Valentine's Day

I'm glad once again this year that you weren't big on Valentine's Day...that's not to say that I don't have special memories- especially when we were dating- of dinners out in trendy restaurants in NYC, special pieces of jewelry, and my favorite: homemade booklets and cards from you.  I do...I do...in my timeless mind- those are all still going on...

But I feel like people thought today was a difficult day for me.  I know it is for many widows and again, that's not to say I didn't feel piercings of the intense nostalgia of grief, remembrances, or wish a few times that we could go out to dinner together, or that you'd choose the prettiest flowers for me and later complain about how "all the prices are jacked up for this day," and mostly wish I could just... hold your hand.  Mostly, I tried not to indulge in these wishes- they can not happen.

But overall, I felt triumphant today.  It had more joy spots than usual.  I might even enjoy Valentine's Day more than I used to.  Because it's not about a commercial, romantic ideal, and there are no expectations.  For me now, it's about the pretty aesthetic that accompanies it and all of the different ways I can make it special for our daughter.  I think perhaps the Hallmark holiday suits childhood much better than adulthood.  I cooped at Audrey's school today Dan- and I made heart shaped waffles, strawberries, and baked tortillas for their snack.  I made photo cards of her for the kids' mailboxes.  I decorated the door of her room with strings of hanging shiny purple hearts, and bought heart-shaped donuts for our snack this afternoon.   A few days ago, I even mailed a package to a single friend- I wrapped up my favorite French soap, bath crystals, and heart-shaped chocolates in pink and red wrapping paper tied up with twine and with little slips of brown grocery bag, I wrote the words "faith," "hope" and "love" on each package.

You were here and present though.  We did not forget you for a moment.   We spoke of you often.  I bought two helium heart-shaped balloons yesterday- to "send up to you" as we did last year.  Probably the hardest part- is taking over your tradition of buying her a Valentine's gift.  You came up with that yourself, and I thought it was just so sweet.  I loved the gifts you chose when she was four months old and when she was 17 months old.  You only got to do it twice huh.  Still, it felt solidified in my mind as something you were going to always do.  I gave her a book and a little fashion press with fabric and she loved both.  I made sure to tell her that this was your tradition and remind her of the things you'd given her in the past- her stuffed dog, her Hello Kitty book, and told her that I was just taking over for you and that you would want her to have this.

I think a lot today about why I feel so light.  I think I may have felt more sadness and misery before I had you...when I was still waiting and hoping there would be someone out there to love me and for me to love and not even knowing love itself, but just the theoretical, commercial ideal I saw in movies or read about in Austen novels.  But now I know there is, and there was, and I feel your love even now.   Still, there is the moment when I wonder if I'm numb and fooling myself.  The moment when I sit in my spot on the kitchen floor and literally squeeze my head trying to wrap my mind around the fact that you are not just disappeared, but dead and buried.  This is one I still don't get and it literally hurts like a muscle lifting weight when I try to.  I give up.  The weight slams down.  I make another Valentine for Audrey's spot at the dinner table.

A tough day?  It was a regular day of heartbroken living with spots of brightness.  The day we met, that's a tough day.  Our anniversary- another difficult 24 hours.  Father's Day- very, very painful.  Your birthday- probably the most difficult day of the year besides your death day.

I think today is about being a couple, having someone, and the notion of romantic love.  It is not about us, our love story, and it doesn't come close to the mundane magic moments that we had.  Each day though, I share an apartment with a living, breathing reminder of our love.  Each cordate, broken, ordinary day.

But interestingly enough, something else happened a few days ago that has pushed me to a slightly different space...my daughter and I were heading out the door- and she was, as usual, dressed in princess attire including crown.  She always says hello to the concierge I'm friendly with as she prances towards the door.  He also happens to have lost his first wife while in his thirties- followed by their infant son.  What he said to me as I was heading out the door has been ringing in my ears ever since.  He said something to me that I did not think I would ever hear again.  And when he said it, at first I almost questioned him: "What do you mean?" But then I knew exactly what he meant, and instead replied, "I know..."

What did he say?

"You're very lucky."

Last Week

Last week was a shitty week...that is truly the best word I can come up with to articulate it.  Not so much grief-related- just life-related.  But of course, harder.

For different reasons every day, I wound up crying in my parked car a lot.

Audrey had a temper tantrum when we got to school one morning, screaming, foaming at the mouth, irrational kind of tantrum and even though I eventually got her up to her room, the teacher sent us home.

