Eight Months

Cale has now missed all three of our baby’s birthdays. Laroux is now 6. Ledger is 1, and Lola is 3.

Time has been a weird concept for me lately. It feels like it’s been 3 years since I’ve talked to Cale, held his hands, and seen his perfect face. It also feels like it was just yesterday that I felt his warmth on the other side of our bed, heard him whistling as he gets ready for work, and had him sneak up and hug me from behind as I’m making dinner.

The pain hits me differently every day. I think one of the best things I’m good at lately, is hiding my pain. I can push through conversations with people, and laugh at jokes. I can smile through my heartache. I hold it together when I’m out with friends, and can dance and sing and be the me that’s full of life for a little. I can push the pain aside when strangers ask if I have any date night plans, or if my kid’s dad is coming to the table at the restaurant. But then, I often lose it in the shower, in my car, and in my closet buried in his clothes.

The hardest thing for me, is hiding it in front of my babes. When Ledger wakes up yelling Dada, when Laroux cries herself to sleep and Lola pets her face and says “miss you Daddy”. My kids are hurting. And their hurt, hurts me. And my hurt, it hurts beyond belief. For a while, I didn’t want to cry in front of them, because I felt like it would make them more upset. I wanted to be strong. Lately, I can’t help but cry with them because it’s too hard to hide. I want them to know you can be strong through pain. And that hurting doesn’t make us weak. That we can do hard things, and that our loss has made us love harder and will continue to give us purpose in this life. I hope that it helps my kids understand how to be kind to others who are hurting, how to love others through anything, and how to be strong when it feels like your world is shattering.

Moral of the story, is that I’m trying. I’m trying to honor my feelings of sadness and pain, and ride the overwhelming waves of grief as they come. But also trying to live, and live for Cale as I would want him to if he was here and I was gone. I’m trying to be the me that I want to be. And the mom that my kids need. It may look like I’m doing better some days, and deeply hurting others. It’s a constant battle. We’re doing this, most definitely not in the perfect way, but in our own way. If that means decorating for Christmas right now to try to feel that extra joy and magic around, I will. Or if I feel like writing this in the middle of the night to get the weight off my chest, I’ll do that too. Having Halloween candy for breakfast, Target shopping sprees, driving to the cemetery at night. Anything that feels good, we’re doing. Because life’s short, and although it’s beautiful, it’s painful too.

I have a lot of built up sadness, trauma, and anxiousness buried inside me, and as we get closer to my birthday and the holidays, I feel things intensifying. Hitting these milestones without him here feels unbearable. We are now hitting 8 months without him here, and almost through a lot of the “firsts”. I read a quote by Norah McInerny (a fellow widow and just an awesome person) and it’s about how time can feel like our enemy, pulling us further from the one we love. That’s how it feels right now. That’s our life. But we are also that much closer to being with him again. And that’s what I like to dream about.

We miss you, babe.