Then and Now

7 years ago Brian and I decided to take every Thursday during the summer and do something fun with our kids.  One Thursday we decided to take them to Governor Dodge State Park for the day.  We visited a waterfall and then spent the day playing at the beach.  We had a picnic lunch.  I remember as we were pulling into the park we were talking about putting in an offer on a bigger house.  I was insisting....he was resisting....finally he sighed and said "Fine, we will put an offer in, but if I am getting an ulcer I'm blaming YOU!"  In hindsight this statement stays in my head like a nauseating, pounding headache that won't go away.  (We did put an offer in on the house, but thankfully didn't get it.)  That was the first time I remember Brian talking about having stomach problems.  That was our last summer of freedom from fear.  It was a time of great hope and planning for our future.  Our kids were so young, 5, 3, 1 and 2 months.  Our family was complete and our future looked bright....
 
Memorial Day weekend I took the kids camping at Governor Dodge State Park.  It is the first time we have been there in 7 years.  We went with my brother, sister-in-law and some of their friends.  I had never camped before I met Brian, and camping without him seems so.....wrong.  Another first...our first camping trip without him.  It was a bittersweet experience.  As we pulled into the park it was raining.  I quietly asked Brian to make it stop so that we didn't have to set up our tent in the rain.  Not only did it stop raining, but a beautiful rainbow appeared.







 I still love my husband so much, even now he is so amazing.  We had a really good time camping, though we all missed having Brian there.  We made S'mores, the kids played at the beach and the park and we visited the waterfall again.








The field just before the waterfall is full of purple flowers, purple being the color of pancreatic cancer, and this of course made me think of Brian and all we have been through. 


Camping was something that we loved to do together.  It is something that I hope to continue doing with our kids, making memories and honoring who their dad was at the same time.  I miss him and our family doesn't feel complete without him.  But we are moving forward and creating new memories.  He will forever be in our hearts as we continue down this path.

I want my Daddy!

I am not in this grieving thing alone.  I have these four beautiful kids that all have their dad's dark brown eyes surrounded by his long, dark eyelashes, that are right here with me in this grief.  They miss him terribly, and as time goes on they miss him more.  They have a range of emotions depending on the day, the kid and the moment.

My oldest, who is 12,  is angry.  She is mad that Brian is dead.  She is even mad at him because he died and left her.  She takes out her anger on the family and it is frustrating.  No matter how hard I try to be nice, she gets the best of me.  As I deal with my grief, her anger is often to much for me to bear.  I don't, CAN'T, blame her, as she has pointed out - at least I still HAVE a dad!

My second suffers from anxiety.  She was diagnosed with it over a year ago.  We tried many things to help her gain control, but none of them have worked.  She deals with her anxiety by pulling out her eyelashes.  She has done this for two years now.  She gets random tummy aches.  If one thing goes amiss as she is getting ready for school she starts running around the house like a chicken with her head cut off.

My third has no motivation at school.  He is SO smart, just like his dad, but often he just sits in class and does not get his work done.  His teacher has pointed out that if he would actually work on his schoolwork, he would be done before most of the class.  He bottles up his emotions and rarely cries about his dad.  There are times though when I can tell he is upset.  He will cry at the littlest thing, something that wouldn't normally even phase him.  It is in these moments that I know he is feeling the loss.  He has taken on the role of "mom comforter", when I am sad a teary eyed, he is right there telling me that he loves me and that I am going to be okay.

My youngest is a mixture of mad and sad.  She talks about how she was the ONLY child that didn't get to go hunting with her dad and how sad that makes her.  Her temper can flare in a moment.  She is often clingy and does not want to go places without me.

All of these things hit me so very hard.  It is hard enough to go through the loss of the person you were supposed to spend the rest of your life with, but that grief is made deeper when you see your children hurting because their world no longer makes sense like it used to.  They miss their dad, they want him back.  They talk about him every day, and fortunately they remember the good times and seem to have forgotten most of the bad ones.  I would do anything for my kids.  I wish I could wrap them up in a big cozy blanket and rock them until the pain goes away, but this is a pain that will last them a lifetime.  It will come and go as life moves forward, and life continues to move forward, even though we often feel stuck.

We are quickly closing in on a year since Brian left us.  We spent Father's Day as a family.  We went to a movie, to a park to play and then out to dinner.  Later that night we sent balloons with messages on them to Heaven and made popcorn over a bonfire in the popper we got him for Father's Day last year.  It was a time for us to remember Brian, and as we get closer to "Angel Day" we are all starting to even out a little bit, which is a good thing.  We are enjoying our summer and having fun together.  It is what he would want for us.  We are traveling this winding path together as a family and as hard as it is, we will be stronger for it, all of us.

**I actually started writing this blog in March.  It was a hard one for me to write.  My children's pain is a sensitive subject for me because I want so badly to make it all better for them, but I can't.  All I can do is love them enough for both of us.....I do and I always will.**

Dating...ugggh!