One morning I was on the phone opening up a Fed Ex account to try to get your blood sample over from Switzerland.  The man I spoke to was telling me I probably wouldn't have to pay any government taxes because, "It's not worth anything."

Another morning the management of a rental I was supposed to look at calls and cancels because of my income level.

One afternoon I took Audrey to get her hair cut and wound up knowing the wife of the salon owner.   I wasn't sure if she knew that you died, but she later said she did- "That was a few years ago?" and followed up with a quick, "But you're OK now?"  

"It feels like yesterday to me," I answer.  "OK?  No, I wouldn't say OK," I reply.

Felt

Unexpectedly tough day- which is always worse than the days that are expectedly so.

It's been lonely lately- I think for both of us.  Audrey's imaginary friends who faded to the background after she started preschool are prominent again.  Her ballet class and yoga class ended and we've lost our rhythm for a bit.  It's funny- similarly to how I've felt about God- not angry just questioning his existence- I question friendships a lot lately- not because I'm angry but because I'm not sure who they are anymore or if I had all the great friends I thought I did in the first place.  My circle definitely feels like it has shrunk since you died.  It's hard to tell whether it's partly because I'm a mom now since that was still new, or because we had also moved fairly recently from the city.  But it certainly seems like when you were alive we had a full schedule with different things, gatherings, events going on all the time.  Now we don't.  Maybe other families want to guard their own family time or maybe they think we'll feel sad being amongst another family- but it's hard coming up with things for us to do each and every day when it's just the two of us.  Your absence is so present all the time. Even for Audrey...for whom I wonder what that must feel like- the absence of someone, something- a father- that you aren't used to having anymore or can't remember- but you still feel.  A vague absence probably- felt mostly when she sees other fathers interacting with their children or when I bring you up.  This morning she talks at breakfast about that vivid dream she had of you again...only this time it meshes with an identical new dream she tells me where Cinderella is the one who is in the playroom waiting to read with her, but when she comes in, she disappears.  She stops talking and just stares at me after this word...disappears.  Heartsink.  I remember so clearly the sound of her screams that night when I found her, "I wanna play with appa NOW!" One of my lowest moments since all this began.

I try to fill our days.  It's tiring taking a three year old to weekend family events by yourself.  After church today we go out to a Korean restaurant- the same one where we all ate lunch after your one year memorial.  I try to get Audrey's soondooboo to cool down, but it takes forever.  We sit on the same side of the large booth they placed us in and I stare at the empty other side of the booth.  The next booth behind that is a family of three- mother, little girl, father.   I give Audrey some crayons and finish up my own soondooboo so we can go.  When we get up, the waitress from your memorial lunch we had in a room there recognizes me.  I'd told her it was your memorial because I wanted to pay for it but sneaky people were trying to intercept the bill.  "Oh...it's you," she says.  "Your husband...how are you doing?"  And unfortunately that's all it takes sometimes.  I can't really speak and my eyes are full and overflowing and then I answer, "The best I can, she's getting so big right?" pointing to Audrey. She gives me a hug and we leave.

Later I realize it's the Superbowl and think of parties we attended and which team you would be rooting for.  I tell Audrey we're having a Superbowl party and put it on on our tiny TV while we have a spaghetti and meatball picnic at our small Korean table on the living room floor.  I think of how I'd always predict which team was going to win, mostly in basketball, and tell you I could tell because of the "energy" but you kind of believed me- that was funny.  I realize later that tomorrow is the sixth of the month.  Ah- maybe that's why today was so hard.  I do laundry and find that I've left a tissue in the wash.  You always hated that and reprimanded me for not checking carefully enough or for keeping tissues up my sleeves (something my third grade teacher told us was a good idea and it stuck).  Little wet, white pieces of tissue stuck on all the clothes as I throw them into the dryer...and I miss you so.  "Yup- I left a tissue in Dan," I say.

Yesterday Audrey and I were decorating a cardboard fairy house we made and in going through some art supplies, I thought some felt squares might be useful.  I open up a Ziploc full of a rainbow of colored felt squares.  And then I see them- the leftover squares from shapes that you'd cut out for the felt board I was so into around the time you died.  It was one of my projects that had great vision, but my end result didn't work out.  Nonetheless, since you were much more artistic than me, I had asked you to cut out some shapes for the board.  You did.  An airplane.  A bird.  A sun or moon.  A few other things I am forgetting.  Those felt pieces I'm pretty sure I'd put away earlier on in a special place with things for Audrey...but these leftover scraps- these pieces, I'd forgotten.

