Mother’s Day is bittersweet

Dearest Nathan,

Mother’s Day is totally bittersweet when you’re widowed.  I love my kids with every fiber of my being. I am so thankful to be their mother and I would immediately take a bullet for them in the event that it was necessary. Those sweet babies in those pictures are literally the only reason I am here and made it through the first months of grief. They are why I am stronger now than I ever have been and why I make sure that good comes from their daddy passing. They are literally my heart and soul BUT.....

Widowed parenthood means that sometimes you wish you didn’t have your kids, not because you’re selfish or because you don’t love them with all your being but because watching them grieve might slowly kill you. And trust me they grieve. The doctors say a lot of Aria’s health issues are from grief and the stress of losing a parent and if you take even five minutes to talk to Sawyer you’ll walk away knowing how much his heart aches.

It’s feeling like you’re failing because your grief pains them.  Because you can’t stop either of your hurt and because you know it doesn’t get better it gets different and you learn to live with it and find joy in your new normal.

It’s the worry that they might do the same thing that their dad did because statistically just the fact that he died by suicide means that they are more likely to also die that way.

It’s the guilt that comes with knowing what they’re missing and wondering if you could have done more. It’s the guilt that comes because there are some days you wish they could just go away so you could have a second to just breathe.

It’s the worry about what happens to them if something happens to you and yet the indescribable pull towards wild and reckless abandon which just so you are aware, creates more guilt.

It’s the guilt that comes from not being able to protect them from the tragedy  that they’ve had to endure. The worry that you yell too much from a combination of stress and grief. The lack of patience. The worry that you’re not doing enough to prove that you love them

and the secret nagging voice in your head that tells you they lost the better parent. You’re failing them. You will continue to fail them and everyone knows it. It’s a matter of when and not if. All anyone sees is the poor pitiful widow and that’s all they’ll see too.  You try to quiet that voice but sometimes it’s enough to drive a person mad.

Mother’s Day isn’t joyous most of the time anymore, it’s just another reminder of what we lost and what we deal with everyday.   It’s loving your kids but wishing they had something different.

An example of reckless abandon 

I’m a different person...

I posted a video on Instagram of a song I composed.  It is the last thing I ever composed. It was in December 2016 when I felt everything and nothing all at the same time.  I could barely remember my own name let alone to eat or to sleep.  I couldn’t close my eyes without seeing his final moments and breathing, something that comes so innately suddenly took so much work. December was a month I didn’t actually believe I’d survive, I’d tell people I was fine just so that they’d stop talking because the sound of their voices literally made my insides hurt.

I remember very distinctly waking up and this melody being stuck in my head and no matter how much I cried or prayed or tried to cancel it out by listening to my baby’s breathing beside me, it wouldn’t go away and so I hummed a recording of it into my phone. One that’s long since been deleted and the next day as I sat at my friend’s house, wearing pajamas (yes, pajamas) that made little sense for the weather because I’d given up on both wearing anything but pajamas and his old sweatshirt unless I had to and on taking care of myself beyond what my friends and family mandated as a must to be considered “moving forward healthily”, reminding myself to breath in and then out and then rinse and repeat I listened to that recording and somehow put it into a blend of music notes.

I still have no idea where it came from or why. And it’s strange to watch it now because I  don’t really enjoy playing anymore. The videos I post seem like ages ago, like I’m watching an entirely different version of myself play and I am okay with that because I breathe without thinking about it, I can genuinely laugh with people without any sense of  guilt, I remember to eat and to sleep, and I tell people I’m fine not because I’d do anything to stop them from speaking even one more word, but because I really am fine. 

I get paid to write articles and people genuinely want to hear what I have to say. I’ve spoken to amazing people like Trent Shelton and I tell a story of devastation in order to lift others up. I’m a different person than I was when I had him. When he was here and his smile was the best thing in my life.  Now I have other things and that’s okay.  I don’t argue as deeply. I let things go that don’t matter and hang on tightly (maybe to the point of obsession) the things and to the people that have touched my life or that I believe in so deeply, even when other people don’t understand why. I’m not as stubborn and I’m much patient and forgiving.  I like to think I’m better than I was but that’s hard to judge yourself on. 

That’s not to say I don’t miss him. That I don’t think about him. That I don’t  talk about him. I do. I do all of those things daily. But I’ve learned to live without him. I’ve learned to be happy without him. And I’ve learned that’s okay. That’s what he’d want.  And it’s okay that I’m a totally different person than the girl that composed this, what would be 2 years ago in December, because  I make a choice daily,  that he simply couldn’t make anymore. I make a  choice to live, because he couldn’t. And not just live but live a life that brings me joy and hopefully in some small way brings those that are lost a little bit of hope.  And I think he’d want that for me too.