Chasing My Blessings

I'm so tired. I'm so tired of the grief. The stress. The longing. The ache. The lonliness. I'm tired of watching my kids cry and plead for thier father. I'm so tired of being a single mother. A widowed mother. I'm tired of not knowing if I will ever see the light again. I'm tired of tossing and turning at night. I'm SO TIRED of him being dead. I'm tired of being everybody's hero. I don't want to be a hero. I just want to be a girl, who married an amazing guy that makes everyone (including herself) think, how' d she get so lucky??

Owen drew a picture last week, and when he finished he walked out into the living room and looked up at Bill's urn and said, "I drew this picture for daddy, but it won't fit inside his box." This. SUCKS. And this is why medication is necessary at this point. I'm pretty sure my heart fell straight out of my body. What's left of it anyway. Landon has been breaking down more often. I guess that's a good thing, but it literally comes out of no where. Like the other night, after he was done practicing piano he came out of the office in hysterics. I was upstairs folding laundry, because, where else would I be?? I thought he was hurt he was carrying on so much. I ran downstairs, expecting to see blood all over the place and when my initial assessment warranted no ER visit I tried to make out what he was saying. I finally got him to calm down enough to where I could understand him and he just kept yelling, "I want daddy! I want my daddy!" He sobb...

We've made it most of the way through our first fall without him. The kids are doing well in school, all happily adjusted and performing well on their classwork. Cyclocross season has come to a close, Owen turned four, and we took our first family photos as a family of four, not five. Halloween was a hit, as always. My kids generally start getting anxious with anticipation for Halloween around April, and this year was no different even given our current circumstances. I even got involved in the Halloween festivities. I went to a costume party without a date. We hosted Bill's entire family for the week of Thanksgiving and we decorated the house for the holidays. I managed to make it through all of this and not completely lose my mind. Thank you Prozac. Shopping for holiday cards was a challenge. There didn't seem to be one that fit my mood. They all seemed to scream, "Joy!," "We're So Happy!," or "2016 Was So Awesome!" There weren...

I was sitting on the staircase tonight waiting for Blake to brush his teeth before I tucked him in to bed. As I sat there staring at the bookshelf, my eyes fixated upon this metal sculpture we have of a person riding a bicycle. I had a flashback of a picture of it that Bill had taken right after we unpacked all of our stuff after our move out here from California. He captioned it something like, "The Only Thing that Broke During the Move." It was literally the only thing that had gotten damaged during the 3 day trek out here. The person's head had broken off at the neck, so of course Bill did what any engineer would do and grabbed his epoxy and glued it back together. I immediately felt sick to my stomach and had to stop myself from retching. Was that a sign? A foreshadowing of things to come? I certainly hope not, but I also cannot ignore the coincidence. For almost the entire year before his death I had an overwhelming sense of anxiety and at times, dread. I had nev...

Dear Bill, Fourteen years ago, you asked me to marry you. It was a pretty amazing night and I was really blown away. I knew it was coming, I mean after dating for 7 years one has to expect it. It was either that or I was getting let go really gently. I'm still in awe of all the effort you went to. You actually took the day off work! That alone was a shock. And then to think you spend much of the day in preparation for the evening. We were so excited about the future. And it was pretty damn great. Although too short lived, and I'm sure you'd agree with me on that. For someone who was the very definition of a "planner," I'm guessing this was not in your foresight. Here I sit fourteen years later. Alone. A widow. How did we get here? One minute you were putting on sunblock in the mudroom talking to me and the next time I saw you was 3 days later. At the mortuary. Lying in a casket fully clad in the cycling kit I had them dress you in. Like you had ...

Dear Bill, I bought a cyclocross bike. I can't decide if you would be excited about this, or just annoyed since I never really wanted one when you were alive. Well, someone has to take our kids to the bike park now, so I guess that's me. Honestly though, it's been a lot of fun and your friends have even taken me out on some rides on the dirt roads around here. The kids have enjoyed me taking them out and I've had fun with them. We miss you like crazy, and I so wish you were here to do things like this with us. I feel guilty that I get to be here with the kids and you don't. I'm really having a hard time adjusting to this new life. I feel like I'm stuck in the present moment while the world just keeps going. I cannot, at this point, fathom a future and the past seems quite honestly, like an entirely other lifetime. I still feel numb most of the time. My body can't figure how register any true feelings, except all this heavy grief. Lately I've been...

NOTHING about the last 3 months has been easy. I have been doing paperwork for three solid months. No joke. Insurance forms, victim's advocate paperwork, getting any and all accounts switched over into my name, more insurance paperwork, survivor benefits paperwork, refinancing the house. It has really been non-stop. A couple of weeks ago I got a letter in the mail stating that I needed to provide the life insurance company with a copy of the police report and the toxicology screen from the autopsy report in order to be awarded an additional accidental death policy. Because apparently the official signed copy of the death certificate saying how he died, and that it was in fact accidental, is not good enough. Never mind the fact that the death certificate is sealed and signed ONLY when all of the results from the autopsy are back and the cause of death on the certificate is BASED ON WHAT THE AUTOPSY RESULTS SAY. So off I went to the coroner's office. Can I just tell you how a...