Slow Motion

Sometimes I feel like I am in slow motion as the rest of the world zooms by me. I can be walking or driving and then everything inside me just stops. Just shuts down and all I see is your face. In these moments that come to me without any warning or provoking - I miss you so profoundly.

Forget the anger I felt all weekend. The sadness and the tears. This is different. This is loss. I miss you so much it feels unbearable. I miss talking to you and hearing your voice. I miss sharing my life with you and of course I miss sharing our children. I don’t ever want my feelings for you to go away and yet they are so painful. I don’t ever want to forget how much fun we had and how much we loved each other. If all I have left are painful memories than I accept this. I just wish you were here today, with us, making new memories. I just really miss you so very much today.

Maybe because this awful ordeal of choosing a headstone and the wording is just - well, it just sucks. I think the moment this is all over I am going to choose my own stone, write the words and pick a place. I can’t bear for my children to have to do this for me. This is just awful. It is morbid and painful and I wish we had discussed and planned this when he was alive and well and maybe it just wouldn’t seem so terrible right now.

My four year old was brushing her teeth tonight – with green spit spilling from her mouth she said to me, I miss daddy. I wish he wasn’t dead. And then went right back to brushing. These moments that also come from nowhere are just too much for me. I try to comfort and say I am sorry daddy is dead. I try and not cry hysterically. I know they miss him and he is always in our thoughts. Sometimes they just need to say them out loud. I blog and they tell me things while brushing their teeth. It is all the same. Grieving and dealing and trying somehow and someway to live a normal life wrapped in an abnormal package.

I had some time alone with my six year old today. I looked at him and asked, so how are you doing? How are you really doing? He knew exactly what I meant. He didn’t say fine – which I was thankful for. He said I am O.K. He said I am kind of sad because daddy is dead. Then he said I am kind of mad too. Why did daddy have to die and not someone else? I don’t really answer him because there is no answer. I simply told him that it is totally normal to feel mad and sad. I don’t want him to keep anything from me. I always feel better when he opens up to me, but he didn’t have a lot more to say about daddy after that. He is way to into “The Diary of a Wimpy Kid” and only wanted to talk about that. This was fine with me.

I am dreading, with a fear I cannot explain, the unveiling. My mother thinks I should talk to a shrink before I tell the children about the day. But they already know daddy’s body is in the ground. They know he is dead. This is really not a situation that can be sugar coated. I won’t lie. The best I can do is ask them if they want to come and not pressure them into attending. But I know them – my children will want to go and it will be awful . . .

I wish I could speed myself up and catch up with everyone – but I am stuck in slow motion. Revisiting past memories while simultaneously trying to live life and move forward. I am moving forward, a little bit everyday, but I do so with cement shoes.