Raising Raging Kids

Posted on June 4, 2018 by Racheal

Here’s a fun fact about widowhood:

If you have young children when your spouse dies, about a year after his/her death those children will probably go into full on rage mode.

I’d heard of this from a widow friend who was farther down the road, and now I am at that signpost.

One of my kids has slammed into “anger” with full force. He’s always been a bit quick to fly off the handle. We’ve always had to learn to manage his fits and his expectations. Lately, however, his anger has become exhausting, impossible, draining, defeating. He is quick to trigger and his rage fits will last over an hour sometimes. We will then have a few minutes of peace before he triggers again. He screams. He kicks walls. He screams. He slams doors. He screams. And screams. And screams.

Through it he hurls insults. I am a terrible mom. I obviously hate him because I don’t want him to be happy. He hates me because I don’t want him to be happy. He’s going to run away. He’s going to grow up to be a criminal due to my poor raising of him. He hates me, he hates me, he hates me.

This isn’t supposed to happen until they are teenagers, right?

I am not without recourse. We all see counselors, and we are working very hard with him to determine how to help him. We are enlisting grief and anger specialists. We are not letting this situation escalate without taking any action. I am getting him the care he needs, but grief is a process. We are getting through this, but in some ways it might just come down to being a storm that we will weather together.

I feel terrible for him. It must be so miserable to be entirely contained within a fog of anger. He can’t enjoy his life. We are working on it. I know we will get him through this.

Meanwhile, am I permitted to also feel terrible for me? I am doing what the counselors suggested. I remain calm. I. REMAIN. CALM. I REMAIN CALM, DAMMIT! Seriously, I try my best to keep a calm tone of voice. He can scream as much as he wants, but not in my face. And not if it is making everyone else miserable. He is allowed to have and express his feelings, but he is not allowed to make others feel bad. He can scream in his room. When he gets insulting, he gets a count. Three count = time out.

One epic incident lasted over two hours. I cannot remember what it was about. I wouldn’t let him have juice, or it was time to turn of the TV. Something like that. He screamed and bellowed and slobbered and flung insults at me. I calmly counted whenever he crossed the line, and wound up sending him to his room three or four times. It was a nightmare, and I didn’t think I would be able to continue.

After that night, it has been better. It was almost an instant cure. For a couple of days he had no fits at all. It’s building up again though. I can feel it. That kid has some sort of tectonic pressure inside of him and he is going to have another collapse.

The other night, he finally said it. He said what I knew was coming, and was dreading to hear.

“Mom, I wish Dad were still here and that it was you that died.”

Holy shit, y’all. Ouch. Ouch.

I know it’s normal and okay. I gave him a count for saying something hurtful. I reminded him that if he wants to talk about his feelings, about my rules, anything that we can do that in a calm way but that he is not to say hurtful things when he is upset.

He was really close to his dad. I am sure there are lots of times that he would rather have his dad around instead of me. I know it doesn’t mean he would trade me, or that he wants me to die. He doesn’t want either of us dead. I know, however, that he sometimes feels his life would be better or more fair if he was with his dad instead of with me. I am told this is natural. A child will idolize their non-present parent and will believe their life would be better with the other person.

I also know that to a certain extent he was trying to engage me in an argument, by escalating his words to get a reaction from me.

It’s okay. I understand.

It’s okay.

Except that Jesus Christ it is so not okay. I’m not okay.

And now I am mad at my husband for leaving me to deal with the grief of our children.

First After Miserable First

Posted on January 27, 2018 by Racheal

We survived our first holiday season without Trey.

As Halloween approached, we elected to not make the costumes we had all been talking about as a family. Then we elected to not make costumes at all, but to buy. Mr.K finally decided to just wear last year’s costume, which was the moment I realized that he was not as excited about the holiday as he wanted to be. We had several parties plus trick-or-treating. Each Halloween event began jovially, but ended with K feeling sad, removing his costume, and secluding himself. He says he may not dress up next year.

Mr.H made a Thanksgiving project at school – a poster on which we all were to write what makes us feel thankful. We all wrote something about family, but I felt dishonest because our family is missing a piece.

Tension built in the days leading up to Christmas, as Mr.K grew more and more insistent that Santa could bring his dad back. He would not be disabused of it. The whole thing terrorized me that he would wake on Christmas morning and fall to pieces because his wish had not come true. Thankfully, on Christmas morning he accepted what I am sure he already knew — that this was not possible. We had a lovely day, but partway through it Mr.H got really upset about a gift he though his dad would have gotten him. I hurt for him so much. After a snowball fight in the yard, Mr.K laid this one on me: “It’s sad that dad couldn’t be here for this. That’s what’s so bad about when people die. They miss out on all these things. I mean, Dad is never going to have another Christmas. I don’t even have to get very old — just 41 — and I will have more Christmases than he did.”