These hurt more.  I couldn't believe how much they hurt.  There were the marks where you'd cut along with scissors.  Where you removed your work and gave it to our baby.  Remnants, scraps, a picture of this great absence- both vague and sharp- on rainbow colored felt.

Trinity

There is an emotion that came to me new with motherhood.   It's not just happiness or joy you feel as you marvel at this human being before you that began as a cell in your womb.  It's not quite pride because it doesn't necessarily accompany any grand accomplishment or milestone.  It comes suddenly in moments and leaps into your heart until it is painfully full.  It is difficult to define and yet I try to tell her often.  "I am delighted with you."  Delight.

Delight, however filling, is inherently in need of at least one other spectator to be complete.  It's like when I watched Audrey suddenly get up on the little stage at Barnes and Noble and sing and "tap dance" to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in front of a crowd of people.  Delight.  But then also- looking around to see who could share this moment with me.  And it's like when she says something after which I ask, "What did you say?"  Like when I asked her once what she was getting- thinking she was doing something she wasn't supposed to and she answered, "Stickers!" and then rolling her eyes slightly, "Oh for God's sake..."  I had to reenact it later hoping someone would catch how delightful it was.  Or when I ask rhetorically at dinner one night..."What is God up to Audrey?" and she answers, "I think he's takin' a rest because he's tired after all that...creating and every-ting..."  Ah.  No one here.  I will write it down in the quaint book for quotes such as this given to me by a friend.  I will write it down though it will never be exactly as it was in that moment.

The last moment of shared delight in our daughter that we had was shortly before you left us.  The three of us were reading bedtime stories on our bed and Audrey hadn't said many, if any, two syllable words yet.  Then while reading about the color purple, she did it..."Po pul"  and at the exact same moment, we turned to each other with a jolt and wide eyes.  It was a moment I hope I always remember.  There have though, been so many more moments that begged for this common reaction since you left, and instead I get the heartsink.  "You would love this," I think.  And it doesn't seem fair at all that I get to see it and you don't.

There is another D word that I also never felt fully until motherhood.  It's what we both felt when a crazy lady in a Mexican restaurant where we were having lunch, Audrey asleep in her stroller, told us to please "remove your child from here- I don't like children."  It's what I felt recently when a little girl in Audrey's class started punching her in the stomach out of nowhere while they were in line to wash their hands the day I was cooping at her school.  It's also what I feel when there's a show or story that focuses on a daughter's relationship with her father and I watch Audrey's eyes so carefully.

Defend.  I want to protect her and be the one who comes to her defense, but it feels so wrong without you here to defend along with me.  After the punching incident, I imagine what you would have said...how angry you would've been and I imagine you without a doubt, approaching that little girls' father at school, and maybe even Audrey's teacher to make sure it was known how unhappy you were about it.  I did not do those things.  I worry that I won't do as good of a job defending as you might have.  I wish you were here with me.  It hurt to see our little girl take those sudden punches.  I almost cried myself as she cried in my arms and every other little girl in her class came by with empathetic looks and offered her hugs.

Many people love Audrey- her grandparents on both sides certainly do delight in her.  But most of the time, they're not here during those unexpected, "Po pul," moments...and- they're not you- her father.

I think the Holy Trinity- is starting to make a little bit more sense.  To truly delight in or defend one person, you absolutely need- another person.

Previous Life

"Don't worry- I'm going to die first..."  

"No!"  

"Yes...if you died first, I just couldn't go on..."

At least once daily I flash back.  Parts of it are sharp, while others are blurred.  I envision myself floating from room to room.  But one thing I remember is people calling me...brave of them...most seemed to say the same thing: "I just had to hear your voice and tell you how sorry I am..."  And my newly foreign voice would reply, "Thanks...thanks...I just don't know how I'll go on...I just don't know how I'll go on."

And I didn't.  And I don't.  

And this refrain has been in my head again as of late.

I am literally stunned at how fresh the pain is.  The time has taken me away from the painful struggle of thinking it's not too late to change things- during that circle when it seemed a little bit of the present still overlapped what had just happened and we could make it different.  During that circle, I could still see and imagine you doing things with us so your absence was acute.  It's not that your absence isn't acute anymore- it's just that now I can't really envision you playing with Audrey anymore- because she is much older.  She talks.  She jumps, sings, and dances.  She's in school.  One evening I try to imagine you coming in the door and how you would greet her, but instead I find my imagination inserts me literally introducing you to her- telling you, "This is Audrey..." and then going on to explain who she is now...this is the "healing" power of ...time.  

