"Mommy, why do everybody's daddies die?"

I forgot about this incident until I read an anecdote tonight that I'd previously missed on Jackie's blog about her daughter, who is becoming rather matter-of-fact about death. 

Tonight when we were snuggling at bedtime, Anna brought up death...again. (I suppose my temporary amnesia shows how common and unremarkable these types of conversations have become, until my memory is triggered.)

"Mommy, do you like everybody who's died?" she asks, out of nowhere.

Huh? That's a bit of a broad topic. There are some people who, I hope, are rotting in hell. Murderers, pedophiles....Oh. I mentally shake myself. Wait. Right. You mean a bit more specifically.

"Do you mean: do I still like Daddy, and Great-Grandma Jenny, and Smudge*, and Suzie*?" I query, puzzled. [*Smudge is our cat that we put to sleep 18 months ago, and Suzie is my parents' ancient toy poodle, who had to be put to sleep at the ripe age of 17 or 18 a few months ago.] If that's not what she means...man, I'm sunk.

"Yeah!" she bubbles.

I shake my head at the cryptic inner workings of preschoolers. "Yes, I still like them all."

"Oh."

She rattles on, something about death or people who aren't here or...something. I've lost track what. But at some point in her monologue, I see an opening to remind her of a few related, relevant truths, to try to convey to her that death is as natural a part of life as breathing. "But honey, everybody dies at some point." My words are an exact echo of something I'd already said to her earlier in the day, in response to another meandering dip into preschooler logic. "You know J, who was here a few weeks ago? His daddy died. And L and Z? Their daddy died too. And Miss M--her husband too."

"But Mommy...why do everybody's daddies die?"

Awwww...crap. 

I suppose that might be the logical conclusion to a four-year-old, when you're pointing out that she knows a number of other children whose parent has died. Dangit. Hadn't thought of that particular snag.

"Well, honey...Mommy only knows those people because their daddies died."

She blinks, my explanation clarifying nothing. Her voice starts to rise, worrying. "And what about P**? What about her daddy??" [**P is a little playmate of hers, the daughter of a guy I grew up with and whose wife befriended me after Charley died.]

"P's daddy is alive, honey. He was at her birthday party last year...remember? We just don't see him very often when we play with P because he's at work."

"But what about L, and Z, and J? Their daddies died," she persists.

Sigh. I start over. "Most people die when they're older, like Great-Grandma Jenny was. And it doesn't happen very often, but sometimes people die when they're younger, like Daddy was. And I wanted to meet other people whose daddies and husbands died when they were young, and that's how I know Miss M and Miss C and Miss A. I didn't know them before Daddy died."

I can't remember if my answer satisfied her or not.

Til next time...Round 457 of Five Thousand Questions....

The photo lineup

Anna continues to ask a bazillion questions about death lately. 

I'm sure it's a continuance from me telling her more about the things that go on during December--our wedding anniversary, Charley's birthday, her seeing her daddy's stocking and other Christmas mementos--but she's been asking things about her daddy nonstop this past week or two. 

I can't even remember what all they've been, as they've been so frequent as to become a babbling brook in springtime. I try to answer her as honestly and simply as possible--mostly because her attention span for the answer is often short, despite that her questions are never simple. Sometimes I'm so bamboozled by whatever she's trying to ask that I simply have to answer her, "Honey, I have no idea what you're trying to ask. Can you tell me again?"

This trend has been slowly building with her all fall. Maybe it's because I started telling her more about him, started bringing Daddy into our conversations more frequently as she started mentioning him more. We stick to pretty basic topics...things he did as a kid, things he did with her, foods he liked.

As Mommy has gotten more and more occupied with photography over the last nine months, Anna's become more fascinated by it too--especially since she's my prime top model. Like all little kids, she always wants to see the photos of her on the LCD of my digital camera, see the pictures as I upload them to Flickr. I suppose it was inevitable that she'd become a bit of a picture monger too, like her mommy. And this month, with the photo albums from my anniversary still lying out on the dining room table and with Mommy posting on her blog so frequently (and also posting a lot of pictures in them) during this two-week-long bout of winter storms--and especially with Anna getting to see video of her daddy, alive and talking and laughing, for the first time three weeks ago--Anna's been even more proactive about wanting to look at pictures.

I don't remember what day it was this week, but she asked to look at the professional photo album from our wedding. I obliged, and we flipped through the pages together. She wanted to see more pictures, so I chose a few more from a box in our office closet. Two albums of her infancy, before Charley died. An envelope of photos of Charley, of us, of him with his friends, his family, that I'd affixed to several memory boards at Charley's funeral. And for some reason, I also grabbed a small, incomplete photo album of pictures that my oldest sister took during Charley's funeral. Anna's been talking about him so much that--I guess?--I figured I'd include the closing bookend to the life she was seeing captured in photos. (I did not, however, grab the album of the professional pictures I had taken at the funeral; I didn't need to bludgeon the poor girl with a proverbial sledgehammer. I just wanted to see what she thought of it all.)

She loved seeing Mommy's tiara and pretty dress and Daddy in the wedding album. She was less interested in the pictures of her as a baby with her daddy (which surprised me). "Der's a lot of pictures here, Mommy," she almost whined as we were midway through the envelope of photos from the memory boards...but she didn't want me to put them away either. 

"What's dis one, Mommy?" she asked as she groped for the last album, already flipping it open.

"They're pictures Auntie C took during Daddy's funeral, right after he died. You were just a baby," I answer.

"Was I in your tummy?" she asks. 

(She's been looking for reference points in everything lately; when she was "inside my tummy" is a popular one, especially since she'd just seen two or three of the only photos of Charley and me together when I was noticeably pregnant, not two minutes prior.)

"No, you were almost one year old," I supply. We flip another page. "See--there you are."

"Oh."

We turn a few more pages in silence. Occasionally I point out extended family members or clarify her questions. I hadn't looked at this album in years and since they were all developed from my sister's film camera, I didn't have access to electronic versions of them. (Translation: the photos might as well have been in a black hole for the last three years. =)) They were like brand-new photos to me. We flip through the mingling before the funeral, the open house after it at our home.

And as I turn another page, before I even know to expect it, I'm--we're--staring at a photo I wasn't planning to show Anna yet.

She knows her daddy crashed into a pole. She knows he was riding his bike. She sometimes remembers it happened during a race.

But I wasn't planning to show her the pole just yet. Wasn't wanting to do the "Oh, look, Anna! And here's the pole where your daddy died!" bit yet. I'd been assuming I'd need to take her to the racetrack at some point in the future, but I was relieved I didn't have to yet.

Yet there it was, the photo staring me in the face.

(This isn't the actual photo we stumbled upon in the photo album, but it's similar.) 

Perhaps what threw me off with Anna was seeing my oldest niece and my mom standing in the bleachers, looking at the pole from afar. None of us had ever been to the racetrack before Charley died and we needed to see where it happened, to try to make sense of the mechanics of the crash, how this horrible thing could have happened. But I didn't go with my family, nor did I remember that they'd gone later, and it was jolting see a different version of the narrative than what I've always seen.

I felt like my hand was forced, looking at the photo with Anna. I suppose I could have said nothing, just let the page slip by without commentary...but why? Why shove the mug shot of Charley's killer under the rug? That stupid pole changed our entire lives, in a single split-second. 

