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
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