Red Wagon

One of the things that is the most devastating to me in the midst of this season of life is when grief knocks me over unexpectedly. I don't really grieve for long these days, but these sudden waves still do come, and they still leave me shaken, and it takes a bit to recover from these ones because I wasn't prepared.

Before bed (and I'm pretty sure this may actually be one of those "mother of the year" things that actually may be deserving of the title), I have a routine down with all 4 of my kids that my therapist and I worked on about a year ago. It gives them 5-15 minutes (depending on the night) of just Mama time. The little ones always pick books, although the big ones sometimes just request snuggle and "talk time". We read (or talk), we sing, I put them in bed, and I pray over them. It has turned into one of my favorite parts of the day, as long as the whining from everyone who ISN'T being put to bed isn't a thing.

When Mark was well, he used to also participate in this bedtime routine overall, but we'd split the duties, and sometimes we'd do the big boys together and combine their bedtime.

Now, I just do it all myself, and make sure it's always separate.

There are some books that I just flat out KNOW I can't make it through without ending up in a puddle of tears. I remember often standing just outside the doorway listening to Mark use different booming voices as he'd read "Tea Party Rules" or "Little Loon and Papa". Those ones I know are off-limits. But one that I hadn't recalled was one called "Red Wagon" by Renata Liwska. Ryan picked that one last night.

It started off innocent enough - a cute little story about an adorable little fox named Lucy who was given a wagon for her birthday, but only could use it to go to the market to pick up vegetables for her family. It details the adventure along the way, and is honestly just the sweetest little book. What broke me down last night was the parts that I remember he added in that weren't in the book. Parts like when he read the page about how Lucy began pulling the wagon and lamented over how heavy it was, and he added "with these guys in it". So, so minor, but the tears began falling: My voice shaky and unsteady. Ryan began sucking his fingers even more aggressively and tugging at my hair harder, unsure of what was going on with Mama. Sometimes I'm capable of putting on a happy face and shoving away the tears, but this particular night, the flowed and flowed and flowed.

A couple pages, it was just always the way he said, "Oh bother" that got me.

And yet even just a couple pages later, the wagon hits a rock and the wagon turns into an imaginary rocket ship, and Mark always used to add another little tidbit to this page, saying "...and went flying!"

The last part, on the last page of the book, he would always add, "but she couldn't play with it because she fell fast asleep after all that hard work."

The tricky part about things like this is that they set me back. The drive me back into the depths of the grief, if only for a very short while, and make it feel like it's just beginning all over again.

While even just a few months ago, a small little encounter might have taken me a few weeks to recover from, this particular night, the tears were dry by the time we finished the next book and I left Ryan's room.

I told my therapist yesterday that while I feel like I'm never going to stop these cycles of grief, I feel like they don't overtake me like they used to: I don't stay in the midst of it for long. I absolutely adore my husband: I always will. But I really do feel like I'm progressing past the part where it consumes me thinking about him all day long every day. I think part of it is the experience he has been having at his new facility: They are honestly just so incredible in how they're approaching his care there, and I am thrilled. I no longer feel like his caregiver, which helps me personally. My therapist said she felt I seemed more settled in my demeanor than I had since she had been seeing me, and I think that's a fair representation of how I feel.

I will never stop loving him. I will never stop grieving his loss. I will never stop advocating for him or for a treatment and cure for this horrific disease. But I feel like I'm finally just slowly reaching the point of not letting it consume me anymore, and that's extremely freeing. The weight on my shoulders is lifting.