snow day





It snowed today. Well really tonight. Snow in our part of the world is pretty rare, maybe once a year do we get snow. Very very rarely do we get it this late in the season, my daffodils have already started blooming.

At 8 pm our neighbor banged on the door "Come play in the snow with us" I looked at the gargantuan amount of snow (like two inches) and decided we could not let this opportunity pass. Thus instead of getting ready for bed, which we normally do at this time we got bundled up and went to play in the snow. Standing in the snow freezing, watching all the neighborhood kids play, it occured to me for the 12th million time that I'm not supposed to be here. A neighborhood dad was helping his kid roll a giant snowball. Where was Dan?

Midnight (or 8pm) snow romps fall under the category of his job. I'm positive he and Baby Girl would have already been out there, the neighbor wouldn't have had to come get us. I would have helped them get all bundled up, given them each a kiss and told Dan to take good pictures for me. I would have stayed in the warm cozy house, in my pajamas, keeping an eye on our toddler and possibly third baby who were already asleep, drinking a warm cup of tea and enjoying rare quite time.  The thing is we don't have a baby, or a toddler, or a daddy. We are supposed to have all those things and we don't. It's just Baby Girl and I.

"Do you think daddy is playing in the snow right now" I asked her as we were finally getting ready for bed. Finally warm in our pajamas, our wet clothes a pile on the floor because I was too tired from doing Dan's job tonight to do my mommy job of cleaning up the mess. "Yup!" baby Girl said with an air of of course he is mommy what else would he be doing right now duh. I asked her who he was playing with, "Constantine and Patches and Ratsy" all pets we've had that have also died. 

Then she stopped and stared off in space. "Mommy, what do you think Heaven looks like?"  I gave her a very Dan the counselor answer "well what do you think it looks like?"  she told me it was way up high in the clouds, and that everything is made out of clouds. The snow is falling on top of the clouds and there are little houses everywhere for everyone to live in. I pictured Dan living in a house all by himself with our cats and our pet rat. Yup he is definitely in Heaven. It's times like these I really want to call him a jack ass.

She talks about him a lot now. It's almost the complete opposite of where we were a year ago, or even six months ago. Then she would run away if I tried to talk about daddy with her, she would have screaming fits or change the subject drastically if I even mentioned his name.  Now she brings him up, not every day but a lot. Now it is her idea to get the picture books out and look at daddy. Now she asks me questions about him and says I remember this or that.  Dead daddy is being incorporated into her life, after three years she is finally learning to live with it. We both are. It's a whole new kind of pain.

I wrote a book about my grief, you can read it here: Carry on Castle

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