Last night I somehow wind up hacking into your ebay account.  Something I'd been interested in was sold out and I found it on Ebay through a google search.  I'm not familiar with Ebay- but you bought and sold a ton of stuff on there- so I would usually ask you to sell something for me or buy something I saw on the rare occasion.  I decide since I have to figure out how to do this myself without your expert advice (you had some tactic you were very proud of with the timing where you were always the winning bidder), maybe I will still use your user name and account.  In grieving it seems there is always some  dusty corner full of tearful debris.  In your Ebay account I go through the archive of all of the items you bought and sold along with the comments from the people you had transactions with.  In it, I see a picture of our life together- I recognize the CD's, DVD's, soccer jerseys, and a few things I'd given you.  But what I'm most struck by is how much everyone likes you...I'm not familiar with this so maybe people always complement their buyer/seller in their rating, but these seem super nice..."Really nice guy- great transaction."  "Really pleasant over email."  "Really quick, professional, and honest."  "Super nice guy and one of the best people I've dealt with."  Things like that.  I am amazed how even in these comments, I get a sense of your character.  And I am very, very sad.

Today for some reason- I think because I am missing you...another crevice I haven't checked in- I look for emails from you from your old yahoo account in my account.  There are only a few before you switched to gmail.  But there is one to this couple from Germany we met in Mexico on our honeymoon.  We had stayed in touch and I think on your last European tour you were even trying to see them, but it didn't work out.  They also have one daughter now.  When we met, we had both just been married.  We were seated randomly at a big round table outside at our resort our first night there.  It was a magical night...warm, tropical sweet-smelling air, and giant pelicans flying slowly overhead.  You and I couldn't get over them- we thought they looked so much like dinosaurs- prehistoric.  We chatted with this couple and one other couple from the US...but we didn't click with them as well.  Then the next day, while I was laying in my bikini, you were on the defense as a man in sunglasses approached me smiling...neither of us had recognized him at first, but you soon calmed down when we realized it was the man from the German couple we'd met the night before.  We chatted while in the pool and decided to have dinner at one of the outdoor restaurants that night together.  It was breezy that night and we have a photo of the four of us sitting at the table as the sun set looking like...newlyweds.  The couple commented that we didn't seem like Americans, but different- and you took that as a complement.  It was mostly you and the man doing the talking as she didn't speak as much English and you were so good at making conversation with strangers whether it was about sports, beer, or cities in Germany.  After we got back home to our new apartment in Brooklyn, we both exchanged a few emails of the photos we had and that was pretty much it.

I look through photos from that night and think about posting one here, but they're all blurry as well.  You had some cheap camera that had enough memory for about five photos and we took too many or something so they all turned out with horrible resolution.  When we got back and realized that, I was so upset to not have a decent photo from my honeymoon.   All are blurred and grainy like they're from fifty years ago rather than eight.  Appropriate now.

Today I decide I should write this man and tell him that you died.  And I do- I tell the story very briefly- not even sure if he checks that email account from 2004 anymore.  He writes back...they are both saddened about our "fate." He has business in the US and maybe can make a stopover in NYC sometime to see us.  

I don't know why I do these things.  Something in me needs to 1) tell the story, but also 2) lasso a rope to the places and people from my previous life just so that I know it was real and it happened, and simultaneously- revisit each portion of our life together in order to say a proper goodbye... The only other people now who remember my honeymoon...how I smiled at dinner and how you wrapped your arm around my waist on the darkening beach while they took our photo- is this couple I barely know living on another continent.  But now they know - and now I know- that they are still there- still alive with their daughter- a picture of what we could have been...and I know, more importantly, that it all really happened- that you existed and we existed and it was wonderful- in another time and place.

Stonewall

I've read a lot of relationship books.  Ours was not an easy one, though I am certain we would've endured and even flourished had you lived.

In general, during arguments, men tend to stonewall.  They shut down, don't talk, need a break.  Women, in general, but this was true for us, want to talk about the issue at hand until they feel that, the problem isn't necessarily solved, but they are reconnected with their spouse.

These different ways of dealing with conflict can really be trying...one person is pushing to keep talking, discussing, working it out.  This is her way of loving.  The other is trying not to lose his temper, needing a break from the intensity of the discussion, shutting down and leaving the room or even the apartment.  This is also, his way of loving.  But the more she pushes, the more he shuts down.