What seems, in my reviewing mind, to be a long, pregnant pause was probably nonexistent. It's not like she looked at me, confused and afraid of the hulking metal monster in the photo, fearful of Mommy's frozen, stricken face. 

Not even close.

I don't know if she even reacted to the photo. And I didn't glance at her to check. Nor did my face--or, in reality, my emotions--look any different from normal.

"And that's the pole that Daddy crashed into," I said after the minutest of pauses, in the same matter-of-fact, informative tone I'd used to point out and explain a photo a few pages earlier that showed the head table at Charley's funeral, which sported his urn of ashes and the framed picture of him that was, at the moment, sitting on our dining room table. 

See? That's the same picture we had of Daddy at his funeral. And that's the box that holds Daddy's ashes. You know how we go to the cemetery sometimes and see the wall where Daddy's buried? That's what's in that wall--this box of ashes.

I don't remember what Anna said, if anything, after being shown the pole. She was probably more interested in the fact that her oldest cousin was in the photo. 

We didn't linger over the four photos of the pole, of the racetrack where he crashed. The next page showed photos of my family seeing for the first time where Charley's interred at the cemetery--the only time (as far as I know) that most of them have been there. At my request, they'd gone back to the cemetery's chapel the day after his funeral to pick up all the flower arrangements; their task completed, my sister--who helped me make all the cemetery and burial decisions--took them to see where he'd be buried the next day, with only Charley's parents, sister and her husband, and Anna and me in attendance.

I don't know what was stranger--having to explain these facts and photos to our daughter when I hadn't really intended or planned to, or the fits of deja vu I had at witnessing somebody else's version of what happened. There's so much of that first week that I don't remember in the first place, but there are some pieces--through my digital photos, mostly--that are as familiar and routine to me as the freckles on my nose. Somehow I forget that that week affected more people than just Charley's parents, sister, aunts and uncles, and me.

We got to the end of the album, and I already didn't want to look at any more. I was relieved when Anna was tired of them too.

I made a point to stow the albums back in their appropriate box in the closet. Immediately. 

Usually I'd just set them back down somewhere, and then turn a blind eye to the stack for weeks...possibly months. And while it wasn't horrendous to sit through those photos with Anna, I wasn't raring for a repeat performance in a few short days either if I left them out as an inadvertent reminder for Anna.

It's a normal, quotidian thing to hear questions or commentary about Daddy peppered throughout my day. It's commonplace to work Daddy into conversations. It's blase to look at photos of Charley alive, of our married life, of his funeral, of his burial, or various commemorations over the last few years. 

It's perfectly normal and comfortable to explain the facts of death to my child.

But I just like to know when it's coming, is all...particularly when I'm (supposedly) initiating it.

Yet somehow, even after almost three-and-a-half years, there are still surprises....Smaller surprises, to be sure, than there were that first year or two after Charley died...but they still exist.

What's that big, beautiful, shiny thing in my driveway???

Oh, yeah! It's my car.

Haven't seen it in four days.

Because it was buried like this:

The one on the right isn't even what it looked like at the worst point--it was just the first night of it, at the end of Day 3, and then we got even more snow after that. The one on the left was taken around midday on Day 5 of the snow, on Monday (so two days ago).

"So what did you do on Christmas Eve, Candice?"

"Oh, not much. Had a lazy morning. Dug my car out of three feet of snow in the afternoon...."

All by myself, I might add. I'm rather proud of my bad girly self.

That's a 26" deep drift at its deepest point there, next to Anna. This is on the end of the 3rd night, with two more days of snow to go...and it only got deeper.


When all was said and done, this is what the backyard looked like, after 5 days of snow.

Consistently two feet deep throughout my yard, with many three-foot-deep drifts too.

And this was the front, between my car and the driveway (which, after shoveling the walkway on Monday, was easily the worst part of the yard):

Crazy. 

We lost power for 11 hours on Monday, which was Day 5 of the storm for us and the last day it snowed. It didn't snow yesterday and actually got above freezing today (which is why I could shovel so easily today)...but it's just starting to snow again. Big, fat, wet flakes...the kind that add up fast. Lord, help me....

Off to celebrate Christmas Eve with my family...not in the way we expected--the church service was cancelled due to the snow--but fun, cozy, and at my sister's house, eating dinner and playing games. And "different" sounds kinda nice this year....

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

(I actually took these photos myself. And I'm quite pleased with myself too. ;o))

Merry Christmas, everyone! I hope everyone has a blessed holiday with as many moments of peace as possible.

Off to put Anna down for a nap so she can stay up later for fun family festivities tonight....'Til next time!

Oh--Hi, Love

And happy birthday. It should have been your 32nd. Instead you never even saw 29.

I'd been pleased this year that I inadvertently agreed to fabulous plans for your birthday, although those plans never had anything to do with your birthday in the first place. C and I wanted to take the girls to the Nutcracker this year, now that they're old enough and in their own dance classes. Plus it's just a fun excuse to get dressed up a little and go have a girly afternoon downtown. Simply by coincidence of our joint schedules, today was the only day C and I could both make it. I didn't plan it specifically because it was your birthday; it just worked out that way...but I liked that I had something fun and special planned with Anna--her first time that she'd ever see it--for the day, yet something that had nothing to do with you. 

Like last year when we were at your parents' house for your birthday--there for the pre-Christmas extravaganza with all (and I mean ALL--even Auntie and Uncle Dick, who (as you well know) can never come because of working in retail at Christmastime...even Jeff and Karen too)--I was guessing Anna and I would make a cake (or maybe buy one, if I was lazy) for your birthday, just so she can have an excuse to blow out some candles and eat birthday cake, which is her favorite part about birthdays. Or maybe we'd go with C, my mom, and the girls to a restaurant after the Nutcracker and get a dessert for you, for Anna. And for me too. Any excuse for chocolate.

But the semi-blizzard yesterday and freezing rain overnight changed the plans a bit. And it's okay. I'm still thrilled and giddy about the snow. (There's sooooooooo much snow...and more ice, even, than that last/first big ice storm--the first time I'd ever seen freezing rain on top of snow like that before--five years ago. You know, that storm where I'd just peed on the stick the night before the storm started and found out I was pregnant, but I was going nuts because I was so surprised but excited and I could NOT reach anyone at my doctor's office, because no one was there due to the ice and snow. We were snowed in for three days. I still remember going for the walk around our neighborhood, and me taking pictures of all the ice...just like I did here a few minutes ago. I know I have a picture of you somewhere (and a pretty bad one, at that), standing out on the ice with that awful old Le Baron parked behind you, but I'm not sure where it is at the moment. And I don't feel like digging through boxes and envelopes for the photo and then scanning and uploading it just for posterity (okay, and because I'm a picture whore). But know that I'm thinking about it. I'm sure you wondered who'd kidnapped and possessed your wife that snow storm, because I was certainly a crazy, happy, overexcited, newly pregnant woman for those three days. You probably thought I was nuts.

But I still remember your face when I dragged you into the bathroom as soon as you stepped in the door from work, and thrusted the pregnancy stick (almost) up your nose. I still remember that shit-eating grin on your face, and the tight hug after it. We went to dinner with Mell immediately after--remember?--and I (we?) were dying because we couldn't say anything about it.

Good memories. But that's not my point for writing. The ice outside right now, as I stomped and broke through the ice in my yard to take pictures, simply reminded of the last time I'd had to stomp through snow and ice like that. And that was with you. And then reminding you of it right now reminded me of the pregnancy test, and telling you you were going to be a daddy (and even faster than we'd secretly hoped it would happen).

