Month: May 2022

Before I had kids I had this image in my head of the kind of mother I wanted to be. I’d be patient with them all the time and never lose my cool. I’d never yell at them; I’d always speak in a calm voice. I’d do fun things with them all the time and teach them everything they’d need to know. I’d be the kind of mother that you read about in storybooks and see in movies where the mother is perfect in every way.

All of those idealistic expectations flew out the window when the reality of parenthood set in after the birth of my first child. They fell even further off the edge of the earth after I had my second one. My patience wasn’t always as present as it should have been. My calm voice wasn’t either as my yelling voice showed up too often. Doing the fun things often took a back seat to doing the hard ones and not everything my kids learned was what it should have been.

I learned, after the fact, that parenthood is hard. Like, excruciatingly hard. Bringing these tiny humans into the world and then sustaining them to adulthood was brutal at times. Some days it took every single thing inside me to keep going. I know Kenny felt the same way. Being a parent is literally the hardest job that you will ever do in your entire life. Period.

We both did all we could to make sure our kids always had a roof over their heads, clothes on their backs, and food in their stomachs. There were many times that these very things seemed damned near impossible but somehow we always managed to do them. Throughout all those years that we struggled we both felt like we failed as parents. We felt that they didn’t get the childhood they should have and the versions of us as parents that they deserved. Kenny and I both beat ourselves up so much over the years with these feelings of failure.

It took Kenny dying and the three of us going through the aftermath of it all (which we’re still very much in the midst of) for me to realize that we didn’t fail as parents like we thought we did. It’s quite the opposite, actually. I realized that we really did do a good job of raising them. They both turned out to be really good adults who stand up and do the right thing in situations where many would not. I can say that because I’ve witnessed too many adult children not do the right thing when they should. I’m truly sad for the parents of those adult children who never even take one glance in the rearview mirror at their parents.

Things have been so hard in all ways since Kenny left us and there are some days we just aren’t sure how we’ll make it to the next minute. But, we lean on each other for support and we get through that one minute, one hour, or one day that seems impossible to get through. When one can’t stand, one of the others is there to hold them up. Our kids have been the ones holding me up these last seven months. They’ve been my backbone. I don’t know how I would have survived had it not been for the two of them.

Those two kids grew up seeing their mother and father lean on each other for support. They saw one jump in to do what needed to be done when the other wasn’t able to do it. They saw their parents fight for each other’s preservation in all ways. They learned from their parents that you don’t abandon the ship when it’s sinking, but stay and work together to bail the rising waters out. Our kids learned all these things from us, even though Kenny and I never realized we were teaching it to them. They learned by example.

I could not be more proud of these two adults-these two babies Kenny and I created together and nurtured into adulthood. Kenny is proud of them, too, and I hope they know and feel it deep in their soul, even though he’s not physically here to tell them. I hope they can feel him beaming with pride from the other side of the veil, because he certainly is doing just that.

In the end, neither one of us failed as parents like we thought we did. We actually succeeded. We raised two kids who know the priceless value of family. We raised two amazing humans who stepped in to close the gap in the circle that their father’s death left and did so because it’s what family does. That’s not a failure in any way–it’s a complete success.

There were a handful of days in my head that I knew would be hard for me after Kenny died. I know that every person that’s ever lost someone they love has the same kind of list.

The first Thanksgiving, the first Christmas, our anniversary, the day of our first date, Father’s Day, his birthday, and the day that he died.

Those are all the days that I expected to be especially hard to get through. Days where the grief would wrap itself tightly around me and make me feel like I was suffocating. Days that the depression would be extra hard to deal with.

I expected all of those days to have a deeper sadness hanging over them because those are the days you feel your loved one’s absence so much more than you do on any other given day. It’s on these days that the emptiness left by their death swallows you into a dark vacuum.

One day that I was not anticipating being equally as hard as the ones above was Mother’s Day. I knew Father’s Day was going to be tough because that’s the day our children and I would celebrate his role in our lives. But, I didn’t think that the day we celebrate all the mothers in the world would be so difficult to get through.

But, it was a hard day. My first Mother’s Day without the man who made me a mother was difficult. I went to bed the night before realizing that this day would be just as sad as all the other significant days after a loved one’s death that I had already gone through. I cried when that realization hit and my pillow was damp from my tears as I went to sleep.