Ouch, kiddo.

New Year’s Eve arrived, with nobody to kiss.

Close on the heels of New Year’s was Trey’s 42nd birthday. It also would have been our 19th wedding anniversary. Even though I was certain gravity had doubled due to the heaviness of my entire body, I managed to bulldoze us through that final day of the Wilson Family Holiday Season. We enjoyed breakfast at the pancake place he used to take us. We honored his memory by once again visiting the root beer store. Mr.H and I cooked a birthday cake for Trey. Mr.K, who originally suggested the cake, found himself unable to move forward with it. We didn’t sing “Happy Birthday.” We baked the cake, iced it and ate it. K joined us for the eating part, and we didn’t talk about why we had cake.

Everybody is extremely sympathetic toward me right now. I appreciate this. I am fortunate to have so many people in my life who care about me and who are thoughtful enough to realize how difficult the holidays are.

The first holidays, in particular.

For every first holiday, however, there are countless smaller firsts. Innumerable times my heart protests that the last time we did this, he was with us. At the beginning of widowhood, these firsts are a daily assault:

The first time I put the kids to bed and came downstairs to nobody.
The first time I made dinner for just the three of us, knowing he would not return.
The first time I went grocery shopping without buying his favorite staples.
I watched a TV show we always watched together.
I picked up listening to the rest of the audoibook we were sharing.
I went to bed.
I woke up.
I rented movies.
I cleaned the kitchen.
I hung up clothes in the closet.

Everything in my life was something I was doing for the first time since he died.

After a while, the basics of living had run through a couple of cycles. No longer was each day a constant chorus of “this is the first time . . . ” The firsts continued to batter me, however.

The first time I took them to a movie just the three of us, I couldn’t figure out what to do when I had to use the bathroom — make them both come with me, or leave them in the theater while I went?

The first time I took them to get the Slushies Trey always got them, I managed to get Slushie all over the place. I could not get the hang of filling the cups the right amount before causing major overflows. In some cases, the stuff keeps expanding after you stop pouring, turning your cup into a volcano science experiment smelling of blue raspberry. I’d had no clue it was that complicated.

The first time we went to one of their school parties without Trey was the Neon Glow Party. It was just a week after he died, but we’d been talking about it for weeks. The neon party is always eighties themed, and I’d said we needed to all dress up like the eighties. Trey had responded, “So you’ll just be wearing your regular clothes, then?” He had a point. Looking back, I can’t believe we made it to the party. I was still in such a fog, and didn’t want to disappoint the kids who still wanted to go. They were dancing their butts off, and I was glad to have brought them. I just kept thinking it would be okay as long as we avoided the photo booth. Of course then K really wanted to do the photo booth. So we did it. And we got the pictures. The same pictures we get every year, but with Trey conspicuously missing. K deflated and wanted to go home. We went home.

The first time we played our favorite four-player video game with just the three of us, we realized one of us would have to log in as Trey in order to keep our game progress. As uncomfortable as it was, I logged in as him. It’s commonplace for me to do that now.

The first time the three of us went on a road trip together, I wondered if it was safe. How can a woman and kids drive over the state border and get a hotel room and be safe? I’d never traveled without a man.

We went to our first soccer game, and to our first hockey game. Without their dad.

These small activities that we find ourselves in, that remind us that Trey was here last time, they are growing more and more infrequent. Maybe there will come a point when there are no more.

The final kind of first I will address is the worst, as the frequency of it will keep growing at least for a few years. Instead of protesting that we did this last time, my heart screams that Trey never had a chance to do this with us, to witness this event. These milestones and first experiences will always be accompanied by my ghost of him, seeing his reactions inside my mind.

I joined the kids on their first airplane ride. They had never heard the safety speech before, and K paid careful, solemn attention to the flight attendant. They delightedly opened the tray tables, exclaiming, “Hey, look at this! A little table!” Trey never got to experience this with him. I could almost feel his laughter.

Harry hit his first baseball. Then stood at the plate, not knowing what came next. At the urging of his coaches he ran toward first base. Still carrying his bat. The coaches yelled at him to drop the bat, so he ran back to home plate to put the bat down, and then back to third. Trey would have told me that only my kid would be doing this sort of classic move.

Korben played goalie for the first time. Trey never got a chance to see his son so enthusiastically cheering on his team mates even when they were not near his goal. He never got to see Korben save a goal.

He won’t be there for their first girlfriends, their first school dances, their first day of every grade, their first kids, first auditions/tryouts for various activities, first play or first academic bowl or first recital or whatever we have in the future — these firsts will keep coming.