Haven't thought of that in years.

But anyway....

So I don't know what Anna and I will do today. She's said she wants to stay home today, not go over to C's again and play with the kids. Sounds good to me. Maybe we'll watch some more Christmas shows on the DVR, or do something fun and Christmasy. I have cake flour in the pantry, and I bet I have all the stuff to make a cake from scratch since I don't have a boxed mix. I bet Anna'd like that. And cake sounds good to me too.

But I was really just making a quick post to say happy birthday, and to post a few pictures of you from birthdays past (or at least I think they might be from loosely around birthdays past, or else Christmas...it's hard to tell in some of them, and it's not important enough to call your mom and ask). Yeah, yeah...I know you'd hate me posting all those photos of you but, well, pffffftttttthhhh. You're not here, and I like photos, and I think they're fun. And besides, it's the only way Anna can really know anything about who you really were. 

And I want a scrapbook, of sorts, of it too.

So happy birthday, my love. I don't have the slightest clue what we would have done for it if you were still alive--maybe go out for dinner, or else I'd make something maybe special/maybe mundane for dinner, depending on our moods and schedule...you never did care much about your birthday, after all. (But dear GOD, do you remember those awful lemon pudding bars I tried to make your last birthday? They were HORRID!! We never did figure out why they didn't turn out right, but at least the Mexican food I made (or attempted) turned out fine. I never did buy you a real present that year because we decided to not do Christmas/your birthday presents that year, since you'd just bought and outfitted your commuter bike--and I'd just bought the new camera in mutually agreed-upon compensation--and you'd said it could be your present that year. Uncle Larry still has that bike, you know. I'm glad he still rides it. And I'm glad it's not sitting in my garage too. Tripping over those bikes every time annoyed the hell out of me after you died and I moved.) 

But right. Your birthday. Fortunately they're never too bad anymore. And actually, none of them since you've died have been bad. They've been kind of fun, actually. Yeah, you're not here for them, but I still did something fun and a little different for them. A dinner with friends, a shopping trip, a birthday cake and dinner with your parents and Auntie Jo and Uncle Bill in SoOre last year...they were all nice. 

So I guess the snow and ice this year make it notable too, in its own way. We'll see if the fact they they both happened to fall on the same weekend ever becomes important enough for me to remember years from now.

But for now, it's my form of something nice and different for your birthday this year. And it's enough.

Anna's wanting her lunch--PBJ, of course (as always)--and my stomach's growling too, so gotta run. Hope you're having a nice birthday, wherever you are. And if nothing else, know that we still love you very much, and hope you're doing well. 

Get a good smile at the pictures too. And shake your head at me all you want too. I know you are. =)

Love you,

me

(PS...Anna just giggled over this one. She thought it was funny and wanted to know who the other people--Chris and Kyle--were. When was this...your 13th birthday? Chris got a kick out of the picture when I posted it on Facebook a few weeks ago. That was fun for me.)

Anna liked this one too. Thought it was quite silly that Daddy was a baby once in Grandma Judy's tummy.

She's asked to see this one several times just now. I think she likes that you're somewhere loosely close to her age. Not that you'd have the slightest clue how old you were here, and I'd have to ask your mom anyway. She'd know immediately. What--2? 3? 4? I don't know if it's your birthday at all, but the Christmas tree means it has to be somewhere close. Ditto for the other photos, judging by the unwrapped presents in them.




Happy birthday, Love!

A mind like a steel trap

Anna just dragged me into the bathroom right now, after going in to wash her sticky, maple-syrupy hands and face from her breakfast of frozen chocolate chip waffles.

“Mommy!! Mommy, come here!”

I groan inwardly and wonder what it is she thinks is so exciting in our downstairs half-bath. She’s practically hopping as I walk into the bathroom.

“Mommy, look!” She points at one of a collage of framed pictures in our downstairs bathroom. “It’s our old house*!!” And she points to a second one. “And that’s our door!”

Wow. She doesn’t forget anything. Until she shows off her impressive memory and logical-connection genius, I’d totally forgotten about our brief conversation about our old house last night at bedtime.*

“Yes, you’re right, Anna!" I exclaim, in approbation. "That’s our old house, where we lived when Daddy was alive.” We haven’t lived in that house in two years, since she was just over two years old, and I never know what she actually remembers from years past. And it’s important to me that she knows the items and collections in our house that tie us to our old life, to her daddy, to where she and I came from. (But no, I'm not a broken record about them either. If it feels natural, sometimes I'll briefly mention the tie to Daddy, but other times I don't feel like it. Today was a brief moment of the former.)

We leave the bathroom, she trotting into the living room to her waiting My Little Pony toys strewn and elaborately staged on the coffee table, me into the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee.

“Yeah…I miss Daddy,” she says, in the same matter-of-fact and rehearsed tone that she always uses. It’s an echo of one the few things I consistently say to her about her father over the last few months, once she started being aware that people—including herself—can have emotions about things, can have their feelings hurt or be sad (and once I started verbally sharing with her those when I was notably sad or a grump-ass about her daddy, like at the three-year death anniversary** or her birthday). Mommy’s kind of sad right now, Anna. Sometimes I miss Daddy more than usual, and it makes me sad. But it’s just because I loved Daddy so much and I wish he was still here.

She’s taken to parroting her own individualized, abbreviated version of it when the mood strikes her.*** When she started the familiar intro to her usual, brief mantra this morning, I’d already started tuning out a bit, assuming I’d hear the exact same version I’ve heard a hundred times over the last few months. I love him very much, I expect her to continue. I sad he’s not here.

Except she surprised me this time.

“Yeah, I miss Daddy." She keeps skipping to the living room. "But sometimes when he’s dead, I don’t love him. And sometimes when he’s alive, I do love him.” Getting back to her toys, she plops down on her stool and picks up a closest one, already on to the next thought in her mind. 

“Oh! Pony! You look gowgeous! And Daddy! Daddy went….” She goes on to some completely death- and Charley-unrelated tangent about daddies, and God only knows what from there.

Wow. Well, hmmm....That was a new one for me….****

And since then, there’ve been no more mentions—from either of us—about Daddy or anything else out of the ordinary in our conversations and morning routines.

And now, instead of the Nutcracker ballet downtown*****, we’re watching The WonderPets Save the Nutcracker, prerecorded off our DVR. Not quite the same, but at least it’s the same music. And just maybe it’ll make Anna that much more fascinated when we (hopefully) make it to another makeup show Monday or Tuesday night (if any tickets are remaining and we’re able to exchange our tickets, that is, and if we can make it out of Sandy and our neighborhood safely).

And brief exchanges like this one from her are so common and unremarkable that they’ve become blasé, banal.

Except this one showed a slight edit to the script. It’s fascinating how her little mind grows and grasps and changes, especially with how it connects to her father.

-----------

*Immediately after I explained that Daddy could never be alive again last night and her responding Oh, she paused and thought of another pressing question. “When are we going to move back to our old house, Mommy?”

