Dear Dad,
Today I was dusting rather compulsively, albeit quickly, and I accidentally knocked down a folder on my bookshelf. Out fell cards, and pictures, and pages upon pages of memories people had shared with us over the first few days after your passing. Though I have not much time to clean the house before Nathan's friends and moms arrive, I took a few moments to read, and now, a few moments to write to you.
I was so angry immediately following your death that I didn't fully appreciate your career, or the impact you made on this region and the world during your time here on Earth. I felt that you had chosen to spend the precious time that you had with your career instead of with us. Now that I look back, I realize that you did spend time with us if we needed you. No, we did not get the chance to talk about your life, your wishes, your hopes, your prayers. We didn't get the chance for you to spend some good days out on the boat that summer, watching Emma jump off the side, watching Natalie and Noah take their first boat rides with their Bubba. It wasn't your fault, though, that we didn't get these moments - it was your stupid cancer's fault.
I remember how upset I was that you didn't want to talk, and now I am sorry that I was ever upset with you about it. I always realized that you were in pain but I couldn't understand how the emotions involved with what you were going through just wouldn't come out. I was upset that you couldn't or wouldn't talk about it.
I think I know now, Dad.
Looking back, I think you knew where we were headed, as a family...down the road of loss, and misery, and sadness, and grey days that don't end. You probably could not bear to think about it, much less talk about it. Whereas I was saying to the rest of us, "we can do this...we'll have the rest of our lives to put ourselves back together, we just have to help Dad now and worry about ourselves later"...you remembered how hard that is.
I was only 12 when we lost mom...and when we lost Grandpa and Grandma and Uncle Mike in those few years before her, they weren't my parents and my brother. Only you knew our road ahead - young parents, with no parents of our own to guide us, or love us, or share these memories of parenthood with us, and no time to even cry (without freaking out the children), or stay in bed for months, or go crazy and sell everything and travel the world like nomads until we find our joy again. We have other people to be responsible to now, others to love while we still carry this heavy, miserable grey load around day after day.
It is horrible, and you knew it would be. I didn't know what this would feel like - the loss, the memories, the missing parts of myself (you and Mom), and watching my children grow up without you. How much I would love to tell you about Emma! How she loves her family - your brothers, your sisters-in-law, your nephews, your niece...how she counts on them and thinks of them and they make her feel safe and proud of herself. I wish I could talk to Mom about my little middle child - the shining star who sparkles and then just as easily explodes...so much emotion and creativity and intelligence in that skinny little body. And Nathan...he is a boy you could really love - he's funny and and smart, and a joy to be around
You know the burden this is...the joy that my children loved you is now my misery that they miss you, my worries that the loss of you is too hard for them, my concern that I won't be able to keep it all together well enough so that I can raise them properly during these precious years.
And believe me, I am now probably happy that I didn't know HOW MUCH sadness was coming my way. It's a different kind of loss, and grieving, when you are 36, with no parents, with young children of your own. It's not at all fun.
So, Dad, it's ok that we didn't talk about it.
Love,
Your daughter always,
Pam
2/3/10
1/29/10
A big day for an introvert
This was a huge day for an introverted mother:
- 8:45am -Take kids to school, remember "Tacky Day" for Nathan, drop off cleaned toys for preschool
- 9:00am - 10am -clean house, including guinea pig cages (a friend came to school all allergic and so I volunteered to take her guinea pig until she found a new home for it. So I was cleaning a cage of a guinea pig that wasn't even mine...)
- 10am - Drop off deposit for Nathan's new school next year
- 10:10am - Return library books
- 10:15am - 10:55am - Drive to the mall, buy gift certificate for Emma's teacher who is going on maternity leave
- 10: 55am - 11:25am - Emma's teacher's baby shower. The teacher loved the scrapbook, with baby and big kid pictures, notes from all the kids, pieces of advice for parents, etc. that I worked on last week
- 11:25am - Emma's off to a playdate
- 11:40am - 11:55am - Pick up Nathan from school,
- 12:05pm - Pick up Katie from the bus stop (half day)
- 12:10pm - Feed kids
- 12: 45pm - Answer phone, it's Katie's friend. Katie's having a playdate.
- 1pm - Collect Katie's friend
- 1pm - 3pm - Supervise playdate, while cleaning toys for preschool and monitoring dumb dog
- 3:10pm - Drop off Katie at Julie's house for "movie Fridays"
- 3:20pm - 4:30pm -Pick up Emma
- 5: 35pm - 8:05pm - Take Nathan to new friend's movie watching party
- 8:05pm - 8:35pm - Leave, drive to pick up Katie
- 8: 54pm - Write this
- 9pm - Put kids to bed
1/25/10
Today by the numbers
Minutes spent driving family members: 243 minutes
Piles of dog waste picked up in the yard: 49
Kisses for a 4 year old: 100
Hugs for same 4 year old: 20
Times same 4 year old was lovingly thrown onto the bed: 12
Times I said, "OFF, HOPE!" - unable to count that high
Hours I spent working on a teacher gift today: 3
Exercise, in minutes: zero
Piles of dog waste picked up in the yard: 49
Kisses for a 4 year old: 100
Hugs for same 4 year old: 20
Times same 4 year old was lovingly thrown onto the bed: 12
Times I said, "OFF, HOPE!" - unable to count that high
Hours I spent working on a teacher gift today: 3
Exercise, in minutes: zero
Happy thoughts
How wonderful it is to have my sister situated so conveniently close by, here in grey old Michigan.
I remember dreaming about our future lives, and telling her, 10 years ago when she was packing up to move to California, to find a good place for us to live. It was always my dream to have all of my loved ones right down the street from me...and I have been willing to make that dream a reality, as much as I could. That's why we settled here, despite my strong desire to live somewhere else. We wanted them to know their grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins.
