So You're A Single Mom Now

One of the biggest differences between young and old widows is the itty bitty kids. Young widows often have young children. My daughter was twenty-two months old when her father died, and my son was on the way.

Grieving as a parent is a terrible, difficult thing fraught with question after question. Should I cry in front of Aubrey? How do I talk about his death with her? How do I find time to cry and grieve on my own? What happens when I'm feeling positive and in a moving-on space, and she is mourning rob and wants to talk about her sadness with me? And when my son was born, was I an adequate parent? Or did I leave him emotionally neglected by my own sadness and loneliness?

Happy Thanksgiving, Rob

Happy Thanksgiving, Rob, wherever you are. I am thankful that you and I connected in this life and that we've many lives to meet in again. Thank you for loving me as you did. I will never forget you. I love you.

(I just noticed that in this picture, Rob's reflection shows in the window behind him. Just his earlobe -- which I liked to flick back and forth, to tickle him.)

Depression and Wallowing ... it comes with the territory

Grieving requires lots of soul-searching and introspection. Truly, it's a solo project. You can go to support groups and talk with friends and lean on family members, but the tough stuff -- the work that bleeds out your eyes and makes you want to throw up -- has to be done by yourself.

So, you could say that grieving is fairly selfish in nature. Not in a bad way, you understand -- it's just something that can't be one when others are around. Usually.

Experiences You'd Never Wish On Anyone

Here's a sample of one of my section abstracts for my proposal:

The next section holds heart-wrenching details of nasty decisions that have to be made -- ones that require a lit cigarette in your shaky hand, though you don't light one because you've quit.

I'm in awe of how the human brain decides to record memories. How are they filed? is it a double-entry system? How do you access them? Why can they randomly jump out at you when you least expect it?

"Do You Remember?" skims my sub-consciousness for memories of the grave site service, and I wonder why I only remember things in slivers -- not whole memories.

Like, I barely remember twenty-two month old Aubrey standing next to me at the grave and a soldier handing me an American flag. But I especially recall that for the rest of the year, every time she'd see one, she'd say, "Look Mommy. A flag for Daddy!" and I would tear up and hold my breath until my throat unseized.

Making decisions is excruciating for a grieving person. "The Funeral Pyre That Never Happened" is the story of my decision to respect Rob's mom's wishes to bury Rob, instead of following Rob's wishes for cremation. It's the story of my decisions to not look at his body, what to bury his body in and what casket to buy.

Another decision I make in those first days is not to view the pictures my family and friends take of the Explorer and the crash site and the marker they left there. I almost wait a year before viewing them. It takes a long time to feel ready. When I do, I expect tears, but instead, only cold analysis shows up. i contemplate the philosophy of guilt and the choices I have right now in this place -- a choice to live and to find purpose.

I think the piece de la resistance for tasks you'd never wish on anybody is in "Where's Daddy?" where I have to tell my daughter that her father is never coming home again. That it's not because he doesn't want to, it's because he can't. That he's far, far away, but that he loves her and always will.

RobDaddy

This last photo was taken about a month before he died.

"Going Back" Abstract

One of the most confusing aspects of integrating your grief, or as some delude themseves into believing: "getting over it," is how to do it with the least amount of trauma to your family or new relationships.

When I first started talking on the phone with Paul, at the beginnning of our relationship, I told him that Rob's family would always be weaved into our lives: weekly phone calls, yearly visits, pictures on the wall -- that sort of thing.

"I know you had a history before I came along -- I did to," he says. He always makes sure that Rob is not forgotten and that he doesn't replace Rob -- only adds to the love we have for the children.

Despite this assurance I always wonder if my remembering rob aloud or having a day where I'm pensive and miss him causes hurt feeling for Paul. Is it possible, perhaps, that Paul feels badly when I talk about Rob even though he says differently?

This affects how I grieve and -- truthfully -- stunts my process. How can I let go and feel sad when Paul is there feeling second fiddle, or trying to make me feel better? And so for a long time I felt shame for grieving.

The writing of this book was a highway of mixed emotions -- swerving around each other, passing on the right and unexpected traffic jams.

My essay, "Going Back," addresses the fears of messing with your new partner's heart while you're still grieving your old one.

