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. 

sometimes I feel like I'm stuck in second, somewhere between awake and asleep - where dreams could still be real and you could still be here.

Dearest Nathan.

It's been so long since I've written.  Two months, nearing three.  I didn't mean to let so much time pass but I also didn't want to write, but I was accused of only writing and talking and remembering you for attention and as wrong as it was, it still stung and made me both mad and sad all at once and suddenly I didn't care if anyone else remembered you.  I didn't care if we raised awareness.  I didn't care.  I only cared that you were remembered by me and by our children and  I wanted to keep my thoughts and feelings to myself where they were safe from ridicule and where no one could ever possibly tarnish the memories I have of you.  But then today I realized something very important.  I don't care what people think, and I want to say your name, and I want the world to know that you're not only remembered but that you were important and that you were loved - are loved and you wouldn't want me to take anyone's incorrect opinions of my motives to heart anyway.  I remember.

You were the one. From the day we started dating, I knew you were the one.  Maybe I had even known in high school when we were just friends. We started dating. We moved in together. We lived. We were happy. That's the kicker... we were happy.  Despite the problems, and the heartache from various things both past and at the time, present, we were happy or at least i thought we were happy.

And then you killed yourself.

It was a cool evening in early November, but despite being cool it was warmer than usual. It was a Sunday, we had argued the day before but that day had been good with no real cause for any sort of concern- we had spent the day with my family and some close family friends, he had met my biological mother’s best friend and we had laughed and shared stories and good conversation. It wasn’t how we spent most sundays but it also wasn’t out of the ordinary. Just a regular lazy sunday - family and then to the grocery store and making plans with friends for the following week, and preparing for the monday work day, the same way sundays had been for as long as I can remember.

When we got home you started acting weird, but I didn’t think it was anything too serious.  I told you to go take a breather, so you didn’t worry Sawyer.  I wouldn’t have let you out of my sight had I known that would be the last time I would ever talk to you.  I would have said so many more things to you.  So many things.  

I remember taking the kids side and setting them down.  I remember you getting into the work van.  I remember you yelling and looking to see what happened.  You had a gash on your head, but I figured I’d get the kids settled in and then go check on you.  Had I known then what I know now, I would have left the kids and checked on you immediately but I guess what they say is true.  Hindsight is nearly always 20/20.  

The gun went off.  I was screaming like a banshee.  The neighbors scooped me and the kids up and rushed us into their house.  The police showed up at around eight o' clock.  The cops asked a lot of questions.  The broke the window to the van, there was no other way to get to you.  They tried to resuscitate you.  I’m not stupid, I know that they did this for much longer than they usually do and I know they did it for my benefit and no other reason but that.  I suppose that’s what happens when you know so many police officers and firefighters.  Everything was so slow motion.  I remember talking to Tahnya and my parents and to Lindsey and to Cory, and the lady was that called Jenn.

I don't really remember much more after that. I know that the officer was trying to put off telling me you were dead and even the knew, I still made him tell me before I would answer any of his questions. I called my parents, my sister, Tahnya, Lindsey, and Cory.  I don’t know how your family knew they needed to come but they came and they all hugged me and told me they were sorry, but they didn’t realize that no one would ever be as sorry as I was.  I don’t remember most of what I said to anyone or the names of the police officers or the name of the lady who called Jenn. I don’t remember so many things.

But I do remember watching you die when I ran outside and feelings it in my heart the moment you left this earth.  I remember the old man across the street asking me if I was okay and yelling back no and pleading with them to call 911.  I remember not understanding how you could leave me and more importantly how you could leave the kid.  I remember picking out photographs for the obituary and for the service.  I remember picking sunflowers and carnations and your red guitar - the same guitar you used the first time you ever played for me. I remember the red shirt you were wearing that night and making plans to have dinner with Linds the following tuesday. And most of all I remember what you smelled like, what your laugh sounds like how you smiled first thing in the morning when Sawyer climbed into the bed. I remember the small scar on your hand from tile work and the way your kisses tasted like Five peppermint gum.

I remember all of it. Just like it happened yesterday. 

