What will I do when you go away?

I wrote this short story from my son’s perspective in the early months after my husband died.

What will I do when you go away?

Will I laugh, run around will I still want to play?

Will I wrestle with dogs and swim in the sun?

Will I still be happy or will I feel undone?

Who will help me tie my shoes and pick out cool cars?

Who will play the great music and take me on long walks with our dogs? Who will go to the park just to hang and fly kites?

Who will be there real early when mom wants to sleep?

Who will let me eat pudding instead of whole wheat?

When will I get to do these things again?

Will I ever feel so safe?

Will being sad ever end?

Will I feel your arms around me after you’ve gone?

Will there still be a family hug?

Will I see you again? And if so, when?

Will mommy be sad every day of her life?

Will her smile come back?

Will we play, tickle, laugh and sing…even without you?

So many questions I have and nobody knows.

Nobody can tell me and nobody is sure.

I know that you love me and that we are best buds.

I know that you’ll guard me when nobody does.

I know that you’d stay here if you were able.

I know that God will help you and help me and mom.

I know God will be there when I feel like your gone.

I love you, dad. I miss the hugs and the kisses. I miss the wrestling the laughing and silly old days when it was just you and me and that was ok.

The First Years – a new category for hope

To my dear friends – over the last months several people I love have had people they love die.  In an attempt to help those in the early journey of loss, I have opened up my own archives and am retrieving some of the pieces I wrote during the first few years after Dave died.  Please, know these were written years ago and my healing and recovery is still moving forward toward wholeness. As you read these older pieces know that is my intent to help those early in the journey and hopefully this combined with my current pieces can create a picture of healing.  I believe with all my being that it is in looking back that we can truly recognize our own progress and learn from our journeys.

simple Sundays

Sundays hurt the most I think.

Weekends were almost always looked forward to and three day weekends looked to as treasure. Well here I sit on a Sunday morning lonely, heartbroken and wishing it was Monday again.  At least on Monday I can busy myself with my regular stuff…not sit in family time with my broken family.  Every Sunday there is just a huge gap for me. From rolling over in the night and seeing your face to making two cups of coffee and Sunday breakfast, it all seems empty. It took months before I realized that I hadn’t cooked a Sunday breakfast. Now, all I can muster is sausage and eggs…no dinosaur pancakes, no omelets…nothing special. It took over a year before I broke out the pancake batter again. I didn’t even realize I hadn’t done it until I did again.

Something that was so routine, I pushed it to the back of my existence, so far back, I didn’t even realize I wasn’t doing it. How sad it is…how sad for my son, years of this ritual ripped away, just like you were ripped away. You were my Sunday man though. You were the one that would make it special. You would get up early and go get special coffee or new plants for the garden or poke me to come watch the sun rise on a parking lot rooftop. Such beautiful Sundays….such a beautiful life, not perfect, but beautiful. Man I miss that. Man I miss you. Man, I miss you on Sundays. There is a beauty and sparkle that is missing and that sparkle is you.

Lately, I’ve been trying to recover from losing you. I’ve been cleaning and focusing on our boys and how to help them. What to do for school when the place you’ve been says that we’re to high maintenance? What to do for home, when it seems like I’m losing my big boy to his grief? Trying to refocus and recover…from a loss so great..