Do You Remember?

I’ve been saving up topics and memories for essay starts for a couple of days now. I started collecting them on a scrap of paper smaller than a playing card. It became my bookmark, and soon enough it had tiny words squeezed onto every available white space, front and back.

Memories from random pockets of my sub-conscious floated to the surface. I’m surprised by these long forgotten snippets of a time I thought I’d never forget – but actually wanted to. Like, that Rob’s Uncle Louie spoke at the funeral and cried at the podium and talked about taking Rob to McDonald’s every week and watching him eat French fries with his ketchup; and that the priest that said the funeral mass was also the priest that married us six months earlier. (We got married in 1997 in Colorado where we were stationed, but had the Catholic ceremony in 2000 in Massachusetts so his family could be present.)

Or the limosine ride to the gravesite after the funeral.

I sat in the back seat with two people on either side of me. I don’t even remember who now. It must have been Gerry and Lena.

The leather was a luscious creamy color that reminded me of homemade organic vanilla ice cream. I stared at the back of the front seat thinking, This would be where the driver’s picture would be, if this were a cab.

My view through the windshield was the hearse in front of us. The back door hadn’t been closed yet and the cherry wood of the casket blared out, There’s a body in here. Rob’s body. I knew it wasn’t him in there. He’d gone somewhere else, but the rest of him – the part he wasn’t using anymore – was in there.

My uncle from North Carolina (the only family member from my side that was able to attend) slid in the front seat next to the chauffeur. His navy suit collar met the skin below his graying red hair. His shoulders suggested that his hands lay in his lap without clenching and his head was bowed. And then he cried.

He gasped and sobbed and his shoulders moved up and down and I cringed. He was crying and I was not. He didn’t even know the people in the limo and his vulnerability leaked out along with his tears. He didn’t even know Rob, save the one time Aubrey, Rob and I visited him. I was embarrassed for him.

But later I remember that I once went to a memorial service for a long time friend of Rob’s. I cried there. I didn’t know anybody there and I’d never met Beth. But I knew the people that loved her. I knew Rob and Chris and Susie and Stacey. And I knew that they were in pain and that hurt me, so I cried. My uncle was doing the same. He didn’t know anybody there except me, and he loved me and I was hurting, and so he cried.

At the military funeral that we had for Rob, the soldiers in Class A’s stood at attention and Taps was played not by a bugler at the site, but on a black boombox placed conspicuously and irreverently on a nearby headstone. Tacky, but moving nonetheless. That was the part of the service I cried at.

At the end two soldiers in white gloves folded the flag with precision movements. One of them walked it up to me and placed the flag in my upturned hands. He saluted me. Through my tears I was stymied. Being an army veteran myself, I knew that soldiers didn’t salute other soldiers out of uniform. And civilians didn’t salute at all.

In fact, it was kind-of a joke to the soldiers I buddied with at my MOS training. Whenever we saw civilians saluting to each other, on movies or something, we’d roll our eyes and shake our heads.

So I’m out of uniform, not a soldier anymore anyway, and I’m being saluted to. What do I do? I salute back. It seemed the expected thing to do and it felt right. I always liked saluting -- showing someone respect and that you honored them – like taking your hat off when you entered a building. It just felt right.

And then after the services, the gathering at our house. The only piece I remember of that time was walking around the house and coming up past the open garage door. It was packed full of people with red-rimmed eyes telling stories and smoking. I made eye contact with Danny Almeda, a neighbor friend of ours – one who’d grown up with Rob and played in the forest and rode bikes together – and Joe Filipe, Rob’s cousin that owned a night club. I so wanted to be in there and to light up a Marlboro Red from a hard pack, but I’d quit smoking Thursday. The day Rob died. I was pregnant now. So I walked on past, lifting my chin at them. They nodded in response, and one raised his cigarette, like his own version of a salute.

You’d think I’d remember huge chunks of this surreal day in my life, but no. Only these. Sometimes I wish I remembered more, wished that I’d written it down at the end of each day to preserve it forever. I never thought I’d have to. Who would’ve thought I’d forget something so horrific? But other times I remind myself that I know enough.

I remember as much as I am supposed to.