He’s Really Gone

Posted on November 20, 2017 by Racheal

He’s gone.

Duh, right?

It’s been almost nine months.

Nine months of not hearing him come down the stairs.

Nine months of him not falling asleep on the sofa on a Saturday morning.

Nine months of me watching kid-inappropriate TV by myself.

Nine months of crying and yelling and laughing and weeping.

You’d think this would not just now be sinking in.

It’s hitting me like an anvil.

I think it started the last time I visited this blog. I got to thinking that I should change the photo of the blog to a more recent one of Trey. This one is over a year old. That’s when it hit me that there will be no new recent pictures. I mean, we have more recent pictures than this one, but all we have is all we will have. At some point the most recent picture of him, one taken on my birthday two days before his death, will be ten years old. There will be no new photographs, no new jokes, no new experiences.

There will be no new memories with him.

At night I get in bed alone, and that is how it will continue to be. I still sleep mainly on my own side. The dog has taken over his pillow, a fact that would both amuse and annoy him.

I wake up with kids in my bed, but no husband. That is how it will continue to be.

This is not the first holiday season without him. This is the first of many holiday seasons without him. Of ALL the holiday seasons without him.

I asked my mom for gift ideas for dad, and awaited the traditional responding question of what she should get for Trey. Half the day went by before I realized that I was expecting that question, and that it would never be asked again.

His gone-ness is overpowering, is washing me away.

I sit at the dinner table, looking at the three of us. (Okay, I admit it. I sit on the sofa, looking at the three of us eating dinner with our plates on our laps.) It’s the three of us. It will be the three of us, until the kids grow up and start lives of their own.

I see advertisements for concerts and live shows to which we will never go.

I get groupon ads for couples’ getaways and think, “Well, I guess I’m never doing that.” We will never go to a romantic resort together. Never take a cruise. Never visit New York. Never visit the real Stonehenge. I may do some of these things on my own, but so many of them are contingent upon being a couple. The part of my life where I am part of a couple is over. I didn’t see it coming. It’s done. He’s gone.

Riding the Depression Wave

Posted on November 17, 2017 by Racheal

It’s all happening again.

Not to the extent it happened before, when the pain was new and I lived in a fog.

It is, however, all happening.

I can’t. I can’t DO. I sit on the sofa and realized an hour has gone by. An hour with no TV, no phone, no music – is just gone. Gone to blank staring, to emptiness and nothing. I’m not remembering. I’m not lamenting. I’m not thinking of the holidays. I’m just physically too sad to move.

My whole body is sad. My shoulders droop. My knees ache. My back twinges. My legs refuse to carry me out of the chair, much less up the stairs or out the door. I am heavy. Gravity has made me its bitch. It pushes me and I don’t even resist.

I try to work, and stare at the screen. I try to wash dishes and stare out the window. I try to sleep, and stare at the ceiling.

I have turned off.

Except when I’m on.

Two days ago, I reorganized/rearranged one of my pantries. A couple of days before that I sorted through the medications in our guest bathroom. I ordered new pictures for the walls. I hung a broom organizer. Over the past couple of weeks I have filled three large trash bags and two boxes for the goodwill.

I am experiencing bursts of organizing and productivity in between lulls of depression and sadness.

I went through this in the early months. I want to claim my life and my space, so nesting kicks in and I go, go, go. A day turns, and I am almost unable to shower.

It is most likely the holidays that have brought this on. This is not happening the way I expected. I thought I would be sad when I looked back at all of our holidays together, or forward to the holidays without him. The truth is, I’m not thinking about or dwelling on those things. Not much. Not VERY much. This is a free floating sadness invading my bones during the most mundane times. Still, I think we can assume it is a combination of the holidays, along with the feeling that I’m careening toward his death anniversary, and the winter doldrums.

I’ve gone to the doctor and have gotten a prescription for Zoloft.

I had been resisting this. I don’t like the way I feel on SSRIs. I feel less me. It’s not a dramatic change, but it’s enough of one that I feel uncomfortable with it. Also, I want to feel my feelings. How am I supposed to heal from the pain if it is always shrouded? Sometimes you have to run a fever to break the flu. (I don’t know if that’s actually true. Don’t come to me for medical advice, I’m clueless.)

I can’t keep going like this, though. I need to keep a relatively clean house. RELATIVELY clean. I need to work. I need to make lunches and walk the dog and sew patches on boy scout uniforms. I would love to succumb to the sadness and stare into space until the kids come home from school, but I do have work to do and it won’t wait.

