Special guest writer: the one and only Baby Girl





Baby Girl isn't really a baby anymore. In about a week and a half is her half birthday, she will officially be 11 1/2.  I guess thats not a baby. She is in the sixth grade, I guess thats not a baby. When she was first born her entire body fit between my fingers and my elbow. That is certainly not the case anymore. Her daddy always called her Baby Girl and thats why I do it too.

When she was 7 1/2 her daddy died, I've told you that story once or twice. She was still very much a baby then. In a time where most kids are growing and learning to do things for themselves we were stuck in the mire of grief. Baby Girl was in it so deep she couldn't talk about her daddy or mention his name. It hurt her little heart to much. Just over a year after Dan died (which might as well have been the next day the way grief counts time) we had to move. Baby Girl and I were both devastated, but like daddy Baby Girl did not like talking about moving, that hurt too much too.

Slowly, very slowly we came back into the world, in many ways we are still working on it. Slowly. very slowly Baby Girl started talking about daddy.

My sixth grader had an assignment a couple weeks ago. Everyone in her class had to write about a hardship they had to go through. I am not naive and I know some kids in her class have had great hardships, one had her mommy die from cancer. However I think for the most part these essays were probably about things like 'I really wanted this video game and my parents wouldn't let me' or maybe  'I had to sit in the car for six hours on a family vacation and my baby brother pooped in his diaper' I don't really know but I imagine most of them are trivial. Baby Girls should have been trivial, Baby Girl should have written something about how she really wanted chocolate ice cream for desert but all we had was vanilla. Thats not what she wrote, thats not her life, thats the life I wanted to give her but thats not what happened.

This is Baby Girls writing on a hardship she had in her life:


Okay, okay, okay. Here she comes. I can feel it in mt gut, it's something bad, really bad. I don't know what to do. I kind of break down inside. She tells me...

Did you know that at least 50% of kids move before there twelve? In our old house my room had a castle on the wall and a rainbow, and flowers. Our house had a huge back yard. It had a swing set, a tree house, a pond, a fire pit and our bunny cage. Me, my mom, my dad and our cat Constantine all lived in that house - and maybe a couple fish that died.  And then one day daddy died. After that I got a kitten and we named her Gem. One day our landlord decided to sell the house and we couldn't afford it. Sadly we moved.

Hahaha nope. The struggle of finding a house is here mwah haha ugh.  We couldn't really find a house we liked so we moved in with grandma. I liked having a bigger family living with us and by bigger I mean grandma and grandpa. I was sad to move but there were no kids in my neighborhood anyways. There weren't at grandmas either. Then luckily we found a house for me mommy and gem. But we had to live there for about a year so it was sad to move again, dang it.

And BAM! We found a house hip hip hooray and Nope. It was a fixer upper. So we moved again. And again it was hard. But I got used to it. We have a really safe neighborhood with lots of people who are nice and care about us, And believe it or not we got another kitten! Her name is Daisy and her and gem love each other more then anything. Even more good news I made new friends! I made a friend named Edna who just so happens to be one of my best friends now. I also made friends named Oscar and Horace who are brother and who are home schooled and I met a friend named Victoria who is really weird. I'm kinda glad we moved because you know new friends, new kitten! Yay but sad.

Now I've learned that moving is ok. Yes it's sad but it's normally ok in the end. Quick update, I'm happy i love my new house I made new friends I kept old friends, I'm at the same school as before and I'm happy.

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

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