That was almost 15 months ago. I'm still trying to work through things. We seem like we have it all together and that we have mastered our new normal but Sawyer and I still haven't quite adjusted to life without you. I don't know if we’ve really had the chance, mostly because it’s chaotic with two kids and two dogs and two fish and only one parent. I still talk to and about you often, even if talking to you really means just talking to your picture hanging on my bedroom wall - the one that everyone signed at the service.  Sawyer still talks about you all the time and smiles when he sees your picture.  He likes to talk about his memories and reminds me often that you’re still with us and you’re happy.  Tahnya and Lindsey still talk about you too and Peyton loved and misses you so much she wanted to take on of your things to show and tell to talk about her Uncle Nathan.   I truly believe that you are  the first man I ever really loved, everyone that came before you - I cared for them, I wanted to love them, but I didn’t feel for them the way I felt for you.  You were the first man I ever truly gave my heart too, the first man I ever loved with my whole being and somewhere in my heart I'll always love you. Always.  No matter where life takes me.

So many of my friends are scattered across the country, in some cases the world and so sometimes we go a long time without talking- but we're all still tied together somehow.  They’re all doing their own things. Getting married, having families of their own, living life by their rules.  I am so happy for them, but sometimes I feel like I'm stuck in second, somewhere between awake and asleep - where dreams could still be real and you could still be here. I move through life slowly, but with purpose. I try to do my best. To make sure our kids know of the man you were and remember how you cared for them and for me.   To hope for good and know that love is real. 

Because I remember.

It’s been one year but it feels both shorter and longer...

I kept thinking words would come. Words that would somehow adequately describe what I was feeling. I am a writer. I maintain a blog. Words ALWAYS come. They come even when I don’t want them to. This time though, this time they never came. 

There are simply not words to covey how in one year everything has changed. Everything is different. And yet, in its difference, it is still immensely painful.  Grief always meets me in the quiet dark of the night but now I don’t run from it. I embrace it like an old friend. I remind myself that the amount of pain I carry with me is a testament to the great love we shared. 

Everything is different. Aria-Lyn is crawling and talking and Sawyer is in school and acts like a teenager some days. Everything is different. I can smile and go out to spend time without friends without being smothered by guilt. I can talk about you and though sometimes I still cry I think of you with so much joy at the happiness you filled my life with. 

Everything is different and yet nothing has changed. You are still the last thing I think of at night and the first I think of in the morning. I still miss you so much my heart physically aches.  I still wish you could somehow come back and say it was all a mistake. Sawyer still talks about you all the time and asks me to watch ninja turtles and power rangers like you used to and Aria still won’t ever have a true memory of her own. Everything has changed and yet nothing has. This still is the worst pain I’ve experienced and the most awful hand I think our children will ever be dealt. 

Sunday we went to the cemetery with your sister and it was a nice moment to share with her. We went back yesterday.  Tahnya made me the sweetest gift in your memory and she took you a red rose and got me one to match. It may be one of my most treasured gifts. It equals that the thumbprint necklace and the wreath are. 

 We laughed and ate junk food (so many of your favorites), drank some wine (I know you think we should have had beer instead), we listened to Chevelle at exactly 8:04 PM (I know it made you smile) and have decided to dub the day “Nathan’s day.” It sounds much less grim than the anniversary of your death and some how helps us to smile a little more. 

You’d be so happy that Lindsey, Chera, and Tahnya were there for us yesterday along with so many more friends and family members who took time to text, message, and call to check on us.  You’d be so glad that so many of these same people continue to love and be there for us on a daily basis.

I am thankful you know what a treasure you are. What a great man you were. 

Until we see you again. 

We love you. We miss you. Forever. 

It'll come. I know it will. It always does, but for now....for now it seems impossible.

Dear Nathan,
From the very start of this horror, I have said that there would be good that came from this.  That beauty would come from the ashes because you deserve that, I deserve that, and most of all our children deserve that.   And so after the initial fog lifted and I made it past the first two weeks of the nightmare that had somehow become my life, I started talking.    After the realization that even if you're living in a nightmare, you simply can't wake up from your life finally set in, I started telling our story and I haven't stopped.  I have been candid in both my pain and with exactly what you did.  I have no secrets.  I will answer just about any question that someone asks me, and I have had my share of inappropriate questions, suggestions, and comments.  They've made me angry, they've made me sad, and they've flat out mind boggled me,  but I have handled them with as much kindness and dignity that I could possibly muster because this isn't about those people or even about me.  It's about the fact that if I am not speaking out, if I am not advocating, then  I am doing a disservice not only to the great man that you were but to the love that we shared, to your pain, to my pain, and to a great many others who may carry around this type of pain.

I am becoming a part of the problem if I am hiding my pain, the kind of pain that is all consuming.  The kind that swallows you whole as you lay in bed trying to will yourself to fall asleep.   The kind of pain, that finally helps you to understand why they say that sleep is a cousin of death.