Your death while abroad, away from me, on another continent, with so many things unresolved- not even two years after a rough and sudden move, a new baby, and a job change for you that took you away from us for a month at a time- we didn't get any time to settle back into ourselves as a couple- go on date nights, (oh how jealous I am of the people on FB now who are "out on a date night with the hubs!"), talk more, watch favorite shows together, share chores or tuck our daughter in together- your death, because of all of this- is the ultimate stonewall.

I want to cry and push and make you listen to me, but it is worse than any stonewall because there's no angry face walking away or slamming door or turning on your side in our bed without saying goodnight.  There is nothing.  You can not hear me.  It is all over.  The pushing and stonewalling and connecting and loving.  This is a very, very hard thing to accept.

Family

The other day, maybe while I'm pouring cereal, I have the random memory of eating my Cheerios...carefully.  Small children, I don't think, can really separate things that are alive and things that aren't.  And I was fairly certain that the Cheerios that stuck together while floating in my milk at the end of the bowl, were not just accidentally grouped together- they were families.  If one in the group slipped off my spoon, I'd be sure to get him back on with his family before they all took the journey into my mouth.  Do other people do this?  I'm pretty sure they do.

The Cheerio families are not an adequate metaphor for how it feels to be a part of a broken family.  The constant gnawing that something- someone is missing from your unit.  They are not an adequate metaphor for how it feels to look forward to Audrey's preschool coffee social- a chance to sit around with other moms who understand mothering and drink much needed caffeine while the kids are in class one morning- but then find your loss smacking you in the face yet again while everyone talks about their silly husbands or their second or current pregnancies.  I chime in as if those are not painful memories- my own pregnancy, birth, "Oh, my husband was like that too...he'd always get the wrong stuff at the store so he'd call to check because I was so neurotic."  At one point when we're discussing how consuming children without siblings can be, one mother from Audrey's class, who must not know- I've never told her- laughs and tells me I better get started on the second baby.  I just answer that it's not really the first thing on my mind right now and it's awkward because a few mothers do know- but the one who said it laughs as if I've made a joke again.  I leave the mothers for a bit to go watch Audrey in her dance class from the gym window- and to gather myself...wipe the stray tears I barely notice are there anymore because they are so much a part of my daily face.

And the Cheerio metaphor doesn't come close to the feeling of having various realtors come through your apartment with clients because your landlord is selling your place and you have no idea yet where you're going to go...the place where you moved as a family when your child was five months old- where she took her first steps, where you slow danced to kids' music with your husband in the living room and made him fresh waffles with heart shaped strawberries for his last Father's Day a couple of weeks before he died.  It doesn't come close to the feeling when these strangers meandering through my home tell me my daughter is cute or they like how I decorated the little nook that is her "room."  It doesn't convey at all the heartsinking that happens when the Korean realtor, seeing our family photos, tells me, "Oh, you have a very handsome husband," and I answer, "Thanks, he was," as they smile not hearing the past tense and head out the door waving to Audrey who has just changed into her fairy outfit and is wondering why the "guests" are leaving.

The heartsinking is the best term- when the pain that's always there dips just a little lower than you thought possible- kind of like the pain I feel when Audrey has a wistful, shy look on her face watching another little girl play with her dad- or when she looks up at me one night before bed telling me she's so scared of the dark...I tell her we're the only people in this apartment and she tells me you're here.  Then I tell her you're not because you died.  And she tells me, "But we'll always be stuck together- we'll always be a family- " probably something I've told her at some point though I don't recognize it offhand.  Then she tells me she wishes you would come to our apartment and call her name, "I wish appa would come to our apartment building and call me Audrey."

Heartsinking.  Pulverizing.

How do I fix our family?  I cannot.  I can not pretend you are still here.  I can honor the life you lived.  But I cannot hold a place here for your return.  I realize that even as I look at rentals and possible homes for us to move to- that thought that I've heard others in grief books talk about arises- "What if we move and he comes back and we're not there?"  It's absurd because I really do get by now the circumstances of my life and yours.  But still- that thought is there- we will be gone- what if?

What to do, what to do.

Buy matching pajamas for my daughter, her doll, and myself.
Buy matching mugs from Anthropologie with our initials.
Tirelessly put a unicorn puppet on my hand named unicorny complete with Julia Child-like voice because he's quite funny and she loves him and he's become a part of our
family.