I have been tolerating parenthood, not enjoying it.  I have had so much resistance to the circumstances surrounding my entry into motherhood that I have been merely plodding along, coping, trying my best to bond with Nova and be a good parent and keep a nice home and keep her alive, but I have not been enjoying it.  I have been doing it because I feel I have been forced to do it.  It has been like a job, and for the most part I have been good at my job -- but this is not how I want to FEEL about my job as a mom.  I want to love this job.  I want to appreciate this job.  I want to enjoy this job, and I want to enjoy Nova.  ​

As she's gotten older it's been easier and easier for me to take time away from her.  She went to Denver for six days without me in September.  She spends 1-2 weekends a month at Judy's.  I am adding more preschool days to her schedule.  I covet this alone time, and I find myself looking forward to these breaks like they are my lifeline.  The days I have with Nova feel empty and scary and sometimes I do not know how I will get through them if we don't have playdates or plans with friends, or a bunch of errands to get done.  

It appears that I do not know how to be with my child.  This is a problem.  And I value my time alone, more than I value my time with her.  This is also a problem.

I do not want to go through the next 17 years feeling this way.  I chose Nova, and she chose me.  We are here now, to accompany each other through life.  I am her mother, her role model, her friend, her playmate, her comfort, her caretaker.  She is my daughter, my teacher, my friend, my playmate, my comfort, my purpose.  These are not the circumstances under which I/we believed we would journey through this relationship, but this is the reality, and I am here, and I have a choice.  Fear and resistance do not get to choose the kind of relationship I have with my child, and I do not want to tolerate parenthood.  I want to embrace and enjoy it.  I want to cultivate patience, curiosity, mindfulness, respect, understanding, flexibility, laughter, joy, and kindness.  I want to be a better parent from the inside out.

I want my daughter to think, feel, and know from the depths of her being that I love her, that I appreciate her individuality, that I am nothing but grateful for her presence in my life.  She has been my greatest source of strength through George's passing and I need to acknowledge her for being exactly who and what she is, in each moment, not who or what she is or isn't in relation to what I expect of her, or what I expected from my life.  Nova is a truly amazing human.  She is here to teach me some incredible life lessons.  I need to open my eyes and ears, slow down, and receive her.  

If we can start there and build upon a solid foundation, then all the things that will make me crazy as she progresses from baby to toddler to school-aged to pre-puberty to puberty to young adulthood, will just be noise.  We will not be fundamentally shaken.  If we can start there, I know we will be okay.  

​(Post written after a greater-than-average challenging week of Nova with croup and extreme discomfort, and Mama with exhaustion and lower-than-average patience, and a lot of crying and whining and tantrums from the both of us.  Sometimes, the lessons of life are forced upon us at the most undesirable times, but I am grateful.)

Lately, my brain has been encouraging me to move forward, have new experiences, meet new people, consider the future.  But my heart is confused, it wants to go back.  Because the more present I am to the here and now and the possibilities of this life before me, the further I am from the life behind me, from George, from all of the memories and emotions and interactions that encapsulated us and made us who we were.  I don't want to lose that.  And my brain tells me, "Dear, you already have."  But I still hold the remains of our relationship in my heart and in my mind, and the fear is that there is not enough space for everything.

You want new experiences and relationships?  Well, then some of the old stuff has to go.

Sure, I can write it all down and document it with pictures and words, but that FEELING, the pure simple joy I felt when he was in my arms, the sound of his heartbeat, his smell, the shape of his lips under my tongue, the texture of his hair, the way he held me and touched me that can never be replicated by anyone else in quite the same way -- all of THAT, where does it go over time?

I understand now why people who are grieving memorialize the physical space of the loved one they've lost.  By not changing what's visible and tangible, you can try to preserve those memories, that feeling of what it was like when they were alive.  And by choosing not to find love again, you can freeze your heart and mind in time, and concentrate your energies on preserving those very specific details and sensory experiences that will only ever belong to that one person who you loved and lost.  I didn't understand it before, but I understand it now.

It is So.  Hard.  To.  Let.  Go.

It is one thing to let go of the future I wanted to have with George, and another thing entirely to let go of the past.  Because as I move forward, the past with George is replaced by another past.  And another past.  And another past.  Until someday, George feels like lifetimes ago.  He feels like the man in my dreams last night, an image, a non-reality.  My future never belonged to me.  But my past did, once.

​Nothing scares me more than waking up one day and not being able to remember what George felt like.  The very thought sends tears pouring down my face.  And yet I wonder if it is simply inevitable, if what I choose is to live my life in the present and look forward to the future.  It feels, quite literally, like a piece of me is dying.  A piece that I love so much.  And somehow, I must allow it to.  This is the sacrifice.  It may be the greatest sacrifice of my life.

These two journal entries were written 5 days apart, illustrating grief’s constant ebb and flow, the impermanence of any one emotion, and the myriad of feelings that arise when a loved one dies, including heartbreak, anger, guilt, shame, gratitude, hope, acceptance, shock, confusion, fear, loneliness, and many many more.  In short, grief makes you feel crazy.

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March 1, 2015
I am tired today but still feeling grounded in life/George/death and still feeling calm.  God, I miss you George, so much so much.  I would do anything to hold you, to see you hold and giggle with your daughter, who is one insanely beautiful and amazing human.  We really made a magical creature and the world is a better place because Nova is in it.  She brings so much joy to people’s lives with the power of her smile.