This was the first Mother’s Day I spent not hearing the words “Happy Mother’s Day” from Kenny as soon as I woke up. This was the first Mother’s Day that I didn’t hear Kenny say thank you for being the mother to his two beautiful children. This was the first Mother’s Day that there was no card from him that said “Love, Kenny”, written messily in his distinct mixture of upper and lower case letters that became so endearing to me over almost 36 years together.

This was my first Mother’s Day spent as a solo parent, and well, it hurt. It hurt so much more than I was anticipating it would and I wish I could fast forward through all of this hurt. But, I can’t, because it’s all part of the grief process.

I can’t pass go until I’ve moved around the entire board. There’s no shortcut. I have to land on every square and work my way through each and every one before I complete this healing journey. If I do try and get to the ending point without doing all the work on each square, I’ll end up back at the beginning and it’ll be like I never started the process in the first place.

Right after Kenny died, I looked up the stages of grief so I could familiarize myself with what was coming down the pike for me. I wanted to be “prepared”, as if there was really such a thing as that in this situation. I read about the stages, which are usually listed as five, but sometimes more, depending on what website you’re reading.

I thought that the grief process would be linear and I would move through each one of these stages in the order that they are listed on the websites. It made sense to me as I’ve always been someone who needed to do things in order. I soon found out that the grief process is most certainly not linear. It’s anything but that.

I also thought that the grief process would only last for a certain amount of time. It made sense to me, I guess, because doesn’t everything in life have a shelf life? I’ve since found out that grief most certainly does NOT have an expiration date. Don’t you dare let anyone tell you it does, either.

The first stage, denial, came even before Kenny died. The “He is NOT going to die….he IS going to live” was at the forefront of my brain for about two-thirds of the time he was in the hospital. That stage carried over after his death and when I saw him lying next to me in the bed that first night after he died the denial was the strongest it has been through this whole thing. “He’s not dead because he’s laying RIGHT here next to me”. Of course, that was not really him lying in the bed next to me because he was dead, but his soul did make his physical self appear to me to let me know that he was close by.

The anger stage overlapped the denial stage. I had fits of screaming rage at him for dying and leaving us and anger at other people, too. I had anger that he wasn’t here any longer to help me do the things I was having to learn to do myself. I was angry about a lot of things. I felt guilty for these feelings when I experienced them. I still do.

The bargaining stage started even before the ambulance came that morning. It came rushing in as I pleaded and begged him to please wake up and be okay. The bargaining stage rode in the car with me to the ER as I prayed so very hard to God to please save him. That stage was there every single second of the 30+ hours he was in the ICU as we all begged for him to live.

The depression stage moved in immediately after his death. I can remember feeling it padlocking itself over me like an iron suit as we walked through the hospital parking lot that evening after he died. We were leaving there without him….and that just was not fair.

As the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months the seldom mentioned stage of jealousy creeped in. Seeing other couples together hit me hard…..and I do mean hard. It was so painful to see other couples together because why couldn’t that still be us? Why did he have to die, and it mean that our happy life together was over? Again, it was just not fair.

The jealousy spurned the anger to rise back up and the anger opened the door for the depression to take center stage again. The depression roped the bargaining in, and the bargaining called all the other stages to come right back in, which they happily did. It’s like an all day and all night screaming rave going on that I want to leave but I can’t find the exit.

I found that the stages of grief were definitely not linear. I wish I understood that in the beginning. I have bounced from one stage to another, back and forth like a yo-yo, and it’s made this unwanted journey all that much harder. I feel like I take one step forward and then I fall backwards a hundred more. It’s hard to see the top of the mountain you’re trying to climb when you keep sliding down to the bottom again.

I recently had someone tell me that it’s been over six months since Kenny died and that I shouldn’t still be depressed. Those words slapped me across the face and stung harder than I think any other words ever have in my whole entire life. Those words also delivered a razor sharp knife right into the center of my heart and left a gaping hole in it that will take a long time to heal, if it even ever does at all.

If there’s ONE thing I have learned during this whole process of grieving it’s that grief does not have an expiration date. I will say it again for those in the back of the room who didn’t hear it the first time–grief does not have an expiration date. Period. It does not.

There is no magical time frame that the grief goes away, never to be seen or heard from again. It doesn’t get placed in a lockbox where it never sees the light of day again. It stays as long as it needs to. It stays as long as it’s necessary for you to work through all the denial, anger, bargaining, depression, jealousy, and whatever other stages you may go through. That might be tomorrow…..or it may be never. But, you are the one who decides how long that grief needs to stay. You, and no other living soul, gets to make that decision. It’s your journey to take, no one else’s. You take all the time you need to work through your grief…..and so will I.