Now, I’m not trying to be alarming. When I leave the house, I do put on shoes — flip flops at least. I am getting us all fed and to school and back. I’m even getting some work done — somewhat inefficiently. I do wear PJ’s and a robe a lot of days — a perk of working at home. The PJs are clean — unless I spilled coffee or egg on them that morning — and in fact I kind of have ‘daytime jammies’ and ‘nighttime jammies.’ I’m showering. I’m taking out the trash. You won’t come to my house to fight through a mountain of pizza boxes and cat litter to find me in dreadlocks with green teeth.

But it’s hard. So Z is for Zoloft.

I have been on it two days. I had forgotten that while the effects take a couple of weeks to be noticeable, the side effects are immediate. I’m not sleeping well and my stomach is in knots. This will peter out, but is unpleasant currently. But if it gets me through the holidays and a bit beyond it will be worth it.

I’m also grief-shopping again. The kids were thrilled with the “epic fort” they were able to make from all the Amazon boxes.

I just want to curl up in my bed and stare at nothing.

But, this weekend I plan to take the kids to a potter class. Next Tuesday I’m going to see the Justice League with my widow sponsor. Next Thursday will be Thanksgiving at my mom’s house, and I’m looking forward to it so much. After Thanksgiving, the Christmas boxes will come out of the garage and we will start decorating. We will also get those cards in the mail.

We’re doing it. We’re doing this life. We’re riding the waves and we’re crashing sometimes but we’re getting back up.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

The Things Not Done at My House

Posted on November 14, 2017November 12, 2017 by Racheal

The light in my bathroom keeps blinking off and on. I’ve changed the light bulb but don’t know what else to do.

The thermostat keeps giving me an error message. I need to call a repairman.

The handle fell off of my bathroom door. I could fix it if I had the screw, but it seems to have vanished. So every time I forget and close the bathroom door all the way, I have to get the handle off of its now dedicated spot next to the sink and jam it into the spot where it goes to open the door.

I took the cover off my bedroom light to replace the bulb, then lost the knob that holds the cover on. I have since found the knob, but still have not replaced the cover because I’ve already folded up the ladder.

There is a mountain of boxes in the garage that need to be broken down and put out to recycle.

All of our bike tires are flat.

My kids don’t know how to ride their bikes.

They also don’t know how to tie their shoes.

There are two large pictures that need hanging.

The door is about to fall off that corner cupboard in the kitchen again. I’m always leaning on it, but I always pretended like I didn’t know how it always broke. He pretended to believe me.

The grill is filthy and needs a good cleaning.

Of course, there are also a lot of things around here that need to be done as a result of Trey’s death. There is sorting and getting rid of things, rearranging things, not to mention the whole nesting instinct that kicks in. So my house is half painted. The above list, however, is a list of things that Trey normally handled and now he is not here. His dad used to buy dilapitated houses and the would enlist Trey’s help fixing them up for rent or sale. This was years – decades – before “house flipping” would be a thing. The point is that Trey could rewire things, install thermostats, repair plumbing — he was a super handy “guy-guy.” And now he’s gone. And it’s not like I’m a girly princess who can’t fix things. I hang my own shelves and I installed our video game systems and I can do a lot of these things. The things I can’t do, my dad can do or I can hire someone.

But he used to do them. He took care of things like broken door handles and flickering lights. He knew what to do about furnaces, and didn’t mind getting out the ladder.

I hate these daily reminders that he’s not here to take care of things.

Meanwhile, there is a jar of strawberry jelly in the fridge that I absolutely cannot open.

The Unbearable Sameness of Being

Posted on November 13, 2017November 12, 2017 by Racheal

When my boys were babies, there was a mom in my Mommy group who said, “It feels sometimes like I’m living the same week over and over again.”

That perfectly captured what it is like to be a stay at home mom with young children. Your life exists only as routine — bathing, feeding, dressing, cooking, cleaning, washing clothes. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

It once again feels like that, now that I am widowed. There isn’t any reason for it to feel this way. The kids and I go places and do different things every week. There are holidays and seasons, birthday parties and movies, classes and scouts. If anything, there is less routine in my life now. I am most likely overcompensating by filling our lives with activities.

Still, it feels like there is no reprieve from daily life. I get the kids ready for school, drop them off and then either work or run errands. I pick them up at my parents’ house. We do homework and have dinner and either watch some TV or do baths unless it is a night where we have activity planned. Then it’s bedtime for them and TV/Chores/Staying up until I pass out time for me.

Every day.

Nobody is here to say, “I’ll do the cooking tonight.” Nobody is here to tell the kids, “It’s after bedtime,which means Mom is off duty. Come to me if you need anything.” Nobody is here to embark on some project like painting the fence that will consume us all.

To be fair, I have had my share of projects. My downstairs is currently half painted.

So I am not sure why it feels so monotonous, but it does.

