Grief and the Beautiful Cliches

All these cliche sayings are floating around in my head.

You're never ready to lose a parent.


Time will heal all wounds.


It will really start to hit once all the people go home.


I'll keep you in my prayers.


You will see him again.


I'm so sorry for your loss. 


Be strong!


He would have wanted you to keep going.


You need to get on with your life.


I keep reminding myself that even if people are saying the wrong things, they are trying to say the right thing.  Not all of these cliches are bad.  You could say a lot of things to me and it would not lessen the amount of raw pain I feel in this very moment.  I used to think, recently actually, that anyone around me could die, but if anything happened to my dad I would crumble.  Cease to function.  My dad has always held my heart, and in the past few years I actually started to somewhat pull away from him because I realized this.  This was literally my worst nightmare.  Obviously I would be devastated if any of my family died, especially my husband or kids, but it's different.  My dad was my rock, my saving grace in life for my entire life.  I KNEW he was the most amazing dad in the world, and I knew not to take it for granted.

Funny thing.  When we were little, my sister and I each thought Dad was Jesus.  Jesus was our Dad.  It just made sense.  We were taught how Jesus loved us more than anyone.  He was loving, caring, forgiving, compassionate, brave, humble, wise, strong, kind, giving, nonjudgmental, captivating.  This described our Dad as well, so it just made sense in our little girl, dreamy minds that the two were one and the same.  I kid you not, people.  My Dad was seriously that wonderful.  We all knew it, me and all my siblings.  We adored him.  It did not take his death for us to realize how lucky we were.  ("Blessed" is what he would say right now to correct me.)

So now here we are, and all it seems I am capable of is focusing every ounce of energy into trying to learn how to live in a world without him.  It's exhausting.  I'll think I'm getting close and then I pass a Burger King.  His favorite.  I pass someone on the road with a flat tire.  My dad was that guy that helped that person with the flat tire.  Gotta get gas, there's QuickTrip.  My dad was notorious for getting the million ounce mug from QT and filling it with Diet Coke each morning.  Well, until about 10 years ago because my mom convinced him that the whites of his eyes were turning yellow because of it.  To be fair, they were.

It just does not seem fair that so many of my friends have crappy, useless fathers who only leave them with gaping Daddy holes in their heart, yet it is my dad that leaves this earth so prematurely.  There does not seem to be logic to that.  Wouldn't God want to off all the idiot fathers and keep the really good ones?  I trust God with this, I really do.  In an odd way I love and trust God more for taking my dad early.  He never had to know a moment more of pain.  He no longer has to helplessly watch me and my siblings go through bad choices, hard situations, injustices, etc.  My Dad cared about each person regardless of their stupidities, me included.  He genuinely loved each person, and when he was talking to you, he was talking to YOU and not focusing on anyone else.  I'm not sure how he did that.  Are you starting to see why we thought he was Jesus? :)  My mom says his heart gave and gave until it had nothing left to give.  Now he gets to be in the most wonderful place, reunited with his brother, with Clyde, Parnell, and Craig.  No hurts, no politics, no physical pain EVER!  He deserved that, and he deserved to get it before everyone else.

Check out what I blogged about a few years ago: http://www.theadventuresofmarkandemma.blogspot.com/2008/08/ode-to-perfect-daddy.html

Thanks for reading :)

Today a five year old told me about how he tried to fake sick this morning so he didn't have to go to preschool.  He said he told his grandma he felt sick and she put a thermometer in his mouth.  She left the room and he put the thermometer against a light bulb until she came back in.  Funniest kid ever.  Where in the world do kids learn this stuff?!  I didn't learn the thermometer trick until I was a Sophomore in High School!

Other than that funny moment, my day has sucked.  I hope yours hasn't.

Confessions of a Broken Heart

I am struggling so much.  I'm exhausted.  I just know some of our friends and family are sick of me being stressed.  I am stressed when Izaiah is home, I am stressed when he's gone.  I'm too busy when he's home, but too busy when he's gone.  I'm sad that Dre is gone, and I still feel like I am too busy to do just about anything.  I either work from 8am-8pm or I work and go straight from there to the hospital to see Izaiah until 8pm.  Then I come home, eat, shower, pass out.  Weekends feel crazy busy, too.  We have great, wonderful friends who have been trying so hard to spend lots of time with us and keep us busy.  I appreciate that so much, I really really do.  But -


Disclaimer: Everything I am about to list are things that I love under normal (does that exist?) circumstances so please do not think I am a self centered brat.


This is how I'm feeling. I do not want to leave my house unless I feel like it in that particular moment.  I do not want to talk to anyone on the phone.  I do not want to go hang out with my friends at their houses or out somewhere.  I do not want to play "Counselor" or listen to someone talk incessantly about their kid.  I do not want people to laugh and joke and seem like they are having a great time.  I do not want to spend what little time I have to help with someone's issue.  I do not want to babysit anyone's kids.  I do not want my husband to help you with something during the only free time I have to spend with him.  I do not want my husband helping you at all right now, because we are having a hard enough time cleaning our house and raising our kids and paying our bills and working on our marriage.  


