Lately in Onamia (April 2021)

After Mark passed away, I felt really overwhelmed for a while, so I decided to take the kids on a little getaway to one of the last available condos on VRBO for the weekend, which was in Onamia, Minnesota, on the south side of Mille Lacs. First stop was in Maple Grove for a short stop for snacks and to play at Central Park there. When we got there, they all groaned and said what a "stupid" park this was going to be, but then I had to literally drag the little two away after 90 minutes. I figured we'd last maybe 20 minutes lol

We can officially make everything fit in the back of our Palisade for all five of us! I mean, the front passenger seat was pretty full, so that might be a problem if we ever have another passenger, but with that space available it all fits without a struggle!

We LOVED the little condo, which had a smaller footprint but more ammenities as our home (aside from one less bathroom). The kids and I settled right in.

One of my "pro" tips for traveling with little kids as a single Mom is to book a VRBO as often as you can, and do as many simple meals and snacks as you can. Don't try to be a "supermom" and get all the food groups in or stress about it for days, just think about what your kids will gladly eat, and go with it. Hot dogs and mac and cheese for dinner this particular night. This is when I splurge on the juice boxes and beef sticks and little bags of chips and fruit snacks and popcorn. I figure as long as no one is hangry, we're good. I almost always plan a pizza night for one of the nights when on vacation with the kids. I also do a lot of picnics if the weather is nice. We do a lot of park hopping, and usually not everyone is hungry at the same time, so it works well.

The downside of this trip was the lack of alone time. After a solid week of me just being harried and exhausted and really sad and then swarming with people, my little two especially were REALLY clingy. I couldn't hardly sit down but what they were on top of me. It was exhausting!.

Until this trip, I had never been to a VRBO home where they didn't have coffee filters or coffee there. This particular trip was THE trip. So...in the morning, once the kids were all up, we loaded into the car and went on a mission to get Mama some coffee! I made sure to get filters and some freshly ground coffee for the next morning.

This sweet lady had JUST opened up shop in Isle the day before, and she made arguably the best latte I've had in my life!

These two had an absolute BLAST chipping away at what was left of the ice. The water beneath was all of ankle deep, so I felt comfortable with it, but they literally spent 2 hours out doing this that first morning.

That first day, after we picked up coffee in Milaca, we checked out Father Hennepin State Park, but it was pretty darn cold without winter coats (we weren't expecting it to be quite that cold), so we didn't stay long. It's pretty cool, though, and I wouldn't mind going back sometime when it's warmer.

With that delicious latte in hand, though, it helped ♥

When we got back to the condo, I worked on breakfast while the boys were down by the shore scavanging for sea glass and shells.

As a boy Mom, I've found that the best kinds of vacations are ones where there are rocky shorelines. With a beach, you end up with sand everywhere, and they aren't entertained nearly as long. With rocks, they spend HOURS looking for shells and rocks and all sorts of things.

If I could sum up about 85% of the trip, this would be it. ::sigh:: These two were absolutely suffocating.

I like that 4-6 age where the kiddos will still hold your hand when you're walking, but they're such big kids ♥

After lunch and a little wind down time, I took the kids over to Kathio State Park in an attempt to find the DNR stand (which, spoiler: We did not...long story).

Against my better judgement, I took the kids for bowling and pizza after a day of no naps. It was a hot freaking mess, if I'm being honest. Cute pictures, though, right? Oy! These are the times I wish I had someone to share in my misery lol

The kids had fun playing video games while we waited for the pizza, but mostly, I was just exhausted from telling them to share the coins for the games, stop climbing on things, and stop pushing each other.

We went bowling at Isle Bowling, and their pizza was AMAZING! SOOOOO yummy!

She's lucky she's so stinkin' cute! Miss Kins is in FULL on threenager mode right now. I guess I'm thankful that it didn't start until she was already 3.5, but I have a feeling it'll run straight through another year. It's this no napping and then crashing stuff, and it's so hard to get her to go to bed if she does. The back and forth. Ryan is finally past it, and is a different kid entirely, thankfully! Also, I am about to start letting her grow her bangs out, because I cannot, for the life of me, get her to let me trim them anymore. lol

The next morning, Cashel was all, "Look, Mom! It's like Minecraft in real life - mining away at the ice" lol

Literally within 8 seconds of when I layed down, this was the scene. #NoRestForTheWeary

AFter getting ready for our day, we went back over to this little park in Isle for a while in the morning. It was a bit juvenile for the big kids, but they made the best of it.

Wherever there is ice, water, sticks and rocks, this is where we thrive.

