Doorbell

I wonder sometimes how I can keep this blog going. I could write everyday, but I don’t. I could write everyday about how much I miss my husband. About how the children are changing everyday and you are missing so many little pieces of their life – too many to list or even think about. I could write about how I feel everyday and the sorrows and conflict I go through, but I don’t. Sometimes even I need a break from the way that I feel.

I could write about how I still have keys to my old house, and every once in a while I go back. I wander the empty rooms thinking about our old life. I think about how many memories were filled within these walls. Sometimes I just stand there and call out your name, just to see what will happen. My voice echoes in the emptiness and there is never a response. Never. I wonder sometimes why I still do it. Why I still try and cling to something from my past that causes me so much sorrow. Maybe because as difficult as it is, looking back is still easier than looking ahead – to a life clearly without you.

My daughter asked me tonight – again - where you died. Then she asked how did G-d reach you from heaven to bring you up there. Her questions seem so simple, yet they are so deep. Even at four, she doesn’t realize just how impossible her questions are to answer. I told her that you floated up to heaven when it was time for you to die. How? She asked. Like a balloon, I whispered and tried once again not to let my tears ruin the moment.

I try not to write everyday because rehashing these moments with my children or sitting down to think about how I feel, just doesn’t seem to help so much. When it does help, I will write. These days I am still feeling like a broken record. My thoughts and emotions have been unchanged for quite some time. I cry some days, some days I just feel sad. Some days the anger is too intense to put into words. Some days the guilt is just a blanket wrapped around me. Whatever it is that day – it doesn’t change too dramatically.

I look back sometimes and see how far I have come. Then I will look back and think I haven’t changed a bit. I am still mourning and grieving. I am still dealing with the first year of your death. I am not so naïve to think that on your year anniversary I will feel like a weight has been lifted from me. In fact, I think I will feel worse. I have decided that I am past getting through the stages of early grief. Now I am just leveling off and staying in place. Somewhere between awful distraught sadness anger longing and guilt and just simply sorrow.

This summer is moving faster than I would like. I am trying to keep the children occupied and give them a fun time each and everyday. It is exhausting. Just thinking about what to do with them each day is exhausting. I love them and don’t want them to feel like they are different than any other kids. Maybe I am trying to distract all of us from the fact that this is our first summer without daddy.

I had this feeling the other day that I wanted to rent a RV camper and drive the children across the country. To set out and have everyday be filled with new sights and new people and new adventures. Then I realized how I would have to do all the driving and I couldn’t really take that much time off from work. I guess in a way I just want to run away. But no matter what state we went to, no matter where we would go, we would still be the same people with the same problems and no amount of miles can take that away. Maybe I will wait and save this trip when the kids can share the driving – that should be fun.

I haven’t written about this in the past because I thought at first I was going crazy – now I just don’t care. I am pretty sure I am being haunted by my husband with a doorbell. Since I have moved into the new house a doorbell has rung in the middle of the night, around 3 am. It isn’t my usual doorbell sound – it is just a doorbell. I thought for a while I was dreaming as I would wake up and run to the door and no one would be there. Four months now and every so often I will wake in the night from a doorbell sound and run for a mysterious caller.

Last night at around 11pm the mysterious doorbell rang again. I was close to the door and able to open it right away, excited that I would be able to catch the person in the act. I threw open the door and no one was there. No one on my stoop, or down the street or anywhere. I actually rang my doorbell to confirm that I am really hearing two different sounds. I am.

So instead of getting totally freaked out, I am just going with the idea that my husband is saying hello. He knows we moved, he knows where to find us – and he is telling me he loves me. Maybe he wants me to stop haunting him in the old house and this is his way of telling me – or maybe I am just really going crazy.