I am changing the things I cannot accept."

My daughter recently sent me a TikTok.  It was a video with music and text across the top that read:  "In another world my mother does not become a mother.  She doesn't meet my dad or at the very least, she never falls in love with him.  Instead she goes to college, pursues her dreams, travels the world.  Taking photos in France and trying new food in Tokyo.  She never had to wonder about the "What if's" in life, because she is too busy living it.  In another world she finally chooses what's best for her and not others.  In another world I do not exist, but my mother gets to live, not just survive."

You have no idea how profoundly beautiful and gut wrenching that was to receive.  I cried and messaged her and said that I promised I would get myself to France and her to Amsterdam.  She messaged back immediately and asked if I was a mind reader because she was literally looking up plane tickets in that moment after sending me the TikTok.

Right then and there we planned the trip and she bought the tickets.  

We leave in 5 days.

I don't have disposable income in a way that my kids will be good for life.  I decided to put a tremendous amount of trust into my husband and the system - and I became a stay at home mom.  I didn't pay into social security.  I didn't have a company retirement.  After years of abuse from a man whose favorite past time was abusing himself and others -I chose to leave a marriage that not only wasn't beneficial for myself and my children, but was actively harming us.  In choosing to leave that marriage, he would ensure that I would pay for that decision forever.  Upon his death he left us nothing but his debt.  His mother got everything else.

She would later see to it that my children would have something to get by on later in life...  but me...  my sacrifice, my suffering, my trauma...  well -that was my payment, my reward, and it was clear that he would win.  In the end -he would win and I would spend the rest of my life regretting having trusted him and believing in the system.  I should mention that I was afforded 30% of his retirement in the divorce...  but that became null when he died and did not himself receive a retirement.

My daughter took this personal.  She knows that I am a human being with wants and dreams -and that I did give those up for a life of devotion to a family.  While I would never wish to live a life any different than however I get to be a mother to my 4 children, I do often wonder what one would look like where I get to have it all.  My children. Love.  Joy.  Travel.  Rest.  Peace.  One where I get to be a girl happy to be alive.

I used to believe in God.  I used to put value in Faith.  The world was hard and Faith was our flashlight in dark times.  As I began to leave my marriage of oppression, I also began to question my faith.  If God is all knowing and all powerful and all good -then why does he look on as bad things happen?

If God looks on because we are given free will, then does that free will extend to the rape victim or the murder victim?  Did they have the freedom to choose to not be victims?  If God can witness 6 million Jews die or a 4 year old be raped and chalk it up to free will or lay blame on the devil -then why am I bearing witness to a profound love to such an entity.

If suffering is noble and holy then we will look on as others suffer and we will tell ourselves that they will receive their reward in heaven...  but we never ask why is it an either or?  Why can't we receive it in both if God is all knowing and all powerful and all good?

Why did 6 million Jews suffer at the hands of a brutal dictator and monsters dressed as men with weapons built to rob humans of life and dignity while others get to grift and live a life of luxury and glutton?

Because if only one scenario can be true then here are our options:  There is an afterlife and those who suffered live a life of glory OR there isn't an afterlife and all they will have ever known is a life of suffering and horror while people watched on and told them "maybe next time"

I don't know how long I have left in this lifetime, but I no longer navigate it through the lens of blind faith.  I now see every individual as a human with dreams.  I now see every life as precious and fleeting, because I choose the scenario where there is only the one option...  The current life with no afterlife.

When I meet someone I think to myself...  today may be the only day they ever have to experience love and peace and joy -and I'm going to do my best to be those things for them.

I fight for justice and equality now.  I see the disgusting selfishness in greed and power.  I lack the ability to have any faith or belief in a hierarchy that puts any one life above that of another.

I no longer think I'll get my reward and I no longer think life will balance the scales.

My riches.  My peace. My love.  My joy.  My rest.  I find all of it in my children.  I need faith in nothing else.

I may have lost my faith in God, but I have never lost Hope.

My love for my children...  that is my Hope.  That is what makes sense.