I couldn't get enough of this view.

After our morning playing at the park, we went back to the condo and I prepped lunch while the kids played at the park for a bit across the street.

After lunch, we drove down to meet my friend Brian at a park in Milaca. The kids had a blast sitting on the big tank while trying to dodge pinecones Brian was throwing at them lol

Brian is one of my best friends, and has really taken me under his wing as I've gone through this FTD journey. His wife passed away from FTD this past November after a long battle as well. It has been tough going through this whole process without having parents to lean on. Brian has really come alongside me and helped process a lot through this journey. I tease him (since has grandkids my kids' age) that he's like a father figure, but really, he's more like a brother to me. I'm not sure how I'd have made it through this whole thing without my FTD brothers and sisters.

On the way down to Milaca, we saw this little burger joint along the way with a playground, so we decided on the way back to the condo, we'd stop there for supper. It was...alright. The kids were more interested in playing than eating (even though they were so starving that it was all they could talk about on the way there), so the food got coldish, and then Ryan had to pee really bad, so we had to leave in a rush (since the place didn't have a bathroom open to the public)

It was alright. I'm not sure I'd say I recommend it, but it was alright.

That evening was a gift. The sunset was spectacular, and the weather was gorgeous. A top 10 night in my books for sure!

Gotta have some silly faces, right? lol

Just us :)

Mark would have LOVED this evening with his kids. He was always skipping rocks where there were rocks to be skipped, so I taught the younger kiddos (the older ones, Mark had taught long ago).

It felt so symbolic of what's ahead for us: Putting aside what's behind, and looking forward to what's ahead, walking in the light.

Our last morning at the condo, we packed up fairly early and hit the road so we could get home at a decent hour. We grabbed some breakfast at a Hardee's along the way, but then made our way to Plymouth before stopping at this fun park - Clifton French Regional Park. The kids had a BLAST, and we spent a solid 2 hours there before we went to find some lunch and make it the rest of the way home.



This was such a great park! The kids want to go back again soon, so I'm thinking we may need to plan a playdate with family in the area!

This guy is struggling for sure, but he's really leaning in more and more to me. I think he's enjoying seeing me happier, even if there are still times when I'm struggling. Not only does Cashel remember pre-FTD Daddy, but also pre-FTD Mommy. Pre-FTD Mommy was definitely more fun. Pre-FTD Mommy wasn't burdened with so many responsibilities. In so many ways, Cashel and Kendrick lost both their Dad and their Mom for a while. Sure, I was there for hugs and reassurance and to feed them and clothe them, but I've been so absent emotionally for so long. I'm not back yet. I'm still pretty broken, but I'm feeling more and more like the Mom my older two remember from before.

One Month Out: A Tale of Three Marks

It's crazy to think that it has been a whole month since I said my final goodbyes to Mark. I feel like while a lot has happened since then, mostly, everything has stayed about the same.

The kids didn't skip a beat that week, and wanted to go right back to their "normal" the next morning, while I cleared out Mark's apartment and planned the short burial service with immediate family. It was all a blur, truthfully, and there are far too many things to highlight (see them in the "Lately in Windom" post just before this one), but overall, aside from not working that week while dealing with so many "final" things, everything just felt...normalish.

Family came, we spent some good time together, and then family went, and life returned to whatever "normal" was. I started back to work the next week, reserving my 2nd week of bereavement time to deal with things as they came about, and taking breaks when I needed them. It feels surreal that the two most special people in the world to me are now together in heaven.

As the dust settled, a few things surfaced that I guess I wasn't really expecting. For starters, I had heard from so many FTD spouses who had already crossed to the "other side" of this thing that all the good memories come flooding back, so that was what I was expecting. However, they haven't. The good memories, while they occasionally come up, feel really buried. I can talk about them, I can see videos and pictures and remember the events, but I can't feel them right now.

What I can feel is the trauma rising back to the surface. I feel every bit of that, and it knocks me out over and over again. Now that it's over, I feel like the trauma we've experienced is almost overwhelming. I'm finally "free" to begin to really delve into it, and it's scary. I feel like I'm slowly peeling back layers and just now realizing how badly wounded I really am. As if I had done a really, really good job of triaging an injury for the time being, but the bone really needed to be reset a few years back, so now that's where we're at. When I start going back year by year, it gets more and more painful. Five years ago, I thought our marriage was in serious trouble, not that he was dying. As such, I thought it was a choice, and the difficult part is that as I go back, I feel those gut-wretching feelings of betrayal and despondence and then I'm supposed to go back and what - put a band aid on it? As if knowing that it was a terminal disease just fixes it all and makes it have not happened? That's not healthy, to look at it that way, and I realize it. But, unfortunately, in order to reach a point where I remember the good him, I have to get closer and closer to the worst of the sick him, and those years before placement, and even during, bring back the triggers of the trauma I've been working so hard to work through and heal from for close to half a decade of therapy.