When our house was for sale and Anna finally realized that, if it sold, it meant we’d have to move and live somewhere else, she asked me a few times where we’d live. “I know!” she’d answered for herself, “We can live with Aunt Dindi!” I laughed at her ingenuity—an obvious answer to her mind…and one that was obvious to me too, two years ago when I decided to sell my old house and move in the first place (except I chose to buy my own house, instead of permanently parking myself in her living room =))—but then I informed her that we’d probably move someplace back closer into Portland, maybe close to around where our old house was. We almost never talk about where we used to live, nor has the topic come up much since this particular conversation, but it must play in her mind every now and then, along with reverting to the other things—like her dead daddy, Jesus, or Santa—that she hears about regularly too, assuming they’re equally plausable too.

In light of this other, new unexpected question, I told her that we never were going to move back to our old house, even if we ever moved out of this house and into a different one, and then I of course had to answer the inevitable questions of why. But, not being certain if she even remembers the house she's asking about, I reminded her that we have a photo of our old house in our bathroom downstairs, as part of a grouping of four framed black-and-white images that I really like. Three--including the one in question of the exterior of our old house, and another of the antique, intricately stamped door knob on our front door of that house, a beautiful old Craftsman style built in 1918--were taken by the professional photographer who photographed Charley's funeral for me.

**The first time I consciously shared with her that Mommy was hurting, sad about something, was when I had my silent, crying meltdown in the tent in July, when I was snuggling with her at bedtime after Chase had attacked that other dog out camping. I was upset about the damned dog, but I was also desperately wishing Charley were there, especially with the three-year death anniversary only a day away.

Anna had only ever seen me cry once—in the veterinarian’s office immediately after we had to put our last cat, Smudge, to sleep a year prior, also shortly after another of Charley’s death anniversaries. I was briefly holding our limp, departed cat and saying goodbye, giving him a last kiss and nuzzle, and Anna was next to me, busily patting and saying her own Mommy-urged goodbye to our kitty. “Bye, Smudge,” she murmured. “You’re a nice kitty, Smudge. Bye, Smudge.” She quickly made eye contact with me, about to say…something…but she froze, spying the tears on my face. Fear gripped her face. “Mommy, why you WET??” she gasped, the sudden insecurity and previously unseen phenomenon jolting her. She immediately looked about to burst into tears herself. “Mommy??” she almost wailed, scared.

I sniffed and scrubbed the back of my hand under my house. “Because I’m crying, sweetie. I love Smudge, and I’m sad he had to die. And sometimes you cry when you’re sad. You know how you cry sometimes when you’re hurt or you fall or you’re unhappy? Mommy does that sometimes too.”

And until I was assaulted by the dog’s stunning betrayal that night last July, she hadn’t seen me cry since Smudge died. But I knew—or at least assumed—she might notice my tears as I held her a bit more tightly than usual, so I went ahead and told her the truth, that I was upset about Chase being so naughty and that it made me really miss and be sad about Daddy. And since then, I’ve decided to share with her occasionally when the status quo in my mood shifts noticeably, and I hug her extra tight and tell her I’m a little extra-sad right then (and usually it’s because I’m having to apologize for being extra grumpy with her that evening) and that it’s just because I’m sad and missing Daddy more than usual right then.

And that’s how I started telling her when I missed Charley…

***And it’s also when when she started forming her own, always-identical version of the script:

****I miss my daddy. I sad he’s not here. But I love him very much. Mommy…do you miss Daddy?

Yes, honey, I miss Daddy very much. I sad he’s not here too.

*****OMG! You will NOT believe the amount of snow we have here right now! Okay, well, people from the Midwest, Northeast, or other equally blustery winter climes will snicker at us here in Portland for being so awed, but this is easily the biggest amount of snow I've EVER seen in Portland--including the 9" of snow that fell overnight (which ended up being about 10-12" on the ground after an additional 2 or 3 days of snow) here in Sandy last January, which previously held my Most Snow Ever (Where I Lived) award--or in my entire 31 years of being alive (in a residential area where I've lived, anyway). It's been snowing here for three days straight now, although yesterday was the first and only day that it never stopped snowing all day. And it's been so windy that it's impossible to measure how much actual snowfall we've accumulated since Thursday morning, but I came home last night to find ***26 inches!!!*** of snow drifted up my driveway, all the way to my garage. (Anna and I spent all day yesterday at my sister's house two blocks away, baking Christmas goodies, playing in the snow, and getting to eat real food [my fridge is woefully empty, because I didn't risk making it to the grocery store earlier in the week]--and getting to ward off the week-long cabin fever and grief grumps--so we didn't see the storm's havoc on my house til 10 pm last night. My sister's house is a bit more sheltered by forest and other houses than mine is, so the contrast was striking.)

I was stunned! What a hoot! And aside from the itty-bitty detail that I don't have much tantalizing, perishable food in the house (although there are plenty of nonperishable stores in the pantry or freezer) and that we didn't even try to make it to the Nutcracker this afternoon, I'm downright giddy! Twelve to 26 inches in spots, and a crust of ice (from sleet and freezing rain) on top of it. I've never seen this before!

I'll try to post pictures later, if I'm on the ball enough. Hope everyone's having as gleeful of a day as I am! =)

If A=B and B=C, then...?

Anna asked me something for the first time tonight at bedtime.

I've heard a sentence from her two or three times in passing in the last two months or so, and each time I've heard it, I couldn't help but think, Uh oh. Oh, crap.

I send Anna to a Christian preschool. It's not by choice, though--more a lack of options. There are only two or three preschools in Sandy, and both are in churches.

Before Charley died, I don't think I really would have cared, nor seen what difference it made. I'd never really put too much lengthy thought into it, but based on my upbringing and personal tastes, I always assumed--or perhaps hoped or planned would be more accurate descriptions--that I'd take my future children to church with my husband (a theoretical husband, at that point in my early twenties), raise them going to Sunday school, and then let them decide for themselves when they became teenagers if they wanted to continue going. That way they'd learn a rudimentary understanding of God, some moral values, and how to treat their fellow man but without having it forced upon them.

I was raised going to church, Sunday school, youth group. I remember playing a hide-an-object-and-go-find-it version of I Spy with my three or four fellow classmates in the last minutes of Sunday school in late elementary school. I remember playing Pass the Pigs occasionally at youth group in middle school. I remember youth group outings, lock-ins, mission trips to Tijuana to build houses for the especially poor, skiing or sledding trips, car washes, fundraisers. I remember singing at the Christmas Eve service with two other girls when I was fourteen. And yes--I do remember some Bible studies, discussions, and lessons on theology too. 

But going to church became a battle with my mother when I was fourteen. Not because I didn't want to go. No, it was because my mom refused to let me wear pants to church. I wasn't asking to wear jeans even--just black dress pants, because as I was stretching from 5'3" to 5'6" in the course of about 15 months, I had no skirts left that fit. 

I don't remember who ever won the war...mostly because I snuck out a back-door exit to the problem. I started baby-sitting in the nursery the end of that school year, and what I wore to church service became a moot point. Or maybe my mom gave in and let me start wearing dressy pants; I don't really remember. I still went to youth group all through high school and I enjoyed it, but looking back, that timeframe was when I started to sour a bit on religion, something that only got worse in college. 

Historically I've gone through phases of apathy, ambivalence, rediscovery, reembracing, and rejection for religion in my twenties. Sometimes I went to church--of my own choice and volition--and felt renewed and enthralled for the experience. Other times I couldn't have cared less.

My personal beliefs have run a juggernaut in the wake of Charley's death. I have widowed friends for whom their spirituality and religion have been a great comfort and support in their loss and grief. Some of them simply carried on with the same religious practices they'd always kept, while others found a new, welcome forum that they'd never truly experienced before.

