Don't Think

There are things I try really hard not to think about. Then there will be days like today, when I am consumed with all the memories and ideas I have fought so hard to keep away.

Today all I see is your face when I found you. Then I see your casket as it was lowered into the ground. I think about how your little girl doesn’t have a daddy and how your youngest son will never have you for a soccer coach. I can’t stop wondering what your eldest son, father and brother must be going through. How people in the neighborhood are still mourning your loss and wondering how they missed the signs.

I just try not to think about how I must have failed you. How I missed every sign of your pain or dismissed it as nothing. Or maybe I was so wrapped up in my own life; I didn’t take a good long look at yours.

Deep, deep down, in the pit of my soul, I do blame myself. I know that I am not supposed to, but some days I just do. I try not to dwell on this feeling. I push it away and know that rationally it isn’t my fault. But there are moments when I just have to wonder how you hid your pain so well from me that I didn’t have a clue.

The only day I really saw you different was on your last day. The only day that I felt something was wrong was the day you died. I certainly never left the house thinking you were going to go kill yourself – but deep down I knew something was going on. I asked you if everything was alright and you said yes. But I knew there was something you weren’t telling me. I didn’t ask the right questions that day and I just didn’t know how wrong things really were.

Maybe if you had acted more like you did on that last day, I would have reacted differently. But everyday you were the same. You went to work, spent time with your children – you lived your life as I have always known.

I remember leaving the house thinking you were really distracted about something and as I went on my way I thought we would just talk later. I hate this feeling that gnaws away at me – this idea that I could have somehow changed the course of events if only I had done even one thing differently. It is an awful feeling.

I guess I could spend the rest of my life dealing with the “what ifs.” I know that I need to focus on the right now and not look back. But there are some days that I can’t get over what happened.

I think I just really miss you. I find myself at times still wandering around the house looking for reasons to make sense of this all. I found a bizarre website dedicated to suicide notes. I read them all trying to find some missing link that would give me better incite. It didn’t work. There doesn’t seem to be a connection between any of them. Nothing these random people wrote makes sense to me. Your note makes no sense to me.

I wonder how you did it sometimes. How you could have left us like you did. I just don’t want to believe it most days and pretend like it didn’t happen. I try very hard not to dwell on these feelings. Some days I just try not to think. It is just so awful and so sad and such a waste of your precious life. There is so much to live for – so many wonderful opportunities to enjoy. Your beautiful amazing three children are just enough for me – why couldn’t they be enough for you too?

I hate money and I hate everything that seems to make people crazy. There is just so much more to life than having money, yet it seems to be the driving force behind everything. I just couldn’t care less about materialistic things. I never did. Which is why it bothers me so that you couldn’t look past these inconsequential issues and see the bigger picture. How you couldn’t look into the future and think about your life in terms of your children and their future. How you could only see and focus on the right now. Your children were everything to you and you left them.

Maybe it is inevitable that I have these days and these conversations with myself about you. Suicide is not a normal ending to a life. It has left me with more questions than answers and more grey areas to ponder. How can I not feel somewhat to blame? How do I wake up everyday and not feel you chose the worst case scenario instead of just trying a little bit harder. Maybe if I had just pushed you to talk to me or been a better, more attentive wife, life would be different today. How can I not wonder what might have been. This was not how you were supposed to die.

Everyday I try and focus on the future and what is most important for my children and me. I am trying to make the right choices and the right decisions to give us a better life than what we have right now. Sometime though, I can’t even decide what socks to wear – how I am making important life decisions is almost a joke.

Every few days or so I fall backwards into time and wish it wasn’t so. Maybe this is what I will learn in therapy – that I am not the only one with regrets. Maybe when I finally get myself there it will help me come to peace with all that has happened. Or maybe it will just teach me how not think even more.

Table

I will never forget the day I had to tell my children their daddy was dead. I sat them down at our kitchen table, loaded them up with their favorite dunkin’ donuts and told them the news. This was all I kept thinking about tonight at dinner. It is hard to sit and watch them eat while horrible memories swirl around me at this table.

Tonight at bedtime my six year old was crying again about daddy. Every night when we say our evening prayers we pray to everyone in our family and then end with, “Dear G-d, please bless daddy in heaven.” I hold my breath every time we say it as I am never sure how he will react. Some nights he lets it slide and we go on to our snuggling. Most nights though, he starts to cry. He wanted to know if he would see daddy when he got to heaven and I said yes. He then asked, what if daddy dies in heaven before he gets to see him. I told him once you are in heaven - you are just there.

He is upset that daddy never got the chance to see his magic tricks. He told me he wants to bring his box of magic with him to heaven. I told him O.K. He asked me how he will know when he is going to die to bring it with him. I just want to vomit. I hate when he talks about going to heaven. It is painful and awful and it hurts. So I just tell him that he would not be going to heaven for a long, long time. But someday when he is an old man, I bet G-d will have a box of magic waiting for him. This did not really help his tears as they still fell from his face and I just lay with him snuggling as he cried on and on about how much he missed his daddy.