Next week I will be traveling -and not solo.  Not as a young woman or girl.  Not as a married woman.  I will be traveling as a divorced mother who gave up her future for every moment she could spend loving her children.  I can't think of a scenario with more love than that one -and if God is real then he is not all knowing and all powerful, but I will believe you if you say he is all loving, because that's the only God I'm willing to follow...

because I choose the scenario where there is only the one option...  The current life with no afterlife.

To quote Angela Davis:  "I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change.  I am changing the things I cannot accept."

Build It Better.

 

There's a song that exists. 

"Build it Better."

"You can still see where the water was.
In a line at the top of the chimney bricks
Sometimes, something so broken can never be fixed.
So we saved a few things that were spared
And brought it to the ground
Cause you always build it better the second time around."

Sometimes I get to hear, from others, that I'm lucky that I don't have to deal with the issues that derive from divorce.  No custody sharing.  No parental disputing.  No "it's my holiday" fighting... 

No fighting.

And it's true. 

I guess it's luck.

You see...  There's this thing that happens though, when you bury someone that you built a life with.  There's this thing that happens...  and it's not luck. 

Absolutely everything reverts.

Dear Ken,

Guess what.  I did it.  Maybe you know that.  Maybe you don't.

I used to daydream, looking out into that vast blue sea, the kids were in the sand...  running...  laughing...  swimming, but I know you know that.  It's all I could ever bring myself to talk about.  Maybe that's when you realized I was simple...  or maybe that I wasn't.

But you died and I didn't.  There was no survivor's guilt, just total disbelief and complete awareness,  So I did it.  I bought the dream.  As much as your death was a disbelief, was as much as the fact that my dream was for sale.

There it was...  on that highway we took from our camping trip.  We could have never known, in that moment, that I would be here...  and you...   There.

Sometimes I sit and look out at the sea and I wonder about where you might be. 

They are getting so big and the noise in my head is so loud.  The conversations we shared regarding our first born behind the wheel of a car.

Guess what.  Our first born is behind the wheel of a car; and it is exactly as we feared it would be.

Chloe...  Chloe is every single bit as talented as we thought she might be and Abigail is every bit the IQ we suspected.

George is quickly becoming the boy we feared we'd never get to see.  He asked, just the other day, about what he might look like with a mustache...  and he loves the weather.  All of it.

You always wanted to show off your home in Florida to them.  I'm sorry.  You know what though, they sleep in those bunk beds you bought them.  And they know that you had them in mind when you picked them out.

We discussed colleges and what they might look like as they grew older.  It's better than the picture I had in my head and I wonder if you ever get to see them.

Mitchell is still mischievous and sometimes he gets bullied.  He's still so tiny.

I'm still raising them on my own.  That's nothing new.  The fact that they don't have you....

I revert back to our conversations every time I refused to move.  To the conversation of softening the blow for the divorce.  Which did not soften the blow for death.  Not for any of us.

Maybe you'll get another letter after college.  Or a wedding.  Or maybe not another ever again.

Just know this: 

Everything reverts.

When you spend 15 years building a life with someone...  life after death reverts.

Sometimes they miss you.  Sometimes they get a little lost.  Sometimes they get angry.  Sometimes they don't sleep.

For it was never a lack of love...  only a lack of keep.



"I drove past the place where we used to live.
Where you said you never wanted kids.
Sometimes something so broken can never be fixed.
I'm sleeping more and eating again.
I'm starting over like a factory town.
And you always build it better the second time around.

You always build it better the second time around."

The Remaking of Life

I've tried updating this blog several times now.  I always have these great epiphanies when running and then I sit to type... and I don't want to type.

Sometimes it's because I know the thoughts aren't allowed.  It's not always okay to say what's on our mind.  I've struggled with that my entire life.  Biting my tongue.  In this instance, it's not so hard... except sometimes it is.

We are still trying to figure out how to navigate this...  and by we, I mean me.

It seems so long ago and yet it doesn't all at once.  Sometimes I'm still really angry.  Like the time I was driving home from work.  It was late.  The roads were empty and my van was climbing this massive hill lined with southern trees and all I could think was:  How the Hell did I end up here?!  Oh, I know...  you brought me here...

and then you left us here...

and then...  you left us here.

