Filler

It's been well over a month since I last wrote anything on here.

The short version: We're here. We're fine. Just been busy and doing other things, and had nothing to say.

But.

Yesterday was what should have been Charley's 34th birthday, and two weeks ago was our seventh wedding anniversary. Christmas is only three days away, and Thanksgiving was only a month ago. I got a short-term tech writing contract in November that has been prolonged and buggy but sparse in the hours. Energy has been low, worry has been high, and a generalized, low-level feeling of blah and fear have marked much of the last two months. The euphoria (if that's ever what it actually was to begin with) of the first month of school and our newer normal wore off, and the excitement and enthusiasm of starting my photography business was tempered into something...else. Much of the time I'm so used to doing everything on my own that I don't really pay attention to how tiring and hard--and how much work--single parenting still is...but these past two months, I've felt the downward pull of it much more consciously. Simply getting Anna to and from school and her few extracurricular activities; making arrangements so I can do a few, fun, social things throughout the week; finding the time to get the work done for my contract while having to, yet again, work from home; trying to find extra reserves of motivation and excitement to do scary but strategic business things: I'm finding there simply isn't enough time in each day or week, or enough extra energy, to be as happy, energized, and perky as I'd like. Or to make as much forward progress as I'd like.

Grief is a weird thing over the years, particularly as the time gets longer and longer from Charley's death. In the earliest years, it was easy to know how tough things could be and that I needed to be gentle with myself in making it through things like December, or going back to work. I had low expectations, and mere survival was the only goal. But as I've felt better in general over time and as the grief has, for the most part, ebbed away, I forget to make allowances for difficult things. Anna starting school and officially becoming a big girl; financially needing to go back to work; the holidays--they're all big and potentially complicated things, regardless of being a single parent or a widow. But since grief, per se, isn't a normal, regular part of my life now, I forget to keep watch for it, until I realize I've been a somewhat fearful, overwhelmed mess inside my head for the last couple of months.

Except it doesn't really feel like grief, exactly. Instead I'm feeling the after-effects of it: the lethargy and uncertainty, the paralysis at times. And I'm too quick to dismiss it because it's not as bad or as hard as everything was earlier in grief...but I forget to allow it its due, too, and that they are hard things.

So yes, we're here. And I'm okay...just not as high or excited as I've been other years lately at Christmastime...or as I was two or three months ago. But our tree has been up for a week, Anna's presents are wrapped, and Christmas shopping is done. What needs to get finished by Christmas Eve will get done as and when needed--and the rest, whenever.

And as much as I fear, sometimes, what needs to come next, I'll be glad when December is behind us again and I can face the brand-new, clear slate of 2011...or at least a stretch of several months with nothing extra-loaded and difficult.

Seven Years

I wrote this note on the morning of Charley's and my seventh wedding anniversary, on December 7. Even though I was hesitant to say anything on my personal Facebook account about the date--I mean, hell, it'd been five years since he'd died, and I felt a bit like a broken record, posting something (whether a picture or status update) on each death anniversary, his birthday, or our wedding anniversary for two years or more--I found I still couldn't let the date pass without saying something about it. For one thing, I've learned that people generally won't say anything or won't remember unless *I* say something first. They feel uncomfortable about "reminding" me (as if I'd forget otherwise? ha!), don't know what to say, don't want to say anything upsetting, yadda yadda yadda, and in the end, 98 percent of the people I know will never say anything to me about Charley or that they're thinking of us. So if I want some acknowledgment, virtual hugs, sympathy, or a simple "I'm thinking of you" or "I miss him too," I've learned I need to say something.

So I did. I dropped Anna off at school at 7:40 on the morning of our anniversary, and in the few minutes I sat at the kitchen counter eating breakfast before leaving for a massage and facial, I quickly typed out something on my computer. And completely unlike me, I posted it as a note on Facebook, where all 300-odd of my closest friends and family [snort] could read it. I didn't really think about what I intended to write, I didn't edit it, and I didn't even reread it once before I posted it. I just typed for ten to fifteen minutes, clicked the Share button, and closed my computer. I didn't read it until later in the day.

