Now What

It's been two weeks since Phil died and I am only beginning to have time to "be" with my feelings.  As I said before, prior to Phil going into hospice care my house served as Ground Zero and I have had friends and family in my home until just a few days ago.  Include the visits from wonderful and supportive friends and family who flew and drove in for the memorial, the Thanksgiving holiday and the numerous details I must now attend to and you may begin to understand the position I find myself in trying to find time and space to grieve.  Unexpectedly, even my children are cramping my space to grieve.  Their grief looks so much different than mine and tends to manifest itself in the form of irritability and what I like to call "feistiness".  When I say that to them, we all know what I mean and they know they better knock it off or heads are gonna roll (or Nintendo DS's are gonna be confiscated, more likely).


By way of example,things with the kids and I have gone something like this lately.  It's been a long day for all of us, we're tired and worn out from just making it through another day without Daddy (even though I'm the only one cognizant of this little FACT) and patience with one another and the vicissitudes of life has thinned to almost nothing.  (You might guess by now that it is nearing the dinner hour.)  Chances are good that there may be a somewhat questionable casserole-type dish in the offering tonight, provided by a very well meaning soul who has tried hard to help us with our meals.  However, at this point, although very grateful, we are also very much over white rice, cream of mushroom soup and limp vegetables.  These have never been things I could get my kids to eat anyway so they don't go down any easier when they are grieving.  (Father God, forgive me for throwing away so much food when there are starving children in Africa...)  Anyway, the kids start picking at dinner, get more and more hungry and agitated, ask for short order cooked meals, start taking out their frustrations on me, each other, the world and next thing you know they are screaming at each other "I HATE YOU AND NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN!"  That's gonna be a tough one since they share a bedroom and bunk beds.  


By this time I am missing Phil a whole lot and my grief has picked a fine time to show up.  As the tears come to my eyes my son Bennett looks at me and tells me I cry too much.  He asks me why I am sad still, why I am sad all the time.  What's wrong with me?  When I ask him if he is sad he says, "No, I'm pretty much over Dad now.  I put it behind me."  Well, thankfully I have a right mind and can see through his juvenile attempts to escape his grief but for a split second I want to wring his neck and shake some sense into him, scream back at him "I HATE YOU AND NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN!  HOW DARE YOU!!!"  But somehow, through the grace of God, cooler minds prevail and I say, "OK bud."  By now Olivia has stormed off to her room to have a power pout and a good cry.  She at least will now go write down about 15 pet names for Daddy in her journal and make a list of all the things Phil did/didn't get to do before he died.  My kids surprise me, they are not performing as I thought they would.  I thought for sure my son, the intensely verbal one would talk his way through his grief and Olivia my shy one would clam up.  Just the opposite.  Never ASS-ume.


To say that I was happy that school started yesterday is to put it mildly.  I needed to return to the routine badly.  We all did.  At least to have some forced time and space created so I can just sit still and do nothing if I want to.  Of course that hasn't happened but at least the potential is there if I ever want to pull the trigger on it.  I can choose to be lazy if I want to.  To go back to bed if I feel like it.  To do absolutely nothing.  But surely you must realize that is a joke.  I suppose there will be a very short window for doing that but I happen to have a little book full of things I need to do.  Once the death certificates come I will be a busy woman getting my new life in order.  Until then, I will enjoy this little cushion of time being quiet and resting and enjoying the quiet while my kids are at school and there is space just for me.


I heard that someone recently was asking "What now?" about me.  Really??  I can't believe the answer to that question isn't painfully obvious.  I have two young children to guide through a tremendous burden of grief and loss. I have to figure out how to navigate my own grief which is so different than theirs and will likely do so in a sort of lonely isolation because of how different my relationship to Phil was from theirs.  And I will spend the rest of my life raising them to take as much good from him as I can, largely on my own and yet with the help of my family and friends and those who loved Phil.  


That's is what's next.