So, how are the kids?

"So, how are the kids?"

You hear this a lot.  Most of the time, you know the people are really just asking because that is what you ask.  But many times, you know the reason people ask that question is because they know your story; they know your kids lost their parent.  To me this question is a difficult one.  How are they doing? Well, the 9 year old (#1) is getting hormonal and has unpredictable mood swings at the drop of a hat balanced carefully with being sweet as all get out and smart as the dickens; the 6 year old (#2) is caught some days between being a “big girl” and reverting back to being a whiner while maintaining a hilarious personality and knack for fashion; and the 4 year old (#3) attempts to push every button I have every second of the day while managing to still be irresistibly cute as a dang button.  So yeah – they seem normal.

But in the back of my mind…I still wonder – crap, how ARE they really?

I can’t imagine how they see the world.  They were 6, 3, and 1 when my husband died.  The hardest thing I had to do in my life was to tell them (or at least #1 and #2 - #3 was too young to understand) that he was gone. [Insert that music they play on cheesy shows when a main character is having a flashback here.]  If you are prone to crying, you may want to skip a few paragraphs, this part is rough to read – and was even harder for me to type.  I promise to get back to the funny after.

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It was the next morning after my husband died – as by the time the coroner had come by and given me the news the evening it happened, the kids were already in bed.  #1 came down the stairs, wondering why we had guests – friends and family - over so early in the morning.  That question, in hindsight, is what gave me my “lead in” to tell her what happened.  I explained, “You see all of these people here?  They love you and your sisters, Mommy and Daddy so much.  Do you know that?”

She hugged me, interrupting me…”hey Mommy, where’s Daddy?  Last night when it was dark outside I looked out my front window, and daddy was standing in the yard looking up at my window.  Where was he going?”

Chills ran up my spine.  Dave had died before dark. 

I continued with my speech, afraid I would never get the words out.  “When something bad happens, the people that love us are here for us.  That’s why these people are here now – because they love us so much.”

“And something bad has happened?” she asked, her beautiful big blue eyes – her daddy’s eyes – questioned.

“Yes, Baby – something bad has happened.”  Point of no return here.  I just had to tell her.  “Your daddy was in a bad accident, and he is not coming home.  He is in heaven now.”

She tightened her grip around me, tears filling up her eyes.  “Never ever, Mommy?”

“No baby…but he will always be with us, looking over us, loving us, just like he did last night when you were looking out your window.  He is like our angel now.”

The tears spilled out of her eyes, and of mine.  We just held each other.

#2 was coming down the stairs.  Round Two.  #1 instinctively knew that it was time for her to go to someone else’s lap, which she did, and I began the task of telling #2 the news.  Since she was three years old, I had to take a different approach.  How I gathered the strength and ability to realize this, to think of the things to say, I will never know.  Perhaps my husband was there with me, guiding me through it. 

I explained that Daddy had to go to heaven and live with Jesus and the angels, but would always be in our hearts.  She didn’t cry, just told me that her best friend had a grandpa that went to heaven and lived there with Jesus too, so Daddy wouldn’t be lonely.  She sat quietly on the couch, and #3 came over and cuddled with us.  I have never hugged them so tight in my life. 

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So yeah – how do kids hear THAT kind of news and “be ok” down the road?  Hell, I have my fair share of “not okay” moments, and I have 40+ years of living experience under my belt. 

My husband always said, “know the facts, and wing it” when he approached anything – a new project, a presentation, whatever – I have that philosophy too.  With that in mind, here’s my thoughts on handling it, attempting to make sure your kids are ok:

1)   Don’t pretend like nothing happened.  It did.  Encourage the kids to talk about fun memories, about how they are feeling, and about what is making them happy/sad/pissed off/etc.  Do the same with your own feelings.  They need to see that you are sad on occasion, that you get frustrated with the situation as well, I think – because that is how they can know that it is “normal”.  Let them know it is ok to cry – um, yeah, for the right reasons, not because your sister has been playing a DS game for two seconds and you suddenly decided you HAVE to have it. 