Maybe it is the simple lack of someone to talk to. Perhaps the presence of another adult, someone to tell about my day, someone to make comments to while watching TV, maybe that is what I am missing. Maybe the simple act of turning to the person next to you and saying, “Whaaaat? I did not see that coming. Did you see that coming?” is what transforms an evening in front of the TV from being sad and monotonous to being fun and engaging. Maybe being able to complain to someone about the mountain of dishes elevates washing them from being lonely to being, I don’t know, not lonely.

That is what I feel now. Bored and lonely, and like every day is the same. Every week is on repeat. The morning routine, the night time routine. Over and over. I know it isn’t true. I know last weekend we went to a Halloween party and the weekend before that we went to a scouting event and this week the kids were out of school on Friday but we all had fevers so we didn’t do anything.

I know my days are not on repeat, but they still feel repetitive.

And now I am being repetitive in this blog. Sorry about that.

I don’t know what to do.

I just feel so sad.

A New Widow’s Christmas Card

Posted on November 12, 2017November 12, 2017 by Racheal

The holiday cards I ordered arrived. Maybe this year I’ll get them sent out.

For the past three years or so, I’ve gotten around to ordering them but never mailed them. I wasn’t able to get my shit together. I ordered them mid-December, paid extra for super rush shipping, and then was too caught up in last minute holiday preparations to send them out.

This year I’ll make it.

I like the cards — I think.

When I sent them to the printer’s, I was certain they were exactly what I wanted. When I started to think about them, however, I wondered if they are wrong somehow.

There are no pictures of Trey.

All of the pictures are of the boys and me. Mostly the boys. A couple with me. But none of Trey.

Will people think that is disrespectful? Will his family want to have a card with his photo on it? Maybe I should have included a picture of us at the Oregon Stonehenge, or our wedding photo, or that picture of him with the kids on Bring Your Own Cup day at 7-11. Maybe there should be some sort of visual remembrance of him.

For the words, however, I worry that I talk about him too much. People don’t want to think of death when reading their holiday cards, right? This is what I wrote:

I started with some general holiday pleasantries . . . hope this card finds you well, etc.

“This was a hard year for us, but we have family, friends and each other to see us through it. As we make our way through the fog, we learn to love deeply, to hold on fiercely, and to be each other’s strength even while we feel weak. We learn the strength of family, that it can be badly damaged and yet remain. We learn that sadness may be with us, but joy is as well. There is no end to the joy that can be experienced if you leave yourself open to it. While we will always feel his absence, Trey’s love will be part of our hearts and of our lives forever. We carry him with us as we continue our journey of love and life and joy. We bid a loud “good riddance” to 2017 as we look forward, hand in hand, to the new year.”

After that is the usual accounting of our lives — what grades and activities the kids are in, what I am doing for work, blah blah blah.

Is that too much? Is it too sappy? Did it make our card too much about death? I tried to make it about looking forward and continuing on life’s adventure, but maybe it is too depressing.

Here I am, then, in a typical widow’s conundrum. Did I say too much? Did I say too little? Will people think I’m dwelling too much on the loss? Will people think I am not grieving enough?

Should I have included photos of Trey? Should I have not mentioned him at all? Should I have sent out plain store bought cards, and avoided this altogether?

I am happy with the cards, save some awkward wordings. I look at it and I’d like to revise, but I had a hard time putting that together so I did not have a chance to edit it. I feel like it would be a disservice to what we are going through to not mention it at all, but I didn’t want this to be a memorial to him.

I suppose some people will think it should have been a memorial, and they will be unhappy. Others will think that my words are overly emotional and improper and they will be unhappy.

I am happy. I am happy to be getting cards out this year. Hopefully I will start receiving cards again. (It’s a two way street. You have to send them to get them.) I am happy to have such lovely photos of us — if they are a bit overly touched up for my taste. And I am happy with the message in these cards.

I suppose people who have a problem with it can kiss my jolly ass.

Happy Holidays!

The Husbandless Holidays, Halloween Edition

Posted on November 6, 2017 by Racheal

So it begins . . . Our first holiday season as a threesome.

I cannot even tell you how not okay this is.

I bought three pumpkins. Well, six. I bought three big pumpkins for carving, and three pie pumpkins for painting. Not for pie. Gross. I’m not someone who gets all jazzed about pumpkin spice. I don’t even understand why people thing this is delicious or smells good or anything.

But I digress. I was about to tell you how I almost wept in the arms of a sweet elderly lady at the grocery store. Perhaps I shouldn’t use the word ‘elderly.’ I’m no spring chicken, and I do not know how old she is. She’s older than me, though. She commented on my cart full of pumpkins, and reminisced about carving pumpkins with her kids when they were young, and again with her grandkids. I talked about how my boys won’t go near the pumpkin guts so I have to clean the pumpkins out before they will even consider having anything to do with the whole thing.