I haven't really been one of those people. A few well-meaning and loving people have gently urged me to embrace Christ in my journey through grief, pressed Christian-based grief books in my hands because they couldn't imagine trying to get through something so monumental and shattering without His help and guidance. And I've considered it many, many times throughout these past three years. But I've never come to enough clarity about my disparate thoughts to ultimately push me in one direction or another. So I still go to church at Easter and Christmas Eve every year, even in widowhood, because it's my family's tradition...and I do find comfort in the ritual. But as I listen to, process, and react to the pastors' words in their sermons, I'm always reminded how conflicted I still am and how I still have no answers.

So even if I had only my own personal feelings to weigh, I'd feel a little torn over putting Anna in a Christian preschool where the lessons include Bible stories and passages that set the scene for beliefs I'm not even sure I still believe in. Death has shaken every belief I've ever held to be true.

Especially now that I have to weigh the dead parent's opinions into the equation too. He's no longer here to give his input anymore, to adapt and change as the circumstances demand. He's not here to say, Yes, it's fine. Put her in the preschool; it doesn't matter, so I have to guess at his possible answers, never knowing how much flexibility he might show in light of something--his death--that was completely unforeseen.

Because I know, unequivocally, what he said four years ago, the one and only time the topic of church and raising our children came up.

We were driving down the freeway in eastern Portland, running errands and chatting about whatever, and for some reason I mentioned my longheld thought that I'd always wanted to raise my children going to church when they were young.

And he just turned to me, with a stunned, what-the-hell-are-you-smoking expression contorting his brow. "Why?" he choked out, dumbfounded. I might as well have said I wanted to move us to outer Mongolia and start raising yaks in a straw-built hut. "Why on earth would you want to do that??" he gawked. 

I was equally as dumbfounded. As a consummate skeptic and scientist, he didn't really believe in God or religion, something I'd known for years, since our senior year in high school when the discussion came up in a philosophy class we shared. But I knew he'd gone to church when he was little. Hell, his mom was my first (or one of my first) Sunday school teachers as a little kid--she co-taught it with my mom that year--and I knew that that Sunday school class was technically where Charley and I had first met, except I have no memory of it at all (and his family stopped going after that year, when Judy's mother died unexpectedly when Judy was only 36). Without ever really thinking about it much, I'd simply assumed that Charley would automatically follow the same tactic, going to church when his kids were young. 

But I found out that one afternoon four years ago that I was mistaken. I was too surprised to press the conversation farther...or else I realized I already knew the answers to any questions I might be driven to ask. 

I'd known him for over ten years, after all.

So when I had to put Anna in a Christian preschool these past two years for lack of any other options, I've felt doubly torn. I knew what Charley'd said before, and while I also knew that he could easily have said to me (if it were possible to talk to me after he was dead), It's just preschool. You're a good mom; do what you think is best for your lives NOW...I still struggle with wanting to uphold as many of Charley's values as a parent and person as is reasonably possible. We agreed on most things anyway and he was a good man, and a great father. He loved that little girl more than anything--more, even, possibly than he did me--and I want Anna to know what her father was like as much as we reasonably can. I want to raise her the best I can, reflecting the hopes and dreams and values both her parents had for her. I want to honor Charley's wishes and memory, but I struggle with the guilt of what I've done, especially since I don't even know if it's what I believe. 

But the practical considerations--there aren't any other choices in Sandy...preschool is great for Anna socially...it's a necessary, very welcome break for me as a stay-at-home single parent--override the guilt. Most of the time. And/or until something happens that makes me cringe a bit.

This fall Anna started babbling about God and Jesus and God and Jesus (and God and Jesus some more) all the time, working it into her normal tangential, diverging conversations on a fairly regular basis. And I wasn't sure how I felt about it. 

God I could handle. God can be interpreted in any number of ways. Even if I don't know anything for sure, I can allow that God, a god, is possible. Anything's possible. But Jesus? Not so sure. 

I'd hoped that Anna beginning to demonstrate the messages of Christianity would be a non sequitur to attending any particular preschool. But her growing awareness and development have belied my measured, careful hopes, pressing the issue a bit too often. 

Mostly I tried to downplay any supposed "meaning" to her repetition. She's four; it's how she learns everything, and she talks about everything she sees and hears all the time. And I also know that what she says at four years old will likely have little permanent bearing on the person she'll grow to be.

I know this, I tell myself this, and usually, the mantra works. But then in early October, we drove by a church with a huge illuminated cross out front, and she started pointing and stuttering in her delight. "Mommy! Mommy! Wook! A cwoss! It's a cwoss, Mommy! Dat's where Jesus died!" 

I started to tune the conversation out, into Mmmm-hmmm, Yes Dear, That's wonderful, dear territory, because it was a monologue she'd delivered periodically, yet regularly, ever since she learned about the Jesus side of Easter at her preschool in March, seven months prior. The excited recognition erupted out of her every time we drove by any church or cross or any time she saw a letter, a symbol, a shadow, a shape, a cloud, etc., ad nauseum, that even remotely resembled a cross or the letter T. But in this particular rendition, Anna unexpectedly changed her lines.

"Yeah, Jesus died," she ruminated. Paused. "But he alive now. He died and he alive now. And...."

Ohhhhh...crap, I said to myself. And so it begins....

How long until she'd start connecting the dots, I wondered. How long until she started moving from Jesus died to My daddy died to But Jesus is alive now to...

...to the question I finally got tonight.

We were snuggling in her tiny twin bed, in our customary post-teeth-brushing, post-jammies, post-reading-a-story, snuggle-til-we-both-fall-asleep routine. We often have short, silly, reflective rituals and conversations during this sacred time, revisiting things she said or did that day or evening. Did you have fun at Grandma's? Did you brush your teeth? Are you big sleepy? ("I big big big big big big big big BIG sleepy," she proclaims, like clockwork. Sometimes the rhythm varies, between six and eight iterations of big most nights.) 

Her bedtime is my favorite time of day, every day. It's when we share lots of hugs and kisses and I love yous, and when I usually remind her what we'll be doing the next day. It's also where we often talk about Daddy. Nothing lengthy or complex--usually it's along the lines of Daddy loved you so much and he was so proud of you or Daddy used to do this with you, when there's something contextually linked to our current lives that I can say--and it usually only occurs once every week or two, or sometimes longer.

She's been talking about her daddy a lot more lately, in passing and in random comments. She frequently points out his stocking that's hanging on our mantel, announcing, "This is my daddy's stocking! And this one is Mommy's, and Chase's, and...which one is mine again, Mommy?" 

Or sometimes it's "I miss Daddy...but we love him very much...right, Mommy?" 

This afternoon it was about an ornament on our tree, a bicycle one Charley and I bought at an antique store in Sellwood one December afternoon while trooping along on his mom's kid-in-an-adult-candy-store foray. 

She was pointing out and discoursing on different ornaments on the tree. I wasn't paying much attention, being busy doing other things. "Mommy, and dis one's a bicycle!" she exclaimed, fingering it and gently tugging it out an inch for me to see. "Dat's Daddy's bicycle! But it's not like his bicycle. It's diffewent. What did Daddy's bike look like again, Mommy?" Then she gasped. "Wait!" She scampered to the stairs and was stomping up them at double-speed before I could even decipher what all she said. (She's very well spoken, but she's a motormouth and jumps from topic to topic like the wind. I wonder where she gets it from...certainly not her mommy.... ;o)) 

She ran back downstairs, plopping down on her stool and speed-thumbing through the chubby plastic pages of the baby photo album she brought down with her. It was a baby- and drool-safe one that I bought her shortly after Charley died, and filled with six or seven photos of Charley with her, me. Sometimes I find it in the back of her closet, buried under other books and toys, never to be seen again for weeks (or months), and sometimes it pops up unexpectedly and is sitting on her bed for days in a row. 