2)   Along similar lines, have rituals.  Let the kids guide you on this one…whether it be making cards or pictures for their lost parent, or telling a story at dinnertime about him, or eating ice cream in his honor.  It’s a way to remember those we have lost, keep talking about him, and for the kids to have some type of outlet too.  The point is to keep talking about him.  He is still a part of their lives, half their DNA, and they need to know that he loved them dearly.

3)   Seek counseling if you feel they need it.  I am constantly watching for signs.  What those signs are, I have no clue – you’ll have to do some Googling on that topic – but I’ll know them when I see them.  I know my kids’ personalities, and encourage them to talk about how they feel.  I’m not the most touchy feely person on the planet, so this one is a toughie for me, but for their sake, I force myself.   If they act out beyond the normal kid acting out, seem depressed, etc…it may be time.  When they are older, feel free to ASK them if they would like to talk to someone professional about their feelings.  Just be open about it.  The communication aspect is pretty danged important here.  Just remember to not always look at things as “ohhhh ,her daddy died and that is why she is calling her sister a stupidhead” – sometimes kids are just kids.

4)   Be prepared to be amazed.  Truly, I think they handle this better than I do sometimes.  They are amazingly resilient.  They now treat death as a part of life – as it should be – are appropriately sad, but also amazingly empathetic for those that the deceased has left behind.  My kids’ hearts grew three sizes bigger when they lost their daddy (just like the Grinch, but they weren’t Grinch-y to begin with), and I think they will be just fine.

Parenting is a big experiment anyway.  When you add something devastating like losing the person you were supposed to team up with on the parenting journey, you lose your “back-up” – you lose the person who is supposed to have your back in decision making, you lose that person that you bounced questions/ideas off of like, “ok, is it normal that X Kid is picking her nose and wiping boogers on the wall, because no one in MY family ever did that…”, or – “do you think we should let X Kid join girl scouts/dance class/karate/softball/etc?”  You have to do that on your own.  You make the decision by yourself.  And if you are like me, you pray that you make the right ones – but so does every parent in the world. 

And like Dave said - “know the facts – and wing it.”  

Time...How to Make it Not Seem Like It Is Beating You Down

As a widow, I sometimes feel like the calendar is my enemy…you know what I am talking about, I am sure.  When it is all fresh, your mind categorizes time in days, sometimes in hours.  “It has been three days, it has been a week, it has been three weeks, six weeks….” It’s like you have some automatic calendar mechanism in your head that flips every day over and spits out the tally for you.  Then it switches to months, then years.  

Then of course you have the anniversary of various events to muddle through.  The first holiday since your spouse died, the first birthday you or your kids have without your spouse, the first passing of your spouse’s birthday, the list is endless.  Eventually, it rolls around to the anniversary of the date your spouse died.  UGH – such a tough one.  For me, the days leading up to each anniversary are the worst.  For whatever reason, I can remember a lot of the moments leading up to his death in the days before: the day he bought the bike (yes, he bought his first motorcycle three days before he was killed on the damn thing), at what restaurants we ate, etc.  I remember that the night before he died, we bought a Wii gaming system, and I kicked his ass in boxing and in Guitar Hero.  I continued to play GH even as he fell asleep in the chair next to me.  I gave him grief the next morning for wimping out on me because he was getting stomped.  We took the kids to the mall that day, ate lunch at a microbrewery.  He stopped after two beers because he knew he was going to ride his bike for the first time several hours later.  I find the detail to which my memories are spelled out in my head weird – especially since I can’t remember what the hell I had for lunch yesterday – but I can remember the buffalo chicken pizza I had for lunch that day.

I tell you all this to perhaps give you some comfort.  If you take the days one at a time, they grow into weeks.  The weeks grow into months. The months grow into years.  You find that through this calendar metamorphosis, you become amazed with your strength, and proud of yourself for getting through those dates.

