For a bereaved parent and widow, as one would expect, there are good days and there are not so good days. Today was a not so good day. I ended up having to pop a second dose of anti-depressant and buckle up because… wow. It was a doozy.

Trigger warning often get made fun of. People that don’t understand the actual use and importance of trigger warnings tend to eye-roll and make fun. What a trigger warning actually is though, is a warning that you’ll get abnormal information from a place one wouldn’t expect. If you do need a trigger warning – you get it. If you don’t need one – you are a lucky person and I kind of envy you.

Normally on lunch I listen to the NPR interview show “Fresh Air”. I’ve listened to it for nearly 20 years and I love that show. Today they had a musician guest and he sang a very short minute and a half song and I was done*. I couldn’t function at my normal levels for the rest of the work day.

Attn: Terry Gross. Why you godda do that to me? Before lunch I was fine. When I came back to work I was a mess. It’s your fault lady. Why didn’t you give me a warning so that I could cover my ears?

My emotions ended up all over my face. And a little bit on my shirt.

Really, that’s one of the harder things about living with so much profound loss; Never knowing what’s going to be that thing that turns you into a puddle of ineffectiveness. Most of the time I can pull myself back. I challenge myself to suck it up and move along. I can cry later. I am strong and I have a formidable constitution. Sometimes though, those cries just sneak right in and take hold and the only thing I can do is just ride it out.

Ugh

For the rest of my life I will be broken. Coming to grips with that is as difficult and profound as the losses themselves. Some days I am just as raw as I was at the beginning.

Loss has layers. It stinks. 0 stars. Would not recommend.

*Sam Baker: Go In Peace

Before you press play, consider this your trigger warning. The song will 100% punch you in the feelings. If not, I’m sorry about your cold, dead heart.

Why did my child die?  Why did my husband die?  Why is this happening?  Does the universe have a vendetta or blood libel against me personally?  Some sort of cosmic score that needed to be settled?

For real though, I don’t struggle with this.  Because the fact is no matter what the answer, how profound or perfect it might be, it will not change anything.

Nothing will bring back my child and husband.  And, frankly, not much would make me feel better about it.  Having answers won’t fill these holes in my heart.  Having answers won’t suddenly make my anti-depressant unnecessary.  My heart won’t de-shatter.  Having answers to these questions only God and/or the universe could answer won’t give either of them back to me.

Unanswerable questions are nothing but a burden on my soul.  Constantly asking for something I’ll never get is relentless and futile.

The weight of the losses is already so heavy.

Asking unanswerable questions is just added noise on my quest for peace and grace.

I don’t quibble internally because I don’t care.  I don’t care if there was a greater good served or if they just died because that’s how the chaos of life works. I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care.  I have better things to do.

Don’t get me wrong – sometimes I love a good waste of time.  This past Sunday I watched 18 hours of TV and drank a half bottle of wine.   I appreciate wasted time and added noise – on my terms;  with my permission.

Screaming into an abyss is 0 stars.  Would not recommend.

 

 

 

In the early 2000’s, during the waning years of our family trips to the Outer Banks, NC – we arrived at our rental house for the week and, as per tradition, unloaded our children from transport and unleashed them directly to the beach. We didn’t stop to unload or move cold goods to the refrigerator. We all ran down the boardwalk and over the dunes and crashed into the waves that were crashing back on us.

I stood next to my cousin Will while we watched the kids play. I soaked in the salt air and the cold water and let the beach tick itself into me.

“Our blood, our sweat, and our tears are salt water. We spend our lives giving our energy away. All waves are energy. Ocean waves are energy. This is why people come to the beach. Saltwater and waves come back to us”

I was taken back by this. I mean, I love (love) the ocean. But I was just standing there soaking up the salt and he articulated the reasons we were naturally drawn to the beach.

Waves are a physical manifestation of energy and the beach is where we reclaim some of the energy we give off into time and space.