I have to fight off the intense guilt for saying that because it is not in my nature to NOT do those things. Mark is that way, too.  My siblings are that way.  My parents are that way.  When my mom was about my age, she had a series of nervous breakdowns and had to be hospitalized on and off.  She says the reason is because she was trying so hard to be perfect.  It's a little different for me than my mom because it's not perfection I'm trying to obtain.  My aim is more of wanting to help everyone, make everyone feel loved, and to love me in return.  If I don't feel like I am helping every person I talk to, I feel unsettled, awful, and guilty.  If I allow the focus to be off of others and onto me, I am usually uncomfortable.  I don't want to talk about me.  I want to talk about you. Yet here I am, feeling like I have nothing to give and all I want to do now is talk about my life for a moment.  Mark and I put everything into Dre and Izaiah and completely over-exhausted ourselves, more so due to Izaiah.  When Izaiah left, we should have stopped and used that time to force ourselves to rest, read books, exercise, take walks, catch up with friends, etc.  We did some of that, but mostly we just threw ourselves into other people's struggles, partially to completely distract ourselves from the throbbing silence at home.  So when my dad died, we were already stretched so thin.  Even with the boys being gone and my dad's death being two months ago, I have been even more exhausted just at the thought of hanging out with some friends for a chill game night.  I hate it.


I've been getting frustrated when people ask how I'm doing, because I don't feel like anyone really wants me to delve into an hour of tearful, depressing account of my life lately.  When they ask what they can do, I want to tell them that they cannot afford what I want to do, which is to sail away to Fiji or Crete and be alone with God in a beautiful, open, quiet bungalow for weeks and weeks.  If I could fall and hit a rock, have amnesia, and come home and be oblivious of all the hard stuff we've recently been through, I'd do it. If that is far-fetched, then I want to sit in my living room on my comfy couch, with my dog and my dad's favorite cologne-sprayed shirt, and just cry.  Cry and talk about my dad for hours and hours and everyone else be so sad.  This is what I want.  And Monopoly.  I want to play a silent game of Monopoly and completely  bankrupt the sucker who is brave enough to take me on.  Grief is so weird.


Despite the guilt, I don't want to go go go until I completely crash like my mom did.  I want to practice self care and not allow myself to go emotionally bankrupt.  I want to allow myself to go garage sailing and rummage through the Goodwill outlet for 5 hours.  I want to sit in my comfy living room and submit applications for free vacations and strategically figure out ways to make money using my coupons so we can pay off debt.  I need to read books on how to parent my children better. I am way behind on writing those thank-you cards that I have been mentally writing in my head for the past 7 weeks.  I want to sit and look at family photos all afternoon and listen to all my dad's favorite songs, which are naturally my favorite songs as well because I adored my dad and everything he did, said, ate, drank, listened to, laughed at...yada yada.  I have been spending almost my every waking moment trying to learn how to live in this world without my Dad.  This is probably what I will continue writing about for awhile. Everyone else's life is moving on and mine is not; I do not want to pretend it is. 


So if you feel like listening or talking about my dad with me in my living room, come on over.  If not that is fine.  Hopefully I will feel like coming out of hiding soon.  Thanks for reading.

Overdue Pictures

Being STILL with Gavin....this is rare, folks!

Who is really the weird one?

Jonathan has become more sappy as he ages. 

Relaxin' all cool 

So precious 

Dre's first visit to the Arch 

Grandpa's 86th Birthday! 

 These are some of the layers Izaiah wears in order to block out the sun during naptime in the car

 Dre is so funny....always using my phone to take his facebook pictures

I promise, she crawled in there of her own free will. 

 Dear cousin, Alyssa and Michael here for a visit

My boys 

Izaiah got caught mimicking Papa.  These two look up to no good! 

Izaiah sure does love his Papa! 

Christmas time!  I never can get a good picture of them together and SMILING. 

Dre thought it would be sooooooo easy to eat a 1lb burger.  Ask him about it. 

Mike and Dre heading to Dylan and Rebecka's wedding 

Holly and Asili 

She never stops smiling! 

Ezra's a Cardinals fan, too 

 

Last picture ever taken of my dad...just hours before he died.  Not sure who the guy in the background is, so  my story is that he's an angel.

Mom, Hannah, Jonathan, David, Cyndi, and me after Dad's Memorial Service.  How we are still managing to look happy and put together - no CLUE. 

Wearing Uncle Jon's football gear and playing Uncle David's keyboard 

Miss Thang 

Why not? 

He is so street

SAD

Blogging about my dad is something I know I have to do.  I don't particularly like it, but writing is cathartic for me, so no sense in fighting it.  I spent the first month after my dad died still in such shock.  I was just trying to get through each hour, each minute.  I kept myself extremely busy.  I took a day off work to grieve. Seriously.  How dumb, but I did it.  Absolutely no grieving occurred on that day and i was pissed!  I wanted to be able to schedule it so it didn't interfere with everything else.  When Izaiah left for the hospital, I felt like our world crumbled and I had no clue how to exist.  I had to put one foot in front of the other and refuse to think about it and refuse to talk about it.  When my dad died, a new pain began settling in which made Izaiah being gone seem like nothing.  Then when Dre left I thought I might just fall over dead from a broken heart.  I felt like I lost 3 of my 4 male loves (I love David and Jonathan too, just fyi).  Now I feel like I go back and forth between grieving one of the three throughout each day.  Mostly I'm grieving my dad, but then feel guilty that I'm not crying over Dre, so then guilt is added.  Once guilt is added about Dre, I begin to think of what a bad mom I am that both my boys are out of my home.  So this is the cycle that makes up my day.   

Recently I have become so SAD.  Not avoiding, not angry, not anything but pure sad.  I'm crying before I even know it and the tears don't stop.  This is new.  Anytime I cry, the tears stop eventually.  This time, though, I am slow to give in to tears because I know if I let myself cry I will not stop crying.  I feel like I have no sense of reality anymore.  I'm just in a cloudy reality.  I miss my boys.