So – how do you get there?  I have a few tips to share…hope they help in some way…

·         You seek the positives.  This one is tough.  How the hell can you find anything positive in the loss of your spouse?  And if you do, you might be (ok, you WILL be) feeling guilty because you are finding some kind of happiness after your world came crashing down.  Don’t worry.  No one is keeping track of your level of pleasure, trust me.  One example that comes to mind in my own experiences is the ability to see who my true friends are.  I had many people come to my rescue after my spouse died.  There are different levels of these friends, of course….there’s the ones who you were never really “text in the middle of the night” friends, there are ones who you can contact at any time, any day and they will be there for you.  The theme is, though – the true friends listen.  The true friends stand by your side no matter how stupid you get. They also stop and think where you are coming from – that the reason you are acting like you are losing your mind sometimes is because you are, and because of what you have gone through.  They are also the ones who will tell you when you are acting like a fool, too.  Having discovered the depth of these friendships has brought me happiness on a level I didn’t think was possible after the tragic events that rocked my world.

·         You have rituals.  Everybody has these, whether they have lost a spouse or not.  But to me, my rituals became more prominent after my loss.  Some of them are minuscule, things that no one notices but you, like saying “good morning” to your loved one even though he is gone.  In the case of my kids, my oldest goes to bed every night with her daddy’s ACU jacket on – no matter the temperature.  It is her way of staying close to him.  It doesn’t make her sad, just gives her comfort.  Then you have the large scale rituals – in my case, I have a party every year at my humble abode for my hubby’s b-day.  We build fires to stand by and shoot the breeze around, I cook a TON of food, and the invitee list is of those who have “been there” for me and the kids over the years.  It grows every year it seems, and I know that Dave would have enjoyed it immensely.  Correction – I KNOW he enjoys it immensely.  It is good stuff – and it gives the kids a way to see exactly how much they are loved and supported by so very many people.

·         You seek signs.  This one will amuse you, it will also amaze you.  You’ll hear that whole “everything happens for a reason” line a bazillion times after your spouse is gone, so much so you want to smack the next person that says it.  But there are many times when you see it materialize, and you can’t help but say it yourself.  These moments, too, have a range – for example, you’ll experience the little ones like his favorite song coming on the radio at a time when you have been sad and crying your eyes out.  This one’s a stretch for me – my husband and I had a somewhat inside joke about the song “Freebird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd (yes, spell check, I spelled that correctly, leave me alone) – and my local radio station plays the hell out of that song…but it does seem more random when it pops up on my iPod during a shuffle since I have 3000+ songs on there.  The big ones take your breath away sometimes though – my example would be that there seems to be some kind of bizarre “pay it forward” thing going on in Widow World in my area…Soon after Dave’s death, I was introduced to a fellow widow with three kids who helped me immensely – because she KNEW what I was experiencing on a level that no one else could.  She was a couple years “in” her journey at the time when I lost Dave.  Then, there have been at least three women close to me (either through my kids’ school or through work) that have lost their dudes too early, and I hope I have been of comfort to them in some way just like my friend was to me after my loss.  Do events like this happen for a reason?  Is the reason to help others through this?  I hold on to the fact that maybe, just maybe, this is part of some plan – and I seek ways to help as many as I can.  Trust me – through helping others you get some little semblance of peace.

These are just some things that I have taken comfort in…they may not work for you, or they might.  The theme here is that you HAVE to find something – anything – to grasp onto to make the road ahead a smooth one.  Sit back and figure out what that is for you.  And hold onto it for dear life.  You know that you have gained an appreciation for how short life is, how fleeting every moment is – it gives you strength.  Use it, share it.

Planning to Not Plan: Chillaxing in the New Normal

As a widow, you will find that your brain goes into overdrive more often than not.  You don’t have that other person there with you to assist in picking up your slack, reminding you to do that thing you were supposed to do, or even to pawn off unwanted tasks to along with all the other obvious crappy things about losing your partner.  Obviously, it creates a lot of stress.  Stress which you do NOT need, on top of the sadness, anger, and general angst inherent in the situation…So – I have found that the only choice is to adapt my outlook to reduce stress at all costs, which sometimes takes a hell of a lot of planning, but also means that you have to minimize the things for which you have to have a master plan.  I have always been a “planner”, even before my husband died.  With the New Normal, the WAY I planned has changed a buttload though since his death.  