In working through this post in my head, I've separated Mark out into three people: Healthy Mark, Pre-Diagnosed Mark, and Diagnosed Mark.

I absolutely adored both healthy Mark and diagnosed Mark, and I feel like in the past four years of therapy, I've worked hard to heal and grieve from those losses. I have very little bad to say about either of them, because they were both so lovable and caring and kind. Even sick Mark had the aides and workers at the facility wrapped around their fingers. The loss of both these men has been astounding, and both of those men will be so, so missed. Full stop.

The pre-diagnosed Mark, however, I need to get through that. The hardest part about delving into this place is that no one was there but me. People may have witnessed a bizarre behavior here or there, but they didn't live it: I'm alone in that space. No one else watched the actual transition day by day like I did, and no one was affected by it like I was. It wasn't THEIR marriage falling apart, nor was it THEIR responsibility to keep a full time job and raise 4 kids by themselves while being degraded and drug through the dirt like I was. No one else had to deal with the embarassment like I did. No one else had other peoples' wives yelling at them for the things their husband's behaviors. Everyone else had the choice to just walk away, and even if they had experienced minor bits and pieces of these things, it was temporary for a few hours. No one else bore the burden of the stares and the judgment like I did. No one else was responsible for him like I was. Imagine being responsible for a grown adult man and having people treat you as if you did a bad job "parenting" him...and he's your husband. No one can truly validate me, because they weren't there, and they didn't experience it. That even goes for my kids, family and close friends. I alone am the gatekeeper of those horrid memories, and no amount of talking them out fixes them.

There are truths about myself that I'm learning that bring me to my knees: Truths that I have a lot of hard work ahead to straighten out. What I know at this point is that processing grief makes all the bad things come to the surface, and while I'm good at talking about it and even at times feeling bits and pieces of it, when I listen to stories from my FTD spouse sisters who are earlier in the process, prior to or just at placement, the feelings that bubble up catch me off guard.

Pre-diagnosed Mark gutted me. Pre-diagnosed Mark is what I'm still caught up on. Pre-diagnosed Mark caused so much trauma that there are still so many things I've got to work through to come out on the other side of that.

Things like: Opening myself up feels absolutely terrifying. I don't remember how much Mark loved me, or how it FELT for him to love me, but I DO recall the devastation of having that taken away piece by piece. I feel the difference between the two: The void.

Quite frankly, I do not believe I could survive that kind of loss again. What does that mean for me? I guess it means that right now, in the midst of a life of uncertainty, I don't know that I'll be capable of truly feeling vulnerable again, or that I'll ever truly let my walls down and be ready for a healthy relationship again. Somehow in my mind, I've equated love to pain, because I'm only just now realizing that there were really three different people, not just two. Because it makes me cringe when people say that "Mark" loved me so much and adored me and worshipped the ground I walked on. Because the "Mark" I initially gravitate to thinking about is this horrible person who treated me so poorly and turned me into this untrusting, angry, hardened person I never wanted to be. And since I can't remember what it feels like to be loved, the pain feels more intense and more comfortable for the time being. And honestly, I'm frustrated about that.

Being treated well is a trigger, because while he DID treat me well, all that followed was pain and agony. If I can stay in the middle ground, I won't have the emotional rollercoaster, because although the highs are exhilarating and incredible and just absolutely the most incredible thing in the world, the thought of being obliterated again like I have been makes it feel just not worth it.

I honestly, truly do NOT feel like remembering Healthy Mark right now. I wouldn't even say it's because it's too painful, but rather that I'm still too angry about all the things. I've said it before, and while I know a thousand times over that it was the disease, I'm still beyond angry at Mark for leaving us like he did. For damaging us like he did. It may have been the disease, but the disease was in his body; the same body that loved us and nurtured us for a decade - who provided for us and who let us all trust him. The same body that I found comfort in for all those years. The same body that I know that never in a million years would it hurt me, because Mark #1 would never have hurt me.

But then that same body, that "same" "Mark" was the one who DID hurt me. That in-between person, that pre-diagnosis person did it so obscurely that it slowly brainwashed me into thinking it was ME who was crazy. That I had unrealistic expecatations about marriage. That I was wrong about how great the prior ten years had been. And he looked and acted so normal during that time period, that everyone thought I was exaggerating. Those around me discounted just how bad it was, and I was too embarassed to be real with anyone about what was going on: There are STILL things I'll take to the grave.

