on the calendar

There is so much to say and truly by not posting in order I will need to go back and fill in the beautiful details of my life but as the inkling creeps up, pushing me to blog it usually is about the stress.  Don't get me wrong, my life is filled with so much beauty.  Unfortunately beauty and peace don't require cathartic writing to process fully.  They just are because they are beautiful.  It's the ugly, uncomfortable feelings that I need out into the abyss of written words to completely analyze, turn over and process.

For the past two weeks, the monster has been there...the two thousand pound elephant trying to remain invisible in the room.  Really I feel like he just sort of follows me. As we started a new school year there were so many people I feel I needed to "let in" on our family as well as ones I felt the need to warn.  Not every parent is ready to have their child come home asking about death. 

I opened my calendar a few weeks ago to put my niece's birthday party down and took a deep breath, then realized I was taking a deep breath.

My calendar is very different now...it's electronic and not just the free WPZ calendar hanging in my kitchen.  It contains pick ups and drop offs for Riley.  It documents days of kindergarten and preschool and social security deposits.  All things foreign two years ago. 

The words...Sarah's birthday.  Pumpkin Patch.  Halloween.  Charissa's Birthday.  Thanksgiving.  dot my calendar in an unintentionally suffocating manner.  With them I have memories like a slide show float through my mind.  For moments I remember the days leading up to it. 

I'm a believer in signs.  If you read my blog in "the beginning", you know I was looking for them behind every door, in ever dark corner and really felt quite empty handed.  It took a few months for me to decide my signs were much more simple. 

I left the pumpkin patch today, soaking wet, driving to our next stop and saw a beautiful rainbow.  The colors so vivid.  Just as I thought we would catch it, that the pot of Gold would be in the field next to us, it would move.  But in this rainbow I found a moment of peace, a feeling of hope, a hand of comfort telling me that life is as it should be and that despite it all, my heart can rest.  Telling me that even though he is gone, illusive, just out of reach, he is always there watching over us. 

My signs have never been big.  I haven't had dreams so vivid I woke thinking they were real.  I rely on smaller signs.  The week Chris died he told me about this song he heard on the radio that he wanted to put on his IPod by Kings of Leon.  When I catch a chord of that song, I say Hi.  Coincidences?  Probably  but in my psychological schema I use them to find peace, to make a connection to my grief and to smile. 

As I watched Maya and Owen at the pumpkin patch today I couldn't help but catch my breath at how much they have grown.  This past week I ran across a copy of  Chris' obituary in the filing cabinet and sat down to read it.  It's sad... are there more eloquent words to say that?  What struck me most were the words about the bond between Chris and Maya.  It makes me wonder if she would be a different kid if she still had that.  Obvious things would be different but I look at her anxieties and sigh...and wonder, why my babies?  Really, my connection to them is crazy... Since Chris died, every time I look at them across the room, cuddle in bed or simple touch their cheeks, an electricity bursts inside of me and I feel toward them something I had not felt ever.  My bond to them carries me through and pushes me to do more, be more and become more than I had ever imagined..

Birthdays

This has been a crazy few weeks.

Three birthdays in 6 days....Owen, Riley then Shaun.

Three "home" parties and one bounce house combined party for the littles.

I was partied out.

Birthdays are such a milestone for me.  I feel like I have accomplished something with every birthday I celebrate for one of my children.  It entails loads of memories.  Pregnancy, labor, birthing, sleepy newborn days.  It's the realization of how much my children have grown.

It's the pain of realizing how much time has passed.  Owen has aged 20 months since Chris died.  His vocabulary has grown by thousands of words.  Though it's far off, in February he will be the age Maya was when Chris died. I have no idea how I will feel then, but I look at him and realize how young Maya truly was.

Owen is such an incredible little boy. He is truly funny, and he knows it.  He makes faces Chris did and I wonder how he knows how to make them. Where does he see them...

There is a fourth birthday in all of this.

