous question, I can think of...