And I get mad.  I get mad because I'm surrounded by a culture that isn't mine and people I barely know, in a place that constantly seems foreign and the distance has created a distance in the friendships formed before we ended up here.  And I think about that...  And I get mad.

And then I park my car, walk into my home, and I see Dale talking quietly to Mitch about cars, or engineering, or furniture...  and I think...  How could I not be here.  How was this not always our life.  And the kids all laugh, or they don't listen, and they eat, or they forget to feed the dogs, and they do homework, or they don't.  And we go on living.  Like it never happened.  Like everything is as it was.
As it should be.

And then I tuck them in.  And sometimes they cry.  And sometimes they don't.  And I worry both times.  Sometimes they talk about him.  Sometimes they don't.  And again, I worry both of those times.

I recently updated my facebook status saying:  I'm not a single mother.

I am an only parent.

Even I can't wrap my head around the magnitude of that.

I'm torn between forgetting to remember...  and forcing the remembering.  I'm explaining that the Uniform that the Army brought to our house may smell like Daddy, but I promise you, he's still wearing the one we buried him in.

Now look at your 7 year old and say that.

How in the world do those words even manage to form.  And how can his beautiful tiny little head make sense of that.

Now when I go to work, the night before, my Mickey begs me not to.  BEGS.

I'm torn between a profession I love and Children I love more.  At a time when they need me more than they ever will...  coupled with a tragedy that I don't know how to normalize.

I've not buried a parent.  How can I help them cope with burying theirs.

So we go to specialists and we make jokes and we laugh or we cry...  or we get mad...  or sometimes...  sometimes we just exist...  as if it never happened.  full well knowing that it did... and questioning reality.

One thing is certain:  Anne Roiphe was right...

"Grief is in two parts.  The first is loss.  The second is the remaking of life."

God is Very Near

I posted on Facebook that I absolutely could put into words my feelings, in regards to the funeral of the father of my four beautiful, brilliant, capable children, but that I wouldn't.  I meant that.  Some things don't need to be said or written.  Some things just need to be felt.

We returned home from Ohio, after what seemed like the quickest, yet somehow slowest, trip of a lifetime.On the way home my sweet George looked up at me and said: "Mommy, I'm still sad."

I responded with the obvious:  "Of course you are."

I went on to explain to him how he will always be sad.  How some pain just never goes away and during that explanation all I could think was...  Some pain wasn't meant to be carried for so long.  We lose our parents when we are older, because the pain is so great and the loss is so significant, that it is not intended to be carried by such a tiny heart for such a length of time.

I received many thanks during the funeral, for bringing my children.  It was a sweet gesture on the part of the guests, to thank me, but all I could think was...  15 years.

And that's where the words stop.

There are moments where I try to ease the blow.  Where I know that God's intentions of placing so many miles between us might reduce the pain for my littles.  Where they won't miss waking up to him each and every morning, but then reality hits.

The pain of losing him is about losing him.  It's about his absence, not in this house, not in this city, not even in this state.  The loss is about the loss of him in it's entirety.  The loss of what could've been far more than what was.

Nothing points that out in clearer detail than that of a folder given to you from the United States Army that reads: Essential papers for families
of Fallen Service Members, and school paperwork that requests the name and address of the parents of the child.... and having to write the word:  Deceased. (4 times)

It's not about what we took for granted or missed out on.  We could have (and often times did during our 15 years) take advantage of every moment together.  We could have traveled the world.  Never spent one moment apart.  It wouldn't matter.  The pain felt is not about what was.  It is about what will never be.

My children had to return home from their father's funeral on Sunday...  and start their first day of school on Monday.  It's now Tuesday...  and I must return to work.

I will tell you that Ken was buried with honor and that he would be proud of his Army.  My children witnessed a beautiful funeral service for the man that gave them life.  And I will tell you that I can see the emptiness in them...  and it's beyond painful.

All I know to tell them is this:

(unknown author)
"Those who die, go no further from us than God...And God is very near."