It was on the tip of my tongue, what had been on my mind all day:

“This will be our first Halloween since my husband died.”

I didn’t say it. I almost said it. I wanted to say it. I didn’t.

Why didn’t I? Part of it was that voice inside my head telling me that she doesn’t want to hear about it. She’s having a lovely memory and doesn’t need my sadness invading her space. It’s what keeps me from mentioning it wherever I go, even though I feel like it’s branded on my forehead.

“This will be our first Halloween without my husband.”

I kept it in. The other reason? I knew that if I said the words out loud, I would cry. I would cry, and I would not stop. I would slobber big snotty drooly tears all over this poor unsuspecting stranger. In the middle of Safeway. On a Monday afternoon.

Instead, I continued the pleasantries, swapping stories of trick or treat and candy bellyaches. I loaded up the six pumkins

six, not eight

and sat in my car and sobbed.

I thought of the missing pumpkins, about family costumes in years past, of the couple’s costume we had planned for the next time we had a grown up party to go to. I remembered his idea to dress up the twins as Daft Punk this year and how he was going to help them build their helmets. I tried to maintain that concept, but none of us had our hearts in it and it fizzled. I remembered how much work he put into helping H with his costume last year. I thought about how Halloween is not so far from February, and how last Halloween we absolutely had no idea the end was coming. How we were still getting settled into our neighborhood and how we were using this as a reason to meet the neighbors. How he insisted on getting full sized candy bars.

I looked to the future Halloweens, all of them with pumpkins in multiples of three. The kids and I may do a family costume, but there are no couple’s costumes in my future.

I sobbed and sobbed until my eyes felt like they were bleeding. I must have sat in that parking lot for 45 minutes trying to get a hold of myself enough to drive home.

I wish I had told that stranger. Maybe if I had told her, I’d have wished I hadn’t. But I think it would have felt better to say it to someone. The holidays. Wow. It is going to be harder than I anticipated. I knew they would be difficult; I’m not an idiot. But Trey was a real grinch about the holidays. I mean, once the boys were born he upgraded from Full-On-Grinch to Grudging-Good-Sport. He recognized the importance of holidays for the kids.

It was always me, however, making the holidays happen, bulldozing them into our lives whether anybody else wanted them or not. Trey liked Halloween, but even then his enthusiasm was limited to selecting a costume. I put out the decorations, and shopped for more. I made costumes. I carved pumpkins. I put together Halloween crafts for the kids. I played Halloween music and watched scary movies. He treated the holidays like they were any other day, as much as he could in the midst of my obsessions. I therefore thought that his presence would not be missed much more than it is any other day.

That’s a nopefish.

This is horrifying — going through the holidays without him.

We went to the school carnival, where my mom accompanied us and watched the kids while I volunteered at a booth. We went to the Boy Scouts Halloween party with my parents, but we didn’t know anyone else so we collectively posted up at a table. We went trick or treating with my mom. There was nobody at our house to hand out candy. Finally, yesterday I went to a grown ups Halloween party where I only knew the host.

It was fun, but also lonely.

What is the rest of the holiday going to look like?

Thanksgiving is coming. Thank goodness, my parents host T-day. All I will have to do is get the kids dressed and show up for dinner. Trey didn’t like turkey, or stuffing, or cranberries. He didn’t care for going somewhere to eat. He’d rather stay home. He was always friendly about it, however, coming with me and eating too much and falling asleep in a chair like the other men. He was also there to do the driving so I could have slightly too much wine. It will be so odd not having him there.

Then, Christmas. Holy shit. Christmas we host at our house.

Once again, he was a grinch. He didn’t participate in the decorating or the planning, or in much of the cooking. But he indulged me. He was there to help put the decorations near the top of the tree. He was there to help lug boxes in and out of the garage, and to help me find extension cords, because they are never where you think you left them. When he really shone was Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

He would spend the entire month of December specifically pretending it wasn’t Christmas. I did the decorating and the shopping and the gift selecting and wrapping. I would handle the cards and the lights and the menu and the guest list. I would watch Christmas movies, above the loud protests of my family. On Christmas Eve, however, he would bake cookies for Santa. He would sit on the floor with me all night, as we assembled whatever nonsense I decided to get for the kids that was made of a million small pieces with a single sheet of instructions. We’d each take one item and race to see who could get it assembled first. He would help hang the stockings and we would share some scotch to congratulate ourselves on successfully preparing for Christmas, before falling into bed at three a.m.