I speak out because we need to be aware.  People need to know that suicide is real.  Traumatic brain injury is real.  Mental illness is REAL and no matter how you hide from it or try to push it to the darkest recesses of your mind, it is real and it will continue to be real and ugly and awful until we stop hiding.  Until we pull it out to the middle of the room and push our thumb into the huge gaping wound that it is, it will be real and we are failing the people around us.  I refuse to be a part of the problem.  I refuse to be part of the stigma and the shame.  I couldn't save you, but if your story, our story can save someone else than I have somehow in some small way righted a wrong that can't really be righted at all.

That said, I need prayer.  As I am sure you recall,  our church, just before the sermon launches, shares a life story.  They're beautiful stories about good coming from the ashes, light shining in the darkness, and the ugly becoming beautiful.   They are stories that need to be heard and I have been asked to begin the process of sharing ours. 

The first stop on the journey is to type out the story.

Seems easy enough for someone who has used writing both on facebook, in a blog, and various media outlets on the world wide web as her platform for sharing.  Should be easy for someone who has begun the process of writing a book, right? You would think so, but you would be wrong.  I have sat down to write it out several times in the last two weeks and have deleted what I manage to get out and given up.   I start to write and I suddenly feel as though there isn't really a story to be told here.  There isn't anything to say that anyone should or would want to here.   There is only a dull ache in my heart and the reminder that my children are growing up without the daddy that loved them so much and I am going to bed by myself again.

I can literally feel every ounce of hope draining from my body,  every ounce of hope that I usually try to give to others suddenly seems to be running for cover. 

I know that there is a story and I have hope and I know that I need to share that hope, but something in me just shuts down.

It'll come.  I know it will.  It always does, but for now....for now it seems impossible.

As always I wish you were here to help me battle this, but I guess if you were here I wouldn't be battling it.  It's a catch 22, if there ever was one.

Whatever.

I love you.  I miss you.  Forever.

Maybe I just couldn't love you enough....

My darling Nathan,



I remember the day we decided to take our 26 year friendship to another level. You had been through a string of bad decisions, broken hearts, and disappointments.  I had too and yet you were everything I wasn't, and I think that's what attracted me to you. There were a thousand things about you that drove me crazy, but just as usual; I picked the ones who were the absolute worst for me.

Although it was what I had always wanted, I didn't think we'd work as more than friends back then, but it quickly evolved into exactly that…something that worked. What we considered "dating" was really just two people learning about each other. Late night phone calls where we'd talk about anything and everything, late evening sitting in your truck, we'd share a bad cup of coffee from a gas station, getting completely swallowed up in conversation. I knew I was in love with you about a week later. I had never been so sure of anything in my life. We got married exactly a month later.  We talked about the future, growing old together, about how we wanted a daughter, and about how if we simply couldn’t fathom how either of us would ever survive without the other.  I was in love with you. Almost everything about you.

Things weren’t perfect.  Nothing ever is, of course, and anything worth having takes work.  We had a difficult season.  It was so hard, but we fought through it.  We fought and clawed our way to the other side and came out standing.  And not just standing, but standing beside each other, hand in hand.  We had a daughter, to complete our family.  Sawyer adored you as much as I did.  We were in a new home.  We were FINALLY through what I was sure would be the hardest season of my life.  We were finally sharing more laughs and smiles than we were sharing tears and heartache.  We were finally happy and everyone who saw us in that time says the same thing.  We appeared so happy, looking forward to the future.  We were.  Or I thought we were.  I was naive.  I should have known that things can always get worse than the worst that you think they’ll be and they did.  We were in a happy place and you still took your life and for me, things got a thousand times worse than they had ever been before.  I am surviving but it’s painful and it’s not the life that I wanted for me or for my children.   What's left of the life we had is shattered into pieces, and there's so many I don't know where to begin to put them back together. I'm good at picking up the pieces and putting them back together, I've done it many times, over and over. This time the pieces don't seem to fit together like they did before.   

I've replayed conversations in my head. Over and over, on repeat until I wish there was a way that I could make it stop. "Promise me you’ll always be there. Promise me, that we’ll get through anything together.” I should have known, but I guess I was blinded where you were concerned. "I promise. I’ll never leave.  I’ll always weather the storm right beside you.”  Yeah right.  After everything that’s happened…all I can say is yeah right.

