Carry on Castle: Living with Grief

I was taking Baby Girl to camp, about to leave her for five days.  We had an hour or so to waste so we stopped for ice cream.  While we were standing in an extremely long ice cream line my mother in law called me. "Hey whats up" I said very causally because it was the middle of the afternoon, I figured she wanted to tell baby girl to have a great time at camp.  "Where are you right now?" there was something wrong with her voice, it was shaky, something had happened but I didn't know what. I left Baby Girl in line with Auntie and I walked away. "Whats going on? We are getting ice cream"  "good I wanted to make sure you weren't driving and I wanted to make sure Baby Girl didn't hear me. Rick died this morning." WAIT WHAT! "Wait what?"  "Rick had a heart attack and died this morning" Rick is Dan's older brother. Arguably the brother most like Dan, they had a lot in common that the other brothers didn't. They

I have a tween girl.  She is 11, she thinks shes 16. I think thats the definition of a tween; a kid who is between 9-12 and really really really wants to be a teenager. So far it has been a summer of 'everything mommy does is wrong'  I wear the wrong clothes, I pick the wrong way to go (cause you know the 11 year old is an expert driver) I get eye roll after eye roll everytime I open my mouth. She rarely wants to snuggle anymore and is embarrassed when I kiss her goodbye. We haven't had the official "talk" yet but I think shes done with Santa and the easter bunny. Yes this blog is about grief, hang on. Baby Girl went to sleep away camp last week. I am picking her up today. Five days and four nights she has been away from me. I am sure that is the longest she has ever been away from mommy EVER. She went with her two best friends. Two years ago her best friend invited her and she refused to go. "I can't leave you mommy" she said and would start to pa