And as the comments from friends and family came in all day, I realized I still needed that acknowledgment. My wedding day was a happy day in my life--one of the best two days of my entire existence--and I wanted to celebrate it, regardless of how short our marriage was, how long it had been since he'd died, or how many times I'd said something before.

As a completely unexpected side-effect, however, I found my words being read to a group of 34 teenage girls a few days later. (And yes, it was with my permission.) A good friend from high school--who knew both Charley and me all through high school, who came to his funeral, and who coaches the dance team I help out with--asked if she could read my note to the girls before their final competition of the fall season, to give them some emotional fodder to draw from as they danced their modern piece, which was about time. Most of the girls probably knew I'd been widowed many years ago, but didn't know much beyond that. And while I didn't really care if my friend read it to them--good grief, I'd published it where 300-some people could read it (who all know me in real life, which is much different from the anonymity of posting it on my blog), so it wasn't exactly private--I wasn't sure how I'd do with hearing my words echoed back to me, with 35 people in the room as witness.

Thankfully it turned out fine, and I quickly realized that hearing someone else read my words was different from hearing myself read them out loud. My heart pounded and I was really nervous that I'd start crying (not that I really cared, though, if I did) for the first few seconds, but after the initial jolt, I became detached and realized that the emotional force of the piece was released when I posted it to Facebook; I'd let it out several days prior, and by the time I had to listen to it out loud, it could have been written by Jon Bon Jovi for all the impact it had to me. I just felt bad that I made a room full of teenage girls cry…although that was my friend's intended effect, for the most part. Many of them thanked me profusely later for sharing it with them, and it struck me, again, that I still need our story--Charley's and mine--to matter, to be significant, to be acknowledged. He died, but we had a wonderful love story, once.

And I'm totally, gee, three months late posting it here, but I wanted it to be a part of the record for Anna someday, along with everything else I've written here. 

[Post-dated note: I later changed the date on this post so it would appear in December 2010, same as when I actually wrote it. But I originally published it on the blog on Friday, March 4, 2011.]

---

Seven Years

Tuesday, December 7, 2010 at 8:41am

Every year I debate with myself--post something, or not? And every year since getting on Facebook, posting something has inevitably won.

Today is what should have been my seventh wedding anniversary...but my sixth since being widowed. Just remembering the math of it all, and the simple fact that I only got to celebrate one wedding anniversary--our first--with Charley alive, still blows my mind.

I had to stop and think, add it up, last week to figure out how long it should have been. I'm so used to keeping track of other tallies--that he's been dead for 5 years now; that Anna was only 10 months old and we'd only been married 19 months and 5 days when he died; that I was only 27, he, 28--that I don't often remember how long I should have been married.

And even though it's been five years now and that, thankfully, the acute, daily pain of grief, loss, and missing is behind me, it's not like his death ever goes away. Funny thing--he's still dead, even after five years. I think about him every single day, many, many times throughout the day. Anna and I talk about him. We have numerous pictures of him around the house. And in my mind, in many ways I'm still married--it just happens to be a man who's been dead for five years.

So I always remember and mark what happened on this day in December 2003. We had a beautiful December, candlelit wedding--the kind I'd always dreamed about since being a little girl. We had an awesome party with our family and friends, filled with good food and lots of laughs, followed by a magical, fantastic, relaxing week in paradise, on our honeymoon in Jamaica. A month after we got home, I found out I was pregnant with Anna--yet another dream come true. Four months later, I found out we were having a girl, something I'd hoped, hoped, hoped would happen. I felt giddy, like the luckiest person on the planet, who couldn't believe her sheer good luck.

That feeling never died, not even once, until the police knocked on my door on July 12, 2005, to tell me he was dead. And while the last five years saw more pain, heartache, and...things that there aren't even any words for, because there aren't words adequate enough in the English language to express it all, I still marvel at how lucky I was, once.

I was married to a wonderful man, and my best friend in the world. I got to create a child with him, and he was the best daddy imaginable. For almost three years, I had wonderful perfection.

And five...no, seven...years later, I still think of him. And I still love him. And I still celebrate this day.

And I want the world--or at least my friends and family on Facebook--to know that this day happened too, widowhood or not.

To Charles K******* C*********...and a person I can barely even remember--the old me, Candice E***** U***. Here's to seven years, love.