I thought we would be relocating, me somewhere with my sister to follow, or the other way around...and then came Emma and so we settled here. At that time I never thought I would be lucky enough that Julie would move back to Michigan with her family in tow.
I love being part of their lives. I love that I have to occasionally monitor fights between Natalie and Nathan. It means that the novelty of each other's presence is gone, now they are growing up together and don't always want to share. I love impromptu family dinners.
I remember dreaming about our future lives, and telling her, 10 years ago when she was packing up to move to California, to find a good place for us to live. It was always my dream to have all of my loved ones right down the street from me...and I have been willing to make that dream a reality, as much as I could. That's why we settled here, despite my strong desire to live somewhere else. We wanted them to know their grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins.
I thought we would be relocating, me somewhere with my sister to follow, or the other way around...and then came Emma and so we settled here. At that time I never thought I would be lucky enough that Julie would move back to Michigan with her family in tow.
I love being part of their lives. I love that I have to occasionally monitor fights between Natalie and Nathan. It means that the novelty of each other's presence is gone, now they are growing up together and don't always want to share. I love impromptu family dinners.
1/23/10
New Friends
Tonight I went on the greatest walk, with a new(ish) friend...and what fun! She knows the neighborhoods even better than I do, having grown up around here, and had lots of good tips and pointers. A cut-through here, pre-school advice there, where they took their daughter skiing, etc.
I am positive that walking with friends is one of my favorite activities. The time just flies by, I learn so much, we spend so much time laughing. Now if only I could get my 3-day friends to start walking in the middle of winter like this wonderful new(ish) friend...
AND...I think I have another new friend in the making - a fellow parent emailed to see if anyone wanted to start a girl scout troop for Katie's grade. I have spent a lot of time trying to find a co-leader, and here she has been all along! Our daughters were never in the same class, so we never crossed paths the right way until this week. I've seen her around plenty, though...she's one of the handful of moms who always volunteer at grade-wide events. I can pretty safely say, with all the time we are going to be spending together, I either have a friend-in-the-making, or an enemy-in-the-making (not that I would ever mind her, she may just find me a little annoying after awhile).
I am positive that walking with friends is one of my favorite activities. The time just flies by, I learn so much, we spend so much time laughing. Now if only I could get my 3-day friends to start walking in the middle of winter like this wonderful new(ish) friend...
AND...I think I have another new friend in the making - a fellow parent emailed to see if anyone wanted to start a girl scout troop for Katie's grade. I have spent a lot of time trying to find a co-leader, and here she has been all along! Our daughters were never in the same class, so we never crossed paths the right way until this week. I've seen her around plenty, though...she's one of the handful of moms who always volunteer at grade-wide events. I can pretty safely say, with all the time we are going to be spending together, I either have a friend-in-the-making, or an enemy-in-the-making (not that I would ever mind her, she may just find me a little annoying after awhile).
1/13/10
Resolving
I'm resolving to spend less time being sad. So, I'm trying my best to catch up on some of my emails, my procrastinations, my responsibilities, and my pictures.
As such, I thought I would share a picture which is making me laugh today - Hope tried to get into the garbage, and look what happened to her (notice wagging tail):
It didn't stop her from trying to get snacks from Noah's high chair/lunch:
And now, off to my Trip of the Day: the Zoo. (Yesterday's Trip of the Day was sledding...twice! Once, with Nathan, and then again later with the girls and Nathan.)
As such, I thought I would share a picture which is making me laugh today - Hope tried to get into the garbage, and look what happened to her (notice wagging tail):
It didn't stop her from trying to get snacks from Noah's high chair/lunch:
And now, off to my Trip of the Day: the Zoo. (Yesterday's Trip of the Day was sledding...twice! Once, with Nathan, and then again later with the girls and Nathan.)
1/3/10
A love story
My sisters and I have spent some time over the past few days reading love letters that my parents wrote to each other throughout the years of their marriage. Most of these letter were written when my dad was away for Basic Training as an Army Reservist in the early 70s. It's uncanny, because these are different people (my mom and dad), and a different time (the 70s), but the same situations that I'm living or have lived. In one letter my young mom is sorry for being unhappy on a phone call with my dad, after he had to leave things a mess to get to basic training. How many times have I apologized been in that situation, making a big fuss with Bill over something, but mostly because I missed him? In one letter, my dad is pining away for his young wife with the intensity of young love that I remember so well as a 23 or 24 year old, when a love like that was the whole world, or all I wanted from it.
It just all makes me wonder...how much of who you are is determined already by your own biology? Here are my knees, showing up in the 1940s under my grandmother's dress. Here's my hair color, and of course, though you can't see it, here's my mutation, too. Here's my mood swings, showing up in letters before I was even born. Here's the same way I love, and argue, and the things that I worry about. Though I know so much of this is probably universal...I just recognize it so much in my Dad's prose, or my Mom's.
It's been enlightening, reading their letters, and hearing them talk once again. I see my Dad's handwriting being formed, hear his signature phrases and my Mom's as well. It's kind of nice, but I'm also a little afraid to really pour myself into those boxes and those letters. It makes me miss them and makes me feel sorry for what they lost. How sad to love so hard and then to lose your young wife! And then also, how sad to miss the opportunity to spend time with these guys, the 2nd generation of your love:
I know they were lucky to have found that love at all, and to have been that happy. I know they are still with us in a way. I also know that at least one of these grandchildren would rather have those grandparents on this earth with her - and I have a feeling that the other 5 will feel that way someday, too.
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