Why didn’t I see this coming?  You were my person, my heart, how did I not see this coming? That’s one of the many questions that I ask constantly and as much as I wish I could turn off what I feel, it's there. I’ve had people tell me to move on. As if that's something as simple as just saying "I'm going to move on."  As if it’s as easy as deciding what you’re going to eat for breakfast.   As if I can magically stop loving you, and decide that I didn’t want and expect to be married to you for the rest of my life. "Every day gets easier..." It doesn't. Some days it’s harder.  Most days it’s not easier or harder, it’s just different.  I heard someone say that the pain from the loss of a spouse changes, it stops feeling like someone is stabbing and suffocating you all at once and becomes more like the pain of arthritis.  Not as all consuming, but still there and though you can ignore it some of the time, it’s impossible to ignore it all of the time.  You can get through the day but it’s still always there.  Maybe I still have some days that are harder because we share the most amazing daughter. And we have a son that still says he wishes you could come home.  That he misses you.   Our beautiful girl and that handsome boy are the best part of my life; they are my happiness.  They are perfection in an imperfect world. 

I guess I just want to know why everyone seems to get a perfect little family and we didn’t.  My pain most days now, is much more arthritic than a gaping stab wound, but that doesn’t take away from the difficult  moments in which  I want answers that aren’t coming, that won’t ever come.  It doesn’t take away from the times that I miss you, like when I forget to take out the trash because that was always your job.  The days when I need something fixed and I have no idea what the hell I am doing, but I have to figure it out because you’re not there anymore.  Or like how I have no idea how I’ll explain everything that’s happened to the kids when they’re old enough to comprehend.  How I’ll make them believe that you loved them and that if you could have you would be there to watch him take vows to his wife and walk her down the aisle to her husband.  How are they ever going to understand this when I don’t even understand. 

  All I know for sure is that you did something that wrecked so many things and so many people, but I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  I’ll keep saying it until I am blue in the face.  I forgive you.  I’m not angry.  I never have been.  Mostly, I just want you to know I don’t think of you as a mistake.  You were a blessing even after everything.


Even through everything that has happened I have loved you.  I have loved you every minute, everyday.  I loved you through the hard season.  I loved you through our triumphs.  I loved you through the trials of parenting Sawyer and through the birth of our perfect daughter.   I loved you even when I hated you and I know that you are gone, that you can’t come back, that my life has to keep going on without you, and that I likely have a long time before I’ll see you again in Heaven, but I can promise I will never stop loving you because of what we share and because you never stop loving your soul mate. I wish I knew how you got to the point that you did or how we could have fixed it or what you were feeling in that moment, but those things don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Choices were made, and although I didn’t get a say in the biggest choice that altered my life so profoundly, what’s done is done.  

I’ll just end with this,  I prefer to think no one could have loved you the way I did and still do, maybe I was….maybe I am wrong. Maybe I just couldn't love you enough.   Either way, I’ll see you in Heaven, love.

We love you.  We miss you.  Forever.

i am thankful that though there is pain in this fallen world, in the next there will be none

Dearest Nathan,

Today was a hard day. We have experienced great heartache this year, the kind that could tear people apart and our  family (for others reading this: Nathan's side) has suffered yet another tremendous and unexpected loss.  However instead of letting it pull us apart and expose our ugly human sides,  we choose to allow it to bring us together, to surround each other in love. 

This loss has reopened painful wounds, that although I know won't ever completely heal, I had naively believed had become tolerable...even ignorable.  It has reminded me that pain, although survivable will be a constant in my life for the rest of my days.  It has made my longing and grief for you rear it's ugly head,  though in truth it's never really gone at all.   However, it has allowed me to count my blessings that are easily forgotten in the monotony of the day to day and so I am thankful. 

I am thankful that we used today to both celebrate your uncle Ken and enjoy time as a family. I am thankful that BOTH of our kids are so loved by their grandparents and their many aunts, uncles, and cousins and step aunts and uncles and cousins. I am thankful for friends like Tahnya who accept the role of auntie and are there when we need them. For friends that have walked beside us through the good, bad, and ugly we have experienced since losing you. 

Mostly I am thankful that we know through Psalm 34:18 that God is near to the broken hearted and saves those crushed in spirit and that we will see the ones we love once again in Heaven and what a glorious reunion it will be and how my heart will rejoice not only because I'm in the presence of both Jesus and with you and my other loved ones again but for the peace and reprieve from grief I will finally be granted. I am thankful that He knows our pain and he takes us in his arms and holds us near. I am thankful that though there is pain in this fallen world, in the next there will be none. 

#missingnathanalways but #hopefulthroughjesus