By the time I am done writing this, I am pretty sure that I will feel as though I am standing in front of the world naked.  But this is an important one.  Not only for me to have this chance to admit that I am interested in dating, but also to help other widows know that IT IS OK to want to do this.  My husband died, I didn't.  I have had a significant loss, but I still have a life to live, and I want to spend it with someone that makes me happy.  I don't know who or where he is, but he is out there somewhere.....

Dating for me is like being in a foreign country and having no idea how to speak the language and no map to help get me where I want to go.  It is foreign territory, no question.  The last time I started a relationship I was 17, it wasn't a hard thing to do and it lasted for almost 25 years. The greatest gift Brian could have given me before he died was the knowledge that he wanted me to be happy.  He wanted me to find someone who would love me and our kids like he did, and he gave me the permission to do it and not feel guilty about it. I don't know if I would be where I am if he hadn't done that.

So, in this day and age, the thing to do is to be on a dating site, and I have to tell you there are a lot of scary people out there.....no, DO NOT call me HOTTIE...eeeew!  Anyway, a few weeks ago, the morning after I put up a profile on a dating site I had a message from someone who said: "Beautifully written, heart felt profile!  You must be an amazing woman!"  I looked at his profile and thought, "Wait, this guy is interested in ME?"  He was really good looking.....  We ended up messaging back and forth all day, and when I say all day, it was from 9:00 am to 11:30 pm and it was one of the best days I have had in a LONG time.  HE couldn't WAIT to talk to me, to meet me, and that felt good.  One of the things that he asked me in our conversation that day was how long I had been alone.  He didn't say single, he didn't say widowed, he said alone.  That question in itself made me feel as though he may actually have some understanding, and it impressed me.  I gave him the simple answer.  My husband died September 3, 2011.  But the real answer to that question is not as simple.

Brian fell in our room July 13, 2011, was transported by ambulance to the hospital, and he never came home again.  I just passed the one year mark of that day, and it was a hard day for me.  For 7 weeks before his death I was alone, running around crazy making sure he was ok and our kids were taken care of.  It was not an easy time.  Then there is the deeper answer to that question.  I have been emotionally alone for much longer.  I can't put a time frame on that, but I can remember thinking a year before Brian died "Will I ever be happy again?"  That is hard to admit.  I was hoping at the time that we would be able to finally get rid of his cancer and I would be happy with him, but that was not to be.  So much of our lives were spent dealing with his cancer and pain that we lost some of what we were.  He did his best to be there for me, but I was often put last, behind everyone else, while at the same time I put everyone else first.  I crave that communication and intimacy that I haven't had for so long.  I miss those things the most.

When I finally met this guy, he was so much better looking in person than he was in his pictures that I was actually intimidated by that fact.  Unfortunately, the story does not have a happy ending, at least not the ending I was hoping for, and I will likely never see him again.  Like I said, dating is foreign to me and I made some mistakes.  Some small, others not so small and one huge, ugly one.  When I told my closest friends what I had done, they looked at me and said "You?  Really?  I don't see you doing that....."  While I am sure you are all curious as to what this faux-pas was, I am not going to tell you (though I can honestly say that it did NOT include breakfast the next morning!).  Suffice it to say it was NOT my shining hour.....but it was something that is so COMPLETELY out of my character that I can't believe I did it.  The worst part about it is that I gave him the impression that I am someone I am not, and there is nothing I can do to fix it.  I am a fixer, and it drives me crazy to know that he has this impression of who I am that is so completely not me.

I talked with another widow the other night about the whole situation and she had some very good points.  First she pointed out that as widows this is all new to us.  We will make mistakes and unfortunately we may not know it was a mistake until we have made it.  Her view is that if we are with the right person, they will talk to us about those mistakes realizing that we are in uncharted territory, and not hold it against us.  I guess I didn't have the right guy....

There was a spark, and I tried too hard to fan the flame and instead I put it out.  My friends tell me that he isn't worth another thought, that he does not know the real me and that it is his loss.  Friends are supposed to say those kinds of things, and I know they mean it, so why does it feel like I am losing?  It feels like I am losing because there really did seem to be something genuine there.  I am a strong woman, and he didn't like that.  What he doesn't understand is that I HAVE to be strong.  I have had to be strong since Feb 14, 2006, the day we were told that Brian had a tumor that was most likely pancreatic cancer.  I have four kids to take care of by myself.  I have to be strong every day otherwise I will get caught in the undertow and get whisked back to Widow Island before I know what happened.  I am NOT going back to Widow Island, at least not for an extended stay.  I don't know if the fact that I know what I want and I was willing to work for it scared him away or that he saw something in me that HE wanted and it scared him away, but either way he is gone.  Maybe my friends are right, he isn't worth another thought, but it just isn't that easy.  He was the first guy I went out with in over 25 years, and it felt like there was the potential for something real.  That is what I can not get out of my head.  Of course now I am left wondering if ANY of it was real.  Ugggh! Dating!  It is going to be a very twisty path, and I'm pretty sure I will lose my balance and fall more than once, I just hope I find that guy who is willing to pick me back up......