She flipped through the pages until she reached the page she wants, the last one, with virtually the only photo I ever took of Charley on his bike, taken at a race he (almost) won two weeks before he died.

"See!" she proclaimed, pointing at his handlebars in the photo. "Daddy's bike was diffewent. It doesn't have this thing...this...the..."--The basket? I supply--"Yeah! Da basket! Daddy's bike didn't have a basket like the twee decowation does."

And then she was off on another unrelated tangent...probably about another ornament (she's fascinated this year by the tree and all its different ornaments, and whose is whose, and who gave a specific one to her, etc.). I was still about three seconds behind her, amazed that she zipped from an ornament on the tree (one that I may or may not have told her ever belonged to her daddy) to her daddy to her daddy's bicycle to knowing she has a picture of daddy on his bicycle to racing to grab the album (and knowing exactly where it was) to showing off her comprehension to me in the living room.

I must be doing something right--or in reality, many things right--that a girl who doesn't even remember her daddy alive could do all that, in a reflex as normal as if she'd gone to grab a Barbie or Polly Pocket that she wanted from upstairs.

Faster, even, and without any of the usual calls to Mommy for help with locating said treasure.

So tonight during our usual bedtime routine, in a lull in the rhythm I paused, evaluating how tired she was against how much I might inadvertently release her chattiness. "It's Daddy's birthday tomorrow.....Do you remember?"

Between our wedding anniversary two weeks ago, her seeing the video of him for the first time, and the framed pictures of Charley and me coming back out on a table, she's had plenty of reminders lately. "Uh-huh," she said.

I didn't really know what else to say. And I didn't really feel like saying much else. I simply wanted her to know it was tomorrow.

And then I reminded her that we'll be going to see the Nutcracker in downtown Portland tomorrow too--her first time. "Oh!" she gasped, her fists and body quivering in delight and anticipation, grin crinkling up her face. 

"But only if we can get out of the neighborhood," I cautioned. (With a 26-inch-deep drift of snow in front of our garage tonight and freezing rain and/or more snow forecasted for the morning, somehow I doubt we'll be successful in making it, but hope springs eternal. And my sister and I are going to wait til morning to make the final decision.) 

We settled back into silence. I watched her blink a few times.

"Mommy...when will Daddy be awive again?"

Well...crap. 

Apparently it only took a few short months for her to connect those dots. 

"Honey, Daddy's not ever going to be alive again."

I knew that whole preschool/Jesus/dead/alive thing was going to bite me back.

"When people die, they can't ever come back to life," I say gently. And pause. "I know you've learned Jesus did, but...." 

Good lord, what do I say now? Should I tell her Santa isn't real too? 

What can I say that won't make me a hypocrite? That won't be a thirty-second-long answer to a question she didn't even ask?

What do I even want her to believe?

Sigh. Crap.

"...But Jesus was God's son, honey. He was special." 

Damn. I hate this. He wasn't real, I want to say...or, I don't know if that really happened, Anna.

Sigh.

Real people can't come back to life. 

Daddy's never coming back.

A war between needing to be truthful and not wanting to lie. Between mothering and sheltering.

"And when real--" I caught myself. "And when people die, honey, they don't ever get to come back."

"Oh." She pauses. Blinks once or twice. Her breathing remains even, her face unchanging.

"Night-night, Mommy. I love you."

I give her a squeeze and kiss her hair. 

"Night-night. I love you too."

I wonder how long it will be til the next big question....

---------------------

(And note: Please, I'm not posting this as an opening for a debate of theology, religion, or what people believe is true. Take it simply for what it is--the first time a small child asks a natural, seemingly simple question that, in reality, touches on one of the most complex, subjective ones in the world. Everybody's allowed their own opinions. Please respect mine.)

The ghosts of Christmas past

You've probably noticed that there's a flurry of posts from me this month. I've certainly noticed it, because I haven't really written as regularly this fall as I did in the spring and summer. But a lightbulb clicked on and it dawned on me why I've been so prolific lately: 

1. For the last week or two I've been staying at home in the evenings more than usual, so I could tackle stuff for Christmas...wrapping presents, avoiding that dreaded Christmas letter, getting my house cleaned up for my anniversary party two weeks ago...the usual December reasons. And true to form, I ended up procrastinating and passing the time reading other blogs and writing on my own, rather than being good. 
   
2. We've had crappy weather all week here in Portland. We got some snow last Sunday, and then it all froze for several days due to Arctic temps, and now we're getting more snow yesterday and today (or at least I am here in Sandy, finally)...and it's not going to be going away for several days, if the weather forecasters are right. I personally wasn't really affected earlier this week because the rest of the Portland metro area was a lot worse off than out here, but it meant that my usual pastimes--dance team practice, support group, preschool, getting out and running errands--have been cancelled and that I've been staying home just in case the roads would turn back to awful before I could get back to my home in the boonies.
   

And I suppose, too, there's probably another reason: because I've been feeling rather crummy the last week or so. My strategy of preparing for Christmas early backfired on me a little last week.

This is my fourth Christmas since Charley died. And each year they've gotten progressively easier. Part of my strategy each year, though, has been having as few "must do's" as possible; getting my Christmas shopping done in November so I didn't have to torture myself by entering stores and seeing hordes of happy, blissfully ungrieving people; and, starting last year, having as many holiday distractions as possible. 

That first Christmas after Charley died was probably one of the hardest things/months I had to face that first year. And I largely boycotted it that year...or at least I refused to do them the way they were "supposed" to be done, had Charley not died. According to my family's 20-year-long traditional schedule, I was supposed to spend Christmas with my family. But I wanted to spend it with Charley's family instead, the place where Charley and I had spent our one Christmas together with Anna (which was only the second Christmas we'd celebrated together, too). 











Charley actually took this picture exactly four years ago today.

That first Christmas in 2005 was a very different story. You'd never know by the photos, though. A sure case where photos lie...for me, at least. At 15 months old, Anna didn't know anything was different. It was only five months after Charley died. 

I mostly eschewed Christmas that year, refusing to participate in my family's gift exchange. I wasn't going to be there for the family celebration anyway, and I couldn't fathom having to open a present when I didn't give a flying $%*@ what was in the package, when the only thing I could feel was horror, panic, and nausea that my husband was dead. What few presents I bought for Anna I ordered online so I wouldn't have to see the happy Christmas displays in the stores. And it helped spending the holiday at Charley's parents' house, surrounded by his family, but it was painful too, seeing his cousin and his wife cuddling their two-month-old baby girl--a baby Charley never got to meet--and watching Charley's sister and her husband in their blissful throes of early pregnancy. And even though I know all his family missed him terribly, no one talked about him...or at least not like he'd died. I remember being rather stunned that they talked about him like he was simply elsewhere, spending Christmas with his ex-girlfriend as he had on the Christmases he'd missed in years past. It was disconcerting. They talked about how Charley did this, or Charley did that, but never once did you hear the words dead or I miss him or This is so wrong without him here. His mother and I suffered alone in silence, it seemed, the only ones who realized he was dead, not merely away...even though I knew everybody felt the same. 