Every living thing gives off energy. We send it into the universe wrapped in emotion and there it lingers for all of eternity. It travels away and spreads broadly where it becomes so thin and delicate we can’t recognize it anymore. But it is always there.

Right now, the sounds of FDR’s infamy speech, and the first cries of a newborn baby, and the last words of Jesus, and the mundane grocery list review of everyone I’ve never met, and all of the symphonies that have ever performed, and every bird that has ever chirped, and the roars of the dinosaurs are still lingering in our universe. Energy waves that can never be destroyed.

Among those are the baby cries and toddler laughs and teenage angst of my daughter. Every time my late husband ever told me he loved me. All of the manifestations of love and life are in the universe.

Every time I ever told them I loved them. Every time I cried with him or for her. Every time we shared something exciting – my sound waves went with theirs.

I hope that my “I love you” finds their “I love you” and our energy waves will travel together the way they were originally intended.

On Sundays, I get sentimental. I’m not so busy on Sundays, so I’ve got all of this extra time to ignore my dirty laundry and have a glass of wine at 1:00pm and listen to the birds that are genuinely happy with the January thaw. Maybe today I’ll clean out my bedside table or make a pie or watch TV while I brows the blogs I follow. No matter my decision I’ll wax poetic and make wishes and listen to the universe.

This whole business is ridiculous. 0 Stars. Would not recommend.

I am training a new hire at home this week (it’s a very busy couple of weeks at the Amy school of purchasing).  Normal get to know you chit-chat.

Do you have any kids?

There’s the question.  The question.  How many kids do I have?

That has, since November 2006, been a very long answer

When I married my late husband, he had a daughter and two step-daughters from a previous marriage.  I used to have two daughters and three step-daughters.  When we married, we had all five girls standing with us.  Three with him and two with me.

Time expands; my husband passed.

For a while my late husband’s ex-wife and I made an effort to keep the kids together.  We’d meet in Brighton and I’d send my girls off to Detroit for an extended weekend here and there.

Slowly it changed.  I had two daughters and one step-daughter and two more girls that used to be my step daughters but now we’re facebook friends.

In 2013, my late husband’s daughter wanted to move in with me to go to college on this side of the state.

For a few short months, my kid count was back up – two daughters, one step-daughter.  Plus my new partner’s son added to four kids in our charge.

Time expands.  My step-daughter went back to Detroit for good.  Z went to Gaylord with my parents for the school-years.  Our house got quieter.

I miss the noise and chaos.

My favorite family pictures have always been blended to one degree or another.

How many kids do you have?  How many?  How many kids do you have?

Watching Z’s life events from far-away wasn’t easy.  According to American ideals and standards children don’t move away from home until college.   Z moved in with my parents and it cut pretty deeply.  Not because we were estranged – we weren’t.  We spoke often throughout the week and I made the drive to Gaylord a minimum of every-other weekend.  After she got her driver’s license she’d come down on the weekends I didn’t go up there.  She liked the drive.  Occasionally, she’d stay in GR until Monday morning.  She’d leave home at 5:00am to get to school at 7:00am.

How many kids do you have?  How many?

After a child passes, the question isn’t a fact of matter; it’s a disclosure of very intimate information.  I’ve mentioned this in a previous blog (the intimacy of the question) and it still stands.   I would never tell a stranger the horrors I endured in my first marriage.  I would never tell a stranger about the last night my mom’s dad was alive.  I would never tell a stranger about what it was like to watch my husband die in our bed.  I don’t want to tell a stranger I’ve had a child pass away.

How many kids do you have?  How many?  How many kids do you have?

I have always wondered what it was like for families that didn’t involve stops and starts.  The suburban stay-at-home lives with stable marriages and a fully realized family plan.  I mean, I’m not under the impression single partnered parents lead perfect lives void of heart-break, but answers to simple questions tend to be easier to manage.   (Saying that, I think of my friends that have struggled with miscarriage.)  Sometimes I twinge with a longing for a life that was not mine.

How many kids do you have?  How many?

How many kids do you have?