It was a short visit, but good. I always want to run there when I have a lot going on. It's dumb things sometimes - thanking him for having bought a mitre saw and teaching me to use it, or teaching me to do a thorough job painting. Sometimes something happened at school for one of the kids and I just need to tell him. Sometimes someone hurt my feelings and I know it's petty, but I need to tell someone, and there hasn't been anyone to tell. Sometimes I tell him how pissed off I am to be a solo Mom, and I'll jokingly tell him I'm mad he had the gall to get sick and die on me. (A little dark widow humor there for ya) I'll tell him his kids are all just like him when hey're being especially "extra" that day.
I honestly NEVER thought I'd say this, but it's therapeutic sometimes to have a conversation with someone who can't talk back.
This time, however, I was in the midst of a long weekend without the kids, and was working on settling in at our new home. At that point, the whole weekend had been so wonderful, and I just wanted to share it with him. The enormity of the chaos of moving, prepping our home for sale, how difficult it is to try to keep the right clothes at the right house at the right time...it has been a lot. In truth, it had been a few weeks since I had visited his grave: the previous visit was shortly after we closed on the house.
One thing that crosses my mind often is if there will be a day that a different defining moment comes along that removes my measure of time being before and after Mark's death, or before and after FTD. Maybe this big move is what it will be? I want to have a measuring point be something happy, not something so sad. I think maybe it's progress that I had to go back and calculate how many months he had been gone for this update.
The day came and passed that we called our home in Windom our official residence, and I've yet to break down. I had been working so hard on making sure our home in Windom would be as ready as it could be to list so that I didn't have to make continual trips back to work on it once the kids started school at their new schools.
The boys are all at the same school together, and Kinsley started the same day at her new preschool. They were all a bit nervous, but after that first day, it has been all smiles since then. Of course, it doesn't come without some struggles. While Kendrick had been having some struggles with classmates prior to moving, he has still had a couple hard interactions with kids, including one comment the other day that some random kid he didn't even know (or who knew him) wished his Mom would die (which, dang...for a kid who just lost his Dad earlier this year...that cut deep). And Ryan is far beyond jealous of Kinsley for getting so much Mommy time during the days, so he gets pretty animated when Kinsley gets clingy in the evenings. I hear "She's not just YOUR Mommy - she's MY Mommy too!" a fair amount. However, they ALL have had no trouble at all making friends, and they get excited to go to school each day, so that definitely helps.
I spent my kid-free long weekend (a sort of pre-40th bday hiatus from normal life) at our new home, putting up pictures, putting colorful laminate in drawers and cabinets, purchasing a few new necessities (toilets that a normal-sized person can actually sit on, new kitchen faucet like the one we had at our old home, a few organizational supplies, etc.) I had some incredible evenings with new friends and old ones, drinks and dinner, charcuterie boards, long walks, a bonfire, good music, lots of laughs and smiles and hugs and all the very best things life has to offer. Our new back yard brings a plethora of squirrels, and they love the little water feature right outside the sunroom, so it's so crazy that you can legitimately see a squirrels eyelashes while sipping coffee in the morning, or watch the deer scavenge for food in the woods so close a hunter would hardly need a scope.
I'm busy, haven't had a chance to sit hardly, but I'm in a really, really good place mentally. I have been for quite some time. We're good! We're happy! We are all so giddy for our future, and we are all loving each morning waking up officially residents in what feels like an entirely new life.
But, as the Nora McInerney video I posted long ago about grief and loss reminds us, we haven't moved on. We haven't left the memory of Mark behind as we move to a new home and a new city and a new life: I think we have even MORE pictures of him up at our new home, actually. We're moving forward with him. We still talk about him all the time. In fact, as is to be expected with little ones and death, Ryan and Kinsley asked the other day when Daddy was going to be home from heaven so we could see him, so we had to go over again how we won't see Daddy again this side of heaven, and what that means. I reached out to the hospice organization that supported our family through Mark's illness, and contacted the bereavement coordinator. I am going to work on getting the kids set up with the right resources around here as well. Ryan specifically struggles with the thought that we've left "Daddy" (a.k.a. his gravesite), so they provided a book called "The Invisible String", which really resonated with him.
Of course, whenever we talk about their Daddy being dead, there is a flourish of talk again about God providing a new Daddy someday, which I think gets us all feeling hopeful. And yet, I know that the Lord's timing is always perfect. There's no rush, and I think the kids seeing that life can be beautiful with just the five of us, there's less pressure. I think I've heard no less than a dozen times in the past two weeks from ALL of the boys that they really wish that Daddy could just be back here again without his sick brain, and they talk often about how wonderful it would have been to sit on the sun porch and watch deer or squirrels with Daddy, and how much he would love to live here with us.
As we come upon the holiday season, I think it's fitting that we start afresh in our new home, building new traditions as we encounter our "firsts". In some ways, it is actually more like our 4th season without him, at least with him home. However this year, we won't be saving him a plate at Thanksgiving or wrapping him gifts for Christmas. This year, I won't be spending 6+ hours every weekend away from one or more of my kids to make yet another round trip to Mankato every weekend: I'll be spending those hours WITH my kids, or if without them, in a space where I'm not hurriedly rushing to visit a man who is not Mark but yet is and watching him slowly die. THIS holiday season, we're thankful that he's whole and that he is with Jesus. This year, we'll be able to invite people in instead of rushing around frantically trying to make everything the best for Mark. It's a LOT of pressure when you know your love is going to die, never knowing when, to make sure every holiday is the best yet, in case it's their last.
Part of this holiday season will be sad, no doubt, but we've done sad for years at this point. I think we're all ready to turn the page, and I, for one, am SO freaking excited to write the story that comes next.