It was a first, unwelcome lesson in how much I hate the smile-and-put-on-a-happy-face mode of ignoring death and grief. Yet it seemed to be how most people chose to face Charley's death. Woe that anyone show they were sad. 

Me included. Except I remember escaping to the spare bedroom where I was sleeping when it became too much and I couldn't tolerate the facade another moment.

I don't know how or when I found time to think or prepare for Christmas the next year, in 2006. I had to pack and move out of our house in November when it sold, move into my new house and get unpacked in early December, and face my second round of our wedding anniversary and his birthday. I was so crushed after leaving our house that I was an empty shell. Christmas was probably a welcome distraction that year--something normal, rather than having to be bombarded even more by my loss. As it turns out, I have almost no memory of this Christmas, except where pictures can jostle my memory a bit.

I remember being glad, actually, that it was Christmas again last year--the third one I'd had to face since Charley died. I felt like $*** every day at that point and had been feeling awful for about three months already, so getting out for all the holiday festivities--going to Zoolights, a family dinner cruise on a sternwheeler in Portland, Christmas concerts, a fast whirlwind trip to southern Oregon right before Christmas to celebrate and see all (and I mean ALL) of Charley's extended family on his mom's side--was a welcome distraction. (Yet another reminder that I do better when I get out and do things instead of hiding in a hole...why is it so hard to remember that sometimes?) Yet I only did things with family, so I could hide behind my "normal" manner with no one being any the wiser how awful I truly felt. 

Since Christmas was actually pretty nice last year, I assumed (hoped?) that Christmas would be just as welcome and easy this year. But I've had too much time on my hands the past week or two...or else the minor funk I got in with before and after my anniversary two weeks ago leached into the rest of my subconscious. I was still happily looking forward to the various Christmas festivities planned for this year--Christmas concerts, Anna's dance recital, taking Anna to the Nutcracker for the first time, a Christmas party, maybe an evening excursion somewhere to see a fancy Christmas light display--but as I finished wrapping the last of my Christmas presents a week ago, I felt a familiar rock sinking in my stomach. Shit...I've finished everything and Christmas is still two weeks away. What the fuck do I do now?? 

I'd proven to myself that I was a competent person this year. I'd purchased all my presents and wrapped them; designed, ordered, and picked up our Christmas cards (before Christmas for a change); made plans for both my wedding anniversary and Charley's birthday; had a party at my house; scheduled the time to celebrate Christmas with both my family and Charley's; gone to the previously avoided Holiday Ale Festival with my friend. 

I patted myself on the back that I was less a widow this year and more just a supposedly "normal" person. (Hooray! Yea, me!) But what I'd neglected to foresee in my strategic early-bird fervor was what I'd do once I actually finished all those distractions. Part of the reason I've been doing better the last several months is because I've stayed busy. Too much time on my hands--especially in the midst of this grief gauntlet/minefield called December--is not very smart of me.

So I've been feeling some rumbles of "Bah humbug!" for the last week. And I don't like it much. And now with the abnormal, bad winter weather throwing another wrench into my well-laid plans, I'm even more uneasy. I love snow, but I need to get out of my house!

But looking for those photos I included above actually helped. I wasn't planning to write about Christmas when I opened this blank, new post--I was planning to write something about single parenting as a widow vs. a divorcee, after reading a few new-to-me single-parenting blogs in my snowed-in spare time--but apparently my need to ruminate on Christmas was more pressing. 

One of the hardest parts about grief is the fear of the unknown--the fear of what it'll feel like as you have to do things for the first time without your dead spouse, fear of how far you'll far apart, how endless the pain could be--and while I've encountered most normal things in the course of three-and-a-half years of widowhood, I guess Christmas is always one of those "unknown" variables. I've felt a little (or a lot) different each year, and the circumstances leading into each one have been very different each year. So I never really know what to expect from Christmas.

I wish it were tomorrow, rather than having to wait another week. I'm ready to have it behind me for another year.

And I'm ready to distract and lose myself in the thrilled wonder that's Anna rediscovering Christmas each year. There's no time to sit and stew in my own thoughts on Christmas itself; there are too many people, too much going on, and too many laughs, smiles, and good times to have with my family and friends. But the time before it?

Ugh.

Maybe it's time to go play a board game with Anna or snuggle up and watch a recorded Christmas program on our DVR as a distraction....

Humbug....

"Tell me: What do you see when you're looking at me?"

I can't remember if it's a line from a poem I read somewhere years and years ago or from an awful one I wrote as a teenager (or possibly both), but after reading Lisa's brief blurb about me yesterday on her blog at the NY Times, but I've had a sing-songy sentence stuck in my head for the last few hours. 

(Something something something...
And something that ends with 'eeee')
What do you see when you're looking at me?

It drives me nuts when I get things--like song lyrics, someone's name, or a book, song, or movie title--stuck in my head but that I can't. quite. remember. the full thing, and I'm wracking my brain for the gap in my memory. But at least its an affliction that's bugged me my entire life and not something intrinsic to grief. Up until being widowed I had an excellent memory, remembering the most random, bizarre tidbits for years (decades, even) on end, so the fact that I couldn't remember something was actually fairly notable. But I've developed huge holes in my memory these past three years, thanks to that damn bamboozling fog that grief can make. So not only have I felt like crap for much of the last three years, but I can't remember anything clearly either. Talk about maddening.

(Although I suppose it's not entirely a bad thing that there are now things I can't remember very clearly. Some things--like the endless maw of pain--just shouldn't be remembered....)

But that's not my point....

What got me scratching my head yesterday and today--even when I first read it--was Lisa's description that I'm "still reeling" from Charley's death in 2005.

I've often wondered how distorted or skewed people's perceptions of me might be based on what I write on this blog. Ninety percent of you readers (or more) have never met me in real life. You've never heard me talk, listened to me laugh, or gotten a good dose of my regular grief-related sarcasm in person. 

I suppose it's an automatic risk when you put what's usually only in the interior terrain of your head out for exterior consumption. Unless I tell you, you'd never know the thoughts that are in my head. And since I naturally write a lot on any given topic, maybe the sheer length lends more weight to my thoughts than I'd actually give them. But it's just how my mind works--it turns and fingers and prods and explores and meanders over the surface of my thoughts, until, like a blind person playing over an object to determine what it is ("Hey, it's not just a ball...it's a globe!"), I can see a pattern, understand the connections and every facet, every dip, valley, and peak, of my terrain. It's how I've always been, in school, work, and everything else. I'm a researcher at heart--something that was confirmed with a personality test/index thing I did at work shortly before Charley died--so it's inevitable that the same instinct would show up when writing about grief...but not just any grief--my grief.

I've wondered several times--I've even exchanged emails about it with one fellow widowed blogger friend--if what I write on my blog makes it seem like I'm much more grief-clogged than I really am, if I seem to fixate on and obsess about Charley more than I really do in "real life." I talk about grief and Charley a lot here--indeed, it's why I started the blog in the first place--but I don't actually talk about it much otherwise. This blog is simply my outlet, my predefined "safe space" and channel to dump all of it. (Not to mention that I'm a written-word whore; I want a record of all this! =))

I read blogs of people who are definitely "still reeling" from the death of their spouse, their unborn and born children. I read their raw, tortured words, and because I know and remember all too well that I felt those same things right after Charley died--hell, all I have to do is go and read my journals from that timeframe and see their same words in my own handwriting--I know they're still right in the thick of the hardest, most painful phases of grief. And so I know in comparison that I'm not in that same pulsing, excruciating place.