Pictures by Julanne Kowalski)

you bear it. That is all

I started this blog from my couch.  Most of it's posts were from my porch or patio or couch, with a cup of coffee in my hand.  Today I'm sitting in an oversized chair, with a glass of red wine. 

I don't know if I became a different person first or if my life's circumstances changed me. 

For the record...  I still drink coffee.

If you just stumbled upon this blog, you'd only see a few posts.  There used to be several.  Years worth actually.  But I divorced and became a full time student and working mom. 

Many people would say that was of my own choosing.  Technically, they'd be correct.

I loved my family.  I loved my role as mom.  I still do.

My girls used to have pigtails and rosy cheeks.  My boys wanted held and played with wooden blocks.

Those days are long gone.

My girls are teenagers now, my boys full on boys.  My teenagers smell like teenagers and fight like cats and dogs.  My boys wrestle and yell and throw balls in the house.

Divorce was hard.  I spent 15 years married to one man.  I spent 15 years married to the Army.  And no one knows how to remind you that you are no longer an army wife like that of the army wives.

I'll probably catch hell for that.  I'll probably catch hell for all of this.  Someone is always disappointed in a choice.  Disagrees with a decision.   Knows the better answer.  Thinks private matters should be kept private.  (For the record, so do I, but I've never shy-ed away from telling my story.  I can't help but feel like if it helps just one person feel they aren't alone, then my battle wasn't for nothing)  So I share my battles.  My thoughts.  My life.  My feelings.

I remember when my grandfather died.  I remember what it felt like to not get to attend the funeral.  To have no one able to take you to the airport.  To not be able to drive because if you missed class you'd be kicked out of the program.  To have no one willing to watch your children.

I remember getting not one call of condolence.  Not one meal brought.  My sweet Chloe picked me a flower and made me a card.  I came home from a long shift on the ambulance, poured a glass of wine, and toasted my grandfather for all that he was and all that he raised me to be.  I finally got to visit his grave this spring.

I remember when I was a stay at home mom, we did meal trains for people, helped clean their homes, did their laundry, took their kids out to play.

But I belonged to no one any longer.  No family here, no longer a member of the military family, it was just me...  and my babies.  That was a hard lesson learned.

I had no idea, at the time, what it was preparing me for.

Saturday morning my phone rang and by Wednesday the nightmare had become a reality.

After nearly 17 years together, 15 of those married, we had the terrible conversation with our children of the dissolution of our marriage.  It's one thing to have to have this life altering conversation with babies.  It's another to have to look at the children the two of you shared and have to tell them that the man they call daddy has passed away.  And to have to do it alone.

Those years we shared.  Those memories.  Those don't dissolve when the marriage does.

I don't know what I am or am not allowed to feel.  I have no idea how to navigate this.  Here I sit, me a glass of red wine, the computer Ken bought me, and a house full of children that have never been more lost.

I may not feel like cooking dinner, doing laundry, or playing a board game, but I now know I can.  And I know I have to.  I now know my children won't break during this time if they are made to "chip in".  The realization that I now have that sole responsibility (and honor) of tucking them in at night, makes it just a little more difficult to breathe.

After receiving the news I rushed to Walgreens to print off some pictures of the kids with their daddy.  Individual shots of each in a frame to give to them when I broke the news of the death of their father to them.  As I drove down the driveway I had to slap my cheeks and say "Get your shit together woman"!!

This one hurt.

Abby said:  "Mommy, my brain keeps forgetting he's gone. And I hate that I'm the one that has to remind it that he is."

My God... she's just a kid.

This Saturday I will say my final goodbyes to many things and I will watch as my children are made to lay their father to rest...  and there isn't enough wine on the planet for that.

I'm now answering questions about things I thought I had time to prepare for and we are remembering joyous times we had been too busy to recall.  We are doing our best to keep him alive through memory, and picture, and love... and luckily we have a little book, produced from a blog, that documents the many years we shared.  I'd like to think he'd be proud.

As Cassandra Clare said:

“You endure what is unbearable, and you bear it. That is all.”