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.