On Christmas Day, he was glorious. Excited to see the kids get excited, he would wake at about five — or perhaps he never slept — and would WAKE THE KIDS. Who does that? Then as guest after guest (mostly my family, but sometimes some of his) entered our home, he was the perfect host. Hosting is not my strong suit. Planning is. Once people are in my home I come dangerously close to falling apart. He always stepped up, offering drinks and cooking some sort of appetizer he had decided at the last minute that he needed to cook.

What will this year be like, without him?

Halloween was fun. But it was also sad. I have not cried as much this month as I did the first month after he died, but I have cried at least half that much, and that is a LOT.

I don’t know how the rest of the holidays are going to go. I’ve ordered Christmas cards and will be sending those out. They have lovely photos of, you know, the three of us. I could write a whole post about that. Maybe I will.

But not today.

Travelling Alone – Yippee or Boohoo?

Posted on October 30, 2017October 31, 2017 by Racheal

Both!

This was work travel. I was to drive for three hours (which always turns into five) to a town in a neighboring state to measure building for a client.

This is something I used to do in my days as a younger Architect. I took 1-2 day business trips, by car or by plane, to measure sites and buildings and sometimes to meet with City Officials. It was always kind of scary. It is always kind of scary for a woman traveling alone. I assume. I had always thought I was being timid or paranoid, but recent events on social media, as well as living in the world and talking to other people, have taught me that many women are uncomfortable traveling alone.

This time it was scarier than I remember it being. Is it because I haven’t traveled alone in years, and I simply must get used to it again? Maybe.

Is it because my previous trips were mainly in the midwest, and now I am in more metropolitan areas? That may have something to do with it.

Is it because being married, even if my husband is not physically with me in the car, gives a sense of security? Probably to some extent.

It’s a combination of those things. I wasn’t in terror the whole time or anything, but I was nervous at some points along the way. I didn’t like how isolated the hotel was, and was nervous being in the empty abandoned store all day.

In truth, however, I was looking forward to it.

A night away from the kids, in a hotel, where I wouldn’t have the option, much less the compulsion, to feel guilty for not doing the dishes or painting the walls or folding laundry.

A “night off” from being a widowed single mom.

A night to myself.

Just one.

I imagined listening to my new Kevin Hearne book in my Jeep on the way to the hotel. I imagined checking in late afternoon, maybe checking out a local tourist attraction before dark. I imagined getting room service or having food delivered. I imagined swimming in the hotel pool or taking a long hot bath. I imagined watching TV propped up on those hotel-y pillows that hotels have.

I knew better, but I still imagined that.

The reality was that my client prefers I get a rental car. I was able to listen to my new book, but had to listen through a tinny bluetooth speaker I have because the radio in the rental doesn’t play media off of non-apple devices.

The reality was that I checked in around 9:00 at night.

The reality was that it was a Comfort Inn. I toyed with the idea of asking the client if they would be okay with me staying at a luxury hotel if I billed them for a Comfort Inn stay, but decided not to broach that subject since this was my first trip for them. This client prefers to pay directly for the hotel. So I was booked in a Comfort Inn. I checked for bedbugs, and found the bed and the room to appear clean. Obviously there was no room service. There was also no list of restaurants that delivered to the area.

The reality also was that I am on a diet. I had brought my diet food with me. Rather than search for an hour for local food delivery to the hotel, I just ate my diet food.

The reality was that the pool was closed, and the hot tub was weird and smelled odd. I was a trooper and got in the hot tub anyway, and then showered right afterward to avoid getting a yeast infection or typhoid or something.

The reality was, who wants to take a luxurious bath in a Comfort Inn tub?

The reality was that the TV got six channels.

The reality was that the hotel wifi was unsecured so I did not feel comfortable logging in and getting work done.

I went to bed at 10:30 watching reruns of The Family Guy and feeling like the loneliest person in the world.

It was nice to have the time to myself. It was nice to car-cry and to go to bed without unfinished chores calling to me.

It was good to wake up alone. I love my kids, and most days it makes my heart happy (even when I’m grumbling about the hour) to have them wake me in the mornings, or for me to wake them. It was grand, however, just once, to wake up and just be me. I wouldn’t be able to access the site until mid morning, so I woke and puttered around, putzed with the in room coffee maker, etc. I padded down to the free breakfast in my jammies. The free breakfast was not awesome, but I’ve had worse. I got my stuff packed and ready to go.

My stuff.

Not my kids’ things. Not even my husband’s things. I was not in charge of finding anybody else’s lost socks or making sure everyone went potty and remembered their drinks for in the car. I did not have to stop anybody from fighting with each other. There was no “five more minutes of this show” or “hold on honey let me check my email one more time.” When I decided it was time to leave, I picked up my bag and my purse and I walked out the door.

Lonely, but awesome. Simple. So simple.

I then worked all day and got back in the car — some more Kevin Hearne, some more car crying.

