Living is a whole new adventure when you suddenly find yourself alone, widowed and the mother of four young boys a lot like their Dad.
Grant Was My Safe Place
He was my safe place. Our world lived and grew within itself. It created a story that was never going to end, until it did. My rock, my safety left the earth world, our family world and our TKOR world all in one instance.
Mexico With My Kids
Can I do this? I keep asking myself this question. Over and over, about everything I do or want to do in life since becoming a single parent of 4. I wanted to take my kids on a trip. Can I do this? No, I can’t, but I will.
Beauty
Beauty has taken on a whole other meaning again. I love beautiful things. This morning as I was getting ready, I felt beautiful. Not like I felt like I looked beautiful, but as I settled into the feeling of being in my body, walking into the bathroom, surrounded by the silence of being alone; that is also now a state of being for me. I felt the feeling of beautiful inside me.
Marbles and Grief
I felt the grief take over me. It was the first time or it felt like it. It feels like the first time every time. Maybe because it’s new, maybe because it’s different every time. A friend shared with me a beautiful story of small objects that now have symbolic meaning to him because of certain experiences he’s had. He placed these objects together and took a picture to have it all in one place to remember.
Lonely, But Not Alone
Loneliness doesn’t come from just being alone. You can be surrounded by people and feel lonely. You can be alone and not feel lonely at all. So far, I’ve kept myself as far as possible from feeling lonely. I have 4 kids, so I’m always surrounded, that helps a lot. I’ve taken on project after project, most out of necessity, but nonetheless willingly because they keep my busy. With my mind occupied my heart doesn’t have much space to feel, or heal for that matter.
Sacred Space
Six days after Grant died - family, a couple friends and I hiked to the crash site. The place of his final moments on earth. The last place he touched as a living person before the impact of that touch changed him from a physically alive living person to a physically dead living person. The site is in the middle of nowhere.
The 2nd Year Is Harder
Grant,
In 2 days it will be your birthday. You’d be 40, but you’re dead, so you won’t be. You stopped aging at 38. You managed to immortalize yourself in your youthfulness, before your age really started to show, before you were affected by all the life lessons and joys of growing older. Congratulations.
The Last Picture
Grant had been dead for almost 3 months.
I took the boys to Cornbelly’s. It’s a fall festival with all sorts of fun turn-of-the-season games including a corn maze. It was nearly Halloween. It was the first ‘fun’ thing I’d taken the boys to do on my own.
2nd Dead Anniversary
Tomorrow is my second wedding anniversary without Grant. What does that make tomorrow for me? The 2nd dead Anniversary? The first one was too soon, only 2 months after he died. I was in a complete haze of life still. We had planned to go to Hawaii that year during our anniversary. Hawaii is where we got married. We’d already paid for our rental house, so I went anyway with my boys.