Chris' 36th birthday is August 11th.  We will be camping with friend's that weekend.  I told myself THAT would be the day we would celebrate Chris.  But then there is the question of how.  I wanted to do the floating lanterns, like Rapunzel BUT I'm thinking it's a bad, bad idea in Eastern Wa.  I'm thinking it will be a balloon release.  Maybe we will write messages to put on or in the balloons.

And then I have a "poor me" moment and wish this wasn't the reality for my kids and me.  What did we do...

But truly, even I know in those moments that the universe doesn't work that way.  It just is. It's life.  It moves like a river and it's just a matter of accepting that and learning how to master its flow.

In Search

Reading another widow's blog, I have realized what I have been trying to put into words yet could not so eloquently find the words in my soul to put it all together. 

http://widowsvoice-sslf.blogspot.com/2012/05/language-of-grief.html

She went spiraling into the world of widowhood a week before I made my grand entrance onto the red carpet.

The essence, it's emotionally dividing to talk about grief and joy in the same life.  You struggle to not want to disgrace and water down the love and joy you had.  Everything is tainted by the glasses of death and loss yet you have a drive to live, to love, to have joy and fulfillment...connection.  And, truly our loved ones on the other side want that.    

By the way, SSLF (Soaring Spirits Loss Foundation), the source through which this particular blog was posted, is absolutely fantastic!! 

http://www.sslf.org/

I didn't do much more than blog stalk this site at first...but eventually I emailed a few widows, commented on their blogs, asked them questions. 

And I felt normal.

It's a great venue for finding help, finding insight and finding resources.  If you know a widow...send this link along!! After Chris died, I found out there are wonderful resources for widows...if you are older or military.  The only community I found of younger widows...stay at home moms, moms with younger kids was online.  

Last night I watched a news story about a club for tall people... everyone should have a place where they can define themselves by something other than the thing which seems to overwhelmingly define them. 

Widowhood is my badge.  It's my journey.  It's my story. 

Surround Yourself With Love

Literally.

Yesterday was spent attempting to finish up photo books for the kids about their daddy.  I have pictures spanning his lifetime and captions about the events and places.  I want something physical to be left should I not be there to tell them. They are simply snippets and perhaps for me it's for my peace of mind but I wanted each to have their own copy to look at, remember and refer to.  It's a project I started a week after Chris died and have tried to tackle several times without success.  The task was too heavy, the pictures in mass a painful hole in my heart.

Alone in the house yesterday I was going to get a hold on the cleaning and instead thought, today is it.  I'm doing it.  Ha!  Only ha because it took 90 minutes to comb through a box to find a specific picture only to discover it wasn't there.  Despite this set back I finished finding pictures, uploaded them and worked furiously on the book.  It's still not complete, but I'm working!!

At one point I had to stop to get Maya from preschool.  On the way home we chatted about school and I told her about the book I was making.  On the way in I grabbed  two giant stacks of pictures which we had set aside for the slide show at Chris' memorial and Maya asked to see them.  She sat on the living room floor and took out the first stack while I ran upstairs. 

Walking back into the living room, my breath caught and my eyes filled with salty tears as I reminded myself to breathe.

There she was, diligently going about her labor of love.  My gut response was to put them away, but really, this is her love, her journey and though painful for me, it was so sweet and so innocent.    

Maya went through pictures and talked about ones she remembered, asked about others she did not all the while surrounding herself with the memories of a world that seems so far removed.

At one point I asked if she would like to make any drawings to include in our book project of memories she had.  She sadly put her chin down and said "I don't remember much."  I've never heard her say this and sadly, I know it's true.  I do know, however, that once we start talking, memories return about events and places we have been and relief sets in.

Maya spent the next 3 hours drawing pictures then continued for another after dinner and returned to it again this morning.  They started with just her and daddy, went on to a camping trip we took the summer before he died and then they evolved to this alternate world where Riley knows daddy or Pickachu goes shopping with daddy. 

There it is, this other universe in which Chris exists and in which memories are blurred with reality.  {sigh}