That same mind that I had grown to love said awful things to me, and did awful things to me and piled on more and more and more responsibility until I thought I might explode, without lifting a finger to help.

But I didn't get to say goodbye to that Mark. I didn't get to tell him off or read him the riot act or tell him "good riddance", because I was too busy keeping us all alive. And then, by the time we found out he was terminal, I felt like the horrible person for being so angry at him. I didn't dare admit those things out loud, because now he was dying, and admitting those things made me a horrible person instead of a victim. I went straight from being angry and hating him to suddenly feeling compassion for him and wanting to protect him and keep him safe and love him for the remainder of his time on Earth, even if he wasn't my "husband" anymore.

I'm angry that he left me so damaged, even after I fought my absolute hardest to help us all escape as unscathed as we possibly could, and that now, after four years of therapy, I get to delve back into it again to figure out all this crap that that third Mark, this pre-diagnosed version of Mark left behind. I'm too tired to bring even more to the table, and I don't feel like I have the strength to figure it all out for myself, much less four kids who are repressing things right now, and, no doubt, will all surface at the same time and expect me to handle it for them.

I'm really struggling to process that half of the people only know the one Mark, and the other half only know the other, but that I'm the only one who even realized there was a third Mark that fit between the two. I'm frustrated that I'm supposed to memorialize TWO people who people adored in their own sense, when the reality of it is, the pre-diagnosed Mark, the one no one really knew about, is the one that I can't get out of my head right now.

I felt like this all throughout this journey, but starting to write the Eulogy has made it extremely clear to me that they were, indeed, these three completely different people with few similarities to bridge the gaps between them all. The stories I hear from the caregivers are describing one man, who was loveable in his own way. He was a man that I also loved dearly, even if he wasn't my husband. I sacrificed my life for the past three years while making sure that everything was in place and safe and that he was well cared for. I will never regret that, and I'm so grateful for the time I had with sick Mark.

The stories I hear from family and old friends are either in jest about when he started getting sick (which, in fairness, the bizarre stories are comical in part), or they're describing the wonderful, kind, thoughtful, loving, patient a man I used to know five years ago before he got sick. I feel disconnected from both of them, if I'm being honest. The Mark I knew when he was healthy is five (almost six years, really) ago, and fiveish years changes things. The sick Mark from the past three years is a whole different person, and I've been removed from his daily routine and care for the past 3 years, so I don't feel like I know him as well as the caregivers even. But the Mark between 2015 and 2018 is the Mark that completely changed my life for the worse. And I'm the one who holds the keys to those memories. I'm the only one who knows all the things I haven't shared: The minor traumatic events that I don't even remember because there was SO many of them that even the major ones seem minor in comparison.

That's just the surface, no doubt. But I'm also beyond frustrated that after all this time, I'm not emotionally ready to handle the thought meeting someone else. I've been horribly, horribly lonely for so, so, so very long, but now that I'm finally released from the limbo I've been in for all these years, I'm in this in-between place where I want to be happy, and I want to feel released and free; to be in a place where I'm ready. The reality is, I'm so far from ready for that that it's kinda depressing. And it's not Healthy Mark or Diagnosed Mark or the thought of honoring him or what my marriage meant to me that's holding me back: As I said above, he really, truly was dead long, long, long before he died. It'd be like telling someone that 5 years after their loved one passed away that it might be too soon. It's more along the lines of needing to deal with this general "trauma" that I just can't compartmentalize right now. I don't want to go into a relationship with the expectation of them "saving" me, so I need to reach a place where I don't feel like I need to be saved. Right now, it just feels like I may be facing the next decade alone, which is just not at all what I had been gearing myself up for. So I guess you could say I'm a little disappointed that I'm not ready. I just can't go into it as broken as I am. Thankfully, I feel content in this place for the time being, somewhat...I think. Maybe? Depends on the day, or sometimes even the hour or minute.

I need to work on processing the trauma that pre-diagnosed Mark wrought on me, and that's going to take time. So at one month out, that's where I'm at. Occasionally the kids break down - Kinsley two nights ago was absolutely a disaster, which I wasn't expecting. It feels like our house is that popcorn on the verge of popping in the pan, knowing we're all going to be popping at different times, and then trying to figure out how to react when it happens.

We'll heal in time, of that I'm certain. It just hurts to know that it's going to still be a while before the next chapter. I was hoping I'd be further by now.