Overall, I give the experience a B+. I felt like a real member of the adult working community — not as a ‘mom’ or a ‘working mom’ or a ‘work at home mom’ or a ‘wife’ or a ‘widow.’ Nobody in this place knew or cared about those roles. I was a person on a work trip. I was a professional doing my job. It has been a long time since I have felt that so strongly. It was lonely and sad for part of the trip, but lonely and sad is where I live much of the time. It was good to get out and about.

Next time I will see if I can arrange for a better hotel situation. I have a hankering for a $10 room service candy bar.

The Fireplace Mantle as a Metaphor

Posted on October 19, 2017October 19, 2017 by Racheal

Our mantelpiece had, among other things, a replica of the helmet from Gladiator. This was not my selection. I don’t even like that movie. It also boasted a host of different Buddha statues and Foo Dogs acquired at different China Towns. I have nothing against these items, but I would not have chosen to decorate with another culture’s aesthetic. The mantel held a smattering of other items, unrelated to one another.

It sounds hideous, but it did not look bad. After Trey died, I removed some pieces to pare down the clutter, but I left up the larger decorative items and this was the result:

See? Sounds awful and bachelor-y. It is a bit bachelor-y, but it is not awful.

But it is also not me.

Whenever buying items for our home, I wanted to plan, to get a strategy in place to avoid clashing items and generate a cohesive design. My desire was to identify a theme and palette that would inform our purchasing decisions. He, on the other hand, would go to Chinatown or Ikea or Target, see something, buy it, and hang it on the wall. The result was an interior design that leaned much more toward his aesthetic than it did toward mine.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided all that stuff on the mantel had to go.

In fact, I am redecorating the whole house as time and budget allows. Again this has been met with alarm by my family. They think I am purging, but I’m not getting rid of anything. I’m just getting it out of my face.

Here’s the hard truth of the matter.

Trey doesn’t live here anymore. This is my house now, and I need it to be my house.

I’m not trying to erase all evidence of him. I’m not trying to make it look like he never lived here. This place will always carry his mark. Our lives and hearts will carry his mark. No matter where we go or what we do, he will be with us.

That doesn’t change the fact that I need to make this place my own. It started in the bedroom, and now I am taking over the living room. I’d like to replace some of the furniture, but, you know, dollar bills. For now I can re-do the fireplace mantel.

That is the justification. Now let me tell you what happened.

I took all of his things off the mantel and put them in the guest room closet. It was then a clean canvas for me to decorate however I wanted. The problem was that I had absolutely no idea what was I wanted to do.

Isn’t that the shit? It’s a metaphor for my whole life. I wrote a post a while back about needing to find myself. I won’t go into all of that again here, although I could easily write three more entries about that process. I’ll give you the tl;dr version. When you’ve been with someone for your entire adult life and suddenly find yourself without that person, you need to put serious time and effort into exploring who you are as an individual.

My mantel looked like this:

It was a perfect reflection of me. I had plenty of ideas for what to put there, but didn’t know if I felt passionately about any of them. I considered gathering my gnomes from around the house. I thought about arranging a Funko Pop display, or of covering it with family photos or with flowers. I even considered decorating it with “Architect’y” things like T-Squares and Prismacolor pencils. It all seemed fine, but didn’t feel quite right.

This is exactly what happens to me when my folks keep the kids overnight and I can do whatever I want for the evening. I have no idea what to do. I think about going to a movie, going out to eat, taking a bath and reading, or cleaning the house from top to bottom. I usually wind up having some edibles and dozing off watching TV. (Which is a luxury to a single mom of twins, I’m not knocking it.)

Suddenly it hit me. I would decorate seasonally. Halloween is coming up, so I present to you my current fireplace mantel design:

After Halloween, I’ll do a general Autumn theme until after Thanksgiving. That’s when I’ll pull out the crates and crates of holiday decorations. After Christmas, I”m not sure — perhaps some general winter display? Add in some hearts for Valentine’s day, and then after that a spring motif? My plan is pretty much to hit the seasonal department of the Dollar Store and will decorate with whatever they have. I may even extend this to include outdoor decorations. I will be that weird old lady who has yard decorations for Presidents’ Day.

At first I felt like this was a cop-out. I thought I was delaying making a real decision.

Then I realized this is actually perfect. Again it is like my life. I am getting through this one day, one season, one holiday at a time. I’m not committing to anything, ever. I’m not looking ahead more than a couple of weeks at any time.

I’m trying different things. A book club, a board game club, a coffee club. I’m not any one thing yet. I’m exploring. My interior decorations don’t have to be any one thing yet either. This is me now.

I can always round up the gnomes if I decide to do so.

Monochromatic Kaleidoscope

Widowed at 41, parenting twin boys

widowed