Writing my Christmas letter a few days ago had already made me wonder, reexamine, if I give the grief a little too much "starring role" status. I sent my mostly final draft to three widowed friends and another wonderful nonwidowed friend (who also happens to be a grammarphile) for a quick sanity check, to get a gut-level reaction from them if it was good, too much, too long, too depressing, too boring, etc. It's the first time since Charley died that I was successful in even writing a letter (see here for last year's aborted attempt), and for those friends who haven't become regular readers of my blog, it was a rare venue to fill everyone in. I've become terrible about keeping in touch via email in the last two years or so (something I was great about doing before then) and have also disappeared socially for most of these people, so I felt compelled--like with my blog--to be honest about why. And to me, the grief and Charley's death are still the more notable fact of my life. Sure, I'm a mom and a whole bunch of other things, and yes, Anna and I actually did some things (like our vacations earlier this year) that are sufficiently "normal" enough that you'd find them in anyone's Christmas letter, but it's the abnormalities of my life--being a widowed young mother--that, for me, occupy the most emotional weight in my life. Fortunately, unlike last year's atrocious, depressing schlock, 90 percent of my letter this year actually sounded pretty normal, I thought. Sure, there were several mentions of "when Charley died" or "since Charley died" throughout the letter, but they're more a factual reference point for me than they are anything emotional or loaded...but I also realize that most people don't think the same way. And thanks to my friends' blessed input and even better suggestions, I retweaked and reordered the letter before actually sending it. I didn't change the actual content of it, but I shuffled sections around, putting them into what seemed a more "normal" order, and as a result the official grief paragraph moved from being the opening, both-fists-drawn punch to the next-to-last paragraph of the letter. And it feels more appropriate where it ended up, especially in light of how I've finally started feeling lastingly better, back to a new form of normal, in the last few months. (Reminder to myself: Editing is always crucial. What you need to say first emotionally may not actually be the most important thing in your life. Shocking. [Insert eye roll =)].)

So maybe Lisa's wording in her blog just struck me at an especially susceptible time, seeing as it came less than 24 hours after my Christmas-letter lesson in perspective.

But am I still reeling?

I know I was this time last year, as I was still in the early months of what turned out to be the worst and longest-lasting grief spiral I've had throughout these entire three years. Or maybe it wasn't that I was still reeling so much as I was reeling again. I'd had a pretty good 6 months or so, from about 18 months after Charley died until shortly after the second death anniversary, enough that I thought I was past the worst of it all and back to being a normal, back-to-my-(almost)-old-self person. But then I had a relapse--for lack of a better word--and the grief was just as bad as ever. Worse, even, in many ways, although it certainly took a far different form and expression than my grief ever did that first year.

The grief was all internal, all in my own head. There weren't fits of tears, of meltdowns out in public when some new experience of grief hit me for the first time. If you didn't know what was still screaming in my head, you'd just think I was a pissy, depressed, TV-addicted slob on the couch who never showered, left her house, or talked to people at all. I knew what was in my own head, but even still I didn't know to really call it grief. 

Until I started writing this blog. 

And then as I decided to give myself explicit permission to say, Yes, I was still grieving, I realized that what I'd been feeling all fall and winter last year was, in fact, grief.

I just didn't know to call it that, because societally it's not okay to still be grieving after two years, after you've physically moved and started dating and can supposedly function as a so-called (mostly) normal person again.

But probably the most useful thing I've learned from my widowed support group is how the grief morphs and shifts over the years. Yes, the expression of grief changes over time--so much so that the rest of the "normal" world doesn't even know that you are still grieving--but that group has reaffirmed to me repeatedly that what I, and the rest of my eight fellow widows and widowers, have experienced--and continue to experience--is completely normal. 

But a topic that's come up several times at group is when--or if--at some point we should stop using a "widowed/grieving" filter for our world view, and start using the rest of the world's definition of "normal." And what Alix, our fearless counselor, tells us is that what we're experiencing is normal. It's just that the rest of the world doesn't really know to call it normal. Death and grief are so hidden, so taboo, in our culture that only the first few weeks (maybe months, if you're lucky, with a temporary, approved license to "honor" and remember at the one-year death anniversary) are universally approved to be labeled as Grief. 

But in reality, it continues for years. I can attest that, at almost 3 1/2 years, it still continues. Not as strongly, no, but I'm stubborn and outspoken enough (that whole writer thing and all =)) to publicly announce--demand?--that it still happens, even "this far" out.

So to a publicly accepted view of normal, am I still reeling?

I don't know. I wouldn't say so...but my filter has been skewed for over three years now.

But Jackie? Matt? Star? Sue? By my filter--and probably everyone's in the world--they're still reeling. Horribly. 

Snickollet? The Girl Left Behind? Holden Tracks? Rachael? I wouldn't really say so. They're to the point of having to pick up and get on with life again. Are they "over it"? Not a chance. But would any of them say, in their usual day-to-day life, that they're still reeling? It might be a dicey bet, but I'd wager they'd say no. 

And I'd say I fall more into a still slightly different category, one more in line with Ian, Pentha, Shelly, and Abigail. We're all at 3, 4, and 7 years out, a place where the grief is more a footnote or an occasional reminder, yet one that can still sting at times. 

But I only write on this blog when I have something grief-related to say. And at 101 posts in now, and at 3 years, 5 months, and 7 days out from the death, I suppose the math of it might suggest I'm still reeling. 

And who knows...maybe I still am....

So maybe it's up to those of you who know me in real life, who've helplessly watched this journey over the last 3 1/2 years, to give me the real answer.

...Do I still seem like I'm reeling?? Or obsessed or fixating?? Or do I seem like I'm finally back to a more even keel, a little (a lot?) closer to the old Candice I always used to be? Time for a sanity check, please! =)

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A quick footnote: If you've never checked out any of the blogs I linked to above, you should! They're blogs I check regularly, and while I read each of them for different reasons--some I read because they're my age and widowed with very small children, and some because I have some personal connection to the person, or their words and insights are just amazing, or because their pain and struggles are acidly tangible and fresh (and serve as a needed reminder to me that I am doing as well as I am)--but I can highly recommend any of them.

Wow...would you look at that!!

Jillian recently left a comment for me on my last post, and I'm just downright astonished at what she pointed out to me!

Check it out here for yourself!

It's a blogger for the New York Times, and I got included in a list of her recommended favorite blogs. Wow! I'm a little speechless!

Thanks so much, Jillian, for letting me know! (And if you see this Lisa, thanks so much too for including me! I'm glad you enjoy my blog.)

The Year in Review, in photos

I deserve a few pats on the back--I actually managed to get my Christmas letter written this year...a big first for me, since Charley died. And since it's me--the queen of epic length--the letter was so long that of course there wasn't room to include any pictures. 

So I'm cheating, and posting a link to them online. (The URL for this blog post is far shorter, and less apt to be mistyped, than its URL on Flickr.)

So to see 2008 in review, in photos, see my set here on Flickr. 

Enjoy! 

(And for those on you on my Christmas mailing list, you should see cards WITH a letter in your mailbox sometime before Christmas...knock on wood.... =))