I know you are not here with us, at least not in the physical sense.  I know you are somehow a part of the greater consciousness though, that you have awareness of my continued existence and of Nova’s existence; that you love and care for us and want to protect us.  I know you wish us love and joy and happiness, and I feel...I hope...you are at peace.  I am getting there.  

It’s a challenge to reconcile the life I just had, that I remember so vividly, so recently, with this new life without you.  I feel like a very different person now, and in many ways I can’t relate to the woman who married you and carried your child.  She was spoiled and privileged and sheltered and blind.  She was self-involved and self-interested and took what she had -- the fortune of love, partnership, a future family -- for granted.  She was afraid, but not of anything real.  She was petty.  I am still some of these things, but I sure have a greater appreciation for the present moment and what is good that exists now.  Impermanence is constantly on my mind.  I really wish I’d been able to be happier when I had everything in the world that I could possibly want.  I wish I’d worried less and played more and put my self interests aside to love you more.  Because you really deserved to be loved.  I wish I’d been more attentive and less absorbed in my own dramas.  I wish… I’d really really really known how fortunate I was to have it ALL.

And, I guess the thing is that I do still have it all -- a beautiful healthy happy child, a warm, safe and cozy home, a supportive family and community, wonderful neighbors, my own health, my own perseverance and will and strength to continue this journey…
Jeffrey says I’m doing all this with a lot of grace.  I hear that a lot actually.  I don’t really feel graceful, I told him, in fact I feel like I'm fumbling through this; but there must be that quality in the way I interact with the world, somewhere down the line I learned to live gracefully.  It’s coming in handy these days.


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March 6, 2015
Wow.  This journey is f***ing crazy.  I just read what I wrote last, and … the guilt!  I have so much guilt about not loving George well enough, but I DID love him well, I loved him very well, and I cherished him completely and did everything I could to make him feel loved and secure and wanted.  I always told him he was the one for me, that I loved him to pieces and was so happy to have found him.  I told him how lucky I felt, how lucky Nova was to have him for a father.  I don’t know what I really wish I’d done better, other than… well… I didn’t always feel amazing because I didn’t always feel complete.  I still don’t feel complete.  But that has nothing to do with George and everything to do with me.  My lack of security does not mean I loved him any less than 200%.  Because I did, George.  I do.  I love you 200% to infinity.  I know you knew this and still know this.

I came upon this photo last night at Toast & Michelle’s wedding, and it just killed me.  He looks so solid and happy and peaceful.  So REAL, like I could reach out and touch him.  And just like that, I’m thrown back into a state of WTF?!?!?  Spinning again, not comprehending this loss, holding George’s ashes and not knowing how or why he’s gone.  He was just here.  And now he is in a box on my lap.

Suddenly my life makes no sense.  My past seems illusory.  Or too real for the present to also be real.  How can my past and present both be true?  How can this life change so explosively and leave me holding a box of ash?  Just like that, the calm quiet period I’d had, vanished.

I am back to -- um, no, I don’t get it.  Where is George?  He was real, right?  I really knew him, I really loved him, what we had was so real and SO GOOD, how could it be over?  Life just came and took him away from me, just stole him from my morning sleep.  I kissed him goodbye one morning and then he was gone forever.  Yes, I believe I have a right to be angry.  Angry at life.  Angry at death.  Angry because it f***ing hurts and there is no one to blame.  There is no one to hold me through this, not really.  I am the strong one.  I am the mama.  I am creating every way possible for me to move on with my life but I am leading this charge and there is no one beside me, shoulder to shoulder.  I am carrying my daughter.  I am carrying my husband’s ashes.  I have support but they all look to me to tell them what to do.  I do not know what to tell you!  I need help but the truth is, you can’t help me in the way that I need it, because you are in charge of a different life, your own.  What I need is someone to share in the responsibility of my life with my daughter, and there is no one who can do that.  Everyone has their own life to live.  So, I lead this life, and Nova’s life, by myself.  And I grieve for George.  And my heart screams for him.  My heart is SO BROKEN, it is so so broken.  
And I feel crazy because he is dead but I feel he is real.

Somehow I am supposed to continue to feel his love without his words or touch or physical presence.  I am supposed to just know by feeling, sensing, believing that he is all around me and that he loves me.  This is faith, I suppose.  Is this George religion?  Ugh.  Haha.  Honestly.  I do not know how to survive this.  I am tired.

Nova being out of the house brings me back to the time before she was born.  The house suddenly feels like it used to, without her presence here.  Like George is out and I am home alone… except he is not out, he is dead.  Holy f***.

It’s amazing, really, how I keep my shit together for Nova.  I’ve lost it several times in the last hour and it’s only because she is not here.  I don’t know how much emotion I’ve contained inside because I don’t have the space to let it out.  I find it so hard to cry in front of her and to sob hard, to make those fixed painful faces that your face just makes when you cry really hard -- I don’t want to scare her!  She is so happy and smiley and innocent.  Why introduce such misery and sadness?
But oh, I really need more space -- more than zero -- to cry and release and let it all flow out.  There is so much.  It’s like a war zone in there.