For instance – before Dave died (in my head I say, “BDD” – Before Dave’s Death – and yes, it is capitalized, get over it), I would have a master plan of the week ahead…work Monday through Friday, then on the weekend, we would be doing X, Y, and Z activities – all at certain times, all at certain places, and there would be no straying from those plans.  Now, to be honest, part of that obsessive planning was his fault (sorry – you’ll just have to take my word for it) – he liked to know what he was doing when, and to stick with a schedule.  I guess that had a lot to do with his military background, and marrying that with my project management background and sheer control freak ways – led to my insanely obsessive planning.

Well – guess what happened next…you got it – the ULTIMATE in unplanned for events – my spouse’s death.  Yeah, you plan for it sorta when you are in your late 30s…like having life insurance, AD&D insurance (that is accidental death and dismemberment for those of you who don’t know, because apparently the loss of a limb sucks badly too in the eyes of the insurance companies – at a lower pay-out, of course).  But you don’t REALLY sit down and “plan” what you would do if your spouse dies.  There isn’t a Plan B – you don’t say in your head, “ok, we are going to go to the mall this weekend to get the kids some shoes because they grew out of the ones I bought them last week –BUT if one of us dies before Saturday – here’s Plan B.”  So, as a result, my obsessive planning has changed.

Since Dave died, I always have a plan B…and have taught my kids the same.  It isn’t to the extent of planning every event with the caveat of “yeah, we will do this activity, but if someone dies, we’ll do this other thing instead” but I try to assure that there is an alternative to accommodate any last minute crap that comes up – a kid gets sick, a dog has diarrhea all over the den carpet, it rains, Saturn isn’t aligned with the moon, etc…But it is the nature of my Plan B that has changed greatly…I am a much more relaxed, chilled out obsessive control freak these days…allow me to explain.

I learned this approach from a dear friend…he is the polar opposite of me when it comes to planning things – as in he usually DOESN’T.  I admire - to the point of envy - his ability to approach the weekend with no game plan other than playing things by ear – but my crazed psyche just won’t let me get to that extent…so instead, I settled in comfortably somewhere in between his philosophy and mine:  I often have a “Plan A” – but I don’t hammer it in stone like I used to – because my Plan B is often, “we will sit on the couch and watch movies and be available (maybe) if someone else comes up with something more exciting to do”…because sometimes you wake up in the morning thinking the couch (or the back porch, or the kitchen, or the recliner) is exactly where you want to be – not out in the world where there are people that aren’t your inner circle, or “things” that don’t belong to you that you have no desire to be around. And sometimes Plan A is to NOT have a Plan A!

Think about it – during the week we have all those stinkin’ things that we HAVE to do – go to school, go to work, fix dinner, breakfast, lunches, snacks – and most of it is on a schedule.  Why the hell add that same stress to the weekends?  Why not PLAN to do nothing?  What a novel flipping concept – plan to chill the hell out, turn your brain off after it has been going full speed for 5 days straight!  I have found that one of the keys to keeping my sanity these days is to learn the art of relaxation – and being content with relaxation instead of being guilty that I don’t have some activity planned for every minute of every day.  I am hoping that my kids pick up on it and learn to appreciate the fine art of chillaxing – and don’t end up like stressed out Wall Street execs someday.

Being a widow is not easy, your sanity is oftentimes right on the edge of looking like that blankie that your 9 year old has been toting around since she was small enough to be swaddled in it, so don’t put the added pressure on it.  Relax.  It is okay to say no.  It is okay to have a day just being in you comfort zone, cuddling with your kids on the couch – and don’t let anyone tell you differently.  Breathe.