Last night went better as my father and step-mother were staying with us and I think the company helps distract him. He just kept saying tonight that it is hard that there are only three people who live in this house now. I just nod my head because I am trying so desperately not to get upset. Afraid if I speak anymore I will just cry too.

We had such a busy weekend and all of it was fun, good stuff. Yet I am just miserable. I can’t find my happy place anymore. I feel like I am racing from one event to the other, only thinking about where I have to go next. I can’t seem to be just "in the moment" and relax. I find this depressing. Then I wonder if I am depressed or if this is just part of the grieving process. I try so hard to appreciate my life and my children, family and friends. I am just not succeeding.

I don’t think I was good company for my dad and stepmother this weekend. I am just not myself and can’t seem to carry on a normal conversation or focus on what is right in front of me.

I went out last night with a group of girlfriends. As I sat in the cozy wine bar I just kept thinking about the fact that it is another Saturday. 11 weeks now since you have been gone. I drank some wine and had a smile on my face, but I am not the same person I was 11 weeks ago. I wonder if everyone can tell by looking at me how I really feel. I am trying to act normal, but just feel like I am not normal and don’t think I will ever be the fun-loving good times girl I once was.

I am going to get everyone therapy. I was fooling myself when I thought we didn’t need it. I thought the children and I would be able to deal with our problems on our own. But I realize that we can’t and probably shouldn’t. I don’t really know any details yet, but I am going to try. I will see how it plays out over the next few weeks. By February I should have us all in something and hope it helps. At this point it certainly can’t make things worse.

I am going to try and be a better parent this week. I failed miserably last week and feel awful about everything. Maybe I will start by getting a table cloth and just try and hide any bad memories under the rug so to speak.

No Stopping

I am too tired to cry. I want to but I am just utterly exhausted from this week. I feel like I started out Monday on a race course and I don’t see the end in sight. It has just been a long freaking week.

I am a little proud of myself for all that I accomplished this week. My multi-tasking has hit an all time high. I scrub the shower while I wash my hair, I brush my teeth and fold laundry and eat dinner while I blog. There just isn’t down time – not now and not ever.

I am not happy that I have rushed my children through this endlessly long week. There was very little fun and barely any laughs or smiles from any of us. I have not enjoyed this week at all and their childhood has been pushed aside for things that must be done. I have more respect for my working friends than ever before and more so for any single moms I know. Ladies – I don’t know how you all did it without bitching and moaning like I am now.

I have a night stand full of books I never get to read. They are either Jewish books of mourning that people send me or give me or vampire books that I look at every night before I fall into the abyss of my bed – for an hour or two. I have so many shows saved on my DVR that I can’t watch and a boot leg of New Moon calling to me – but I have no time for relaxing – those days are far far over.

This weekend does not look any easier as far as I can tell. I have birthday parties and ballet and family coming to visit. The non-stop world I now live in is not giving me a break.

Would this be the life my husband wished upon me? I don’t think so. I don’t even blame him for the mad mad world I now embrace. Most of my life is very much the same – there is just more work, more planning and more sadness added to the mix. I haven’t had time to mourn him this week – expect for my brief visit to him on Tuesday – I haven’t had time to think about our life together and what has happened. Are these distractions a blessing? I am still not sure.

I seem to think about him here and there and then I realize I am going to cry hysterically and just stop myself. There is no room for sorrow right now. I must just keep going.

I am thinking about thinking about going to therapy next month. My friend found a group that meets once a month – “woman whose husband’s have committed suicide”. I guess that would be me. Though when I think about group therapy all I picture is “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and I worry about who is going to be there. I picture all the crazy people talking to invisible pets and yelling out curses and all the insane people who seek out group therapy. Then I think about “Fight Club” and all the people who join group therapy just for the thrill. Maybe I am looking for reasons not to go. Maybe I will fit in perfectly to a motley group of woman who have lost everything and need to vent.

I think mostly I am afraid of sitting in a room with a bunch of strangers and then I will start to cry and not be able to stop. I have never been good at first impressions and don’t see me starting now.

I am too tired to write – I feel like my thoughts are all over the place this evening and I must stop. I don’t feel inspired like I have in the past.

Let me sum up – I miss my husband so much I can’t breathe. I feel like a crappie mother and my house is a disaster.

I pray for a better way to live. I pray that all that haunts me soon has some closure and I pray that my children sleep till 8 a.m.

Your Name

I woke up this morning and took my two children to school. I got into the car and it just started driving to you. I don’t know what possessed me, but I was on a mission. I blasted my ipod in the car as I was trying to drown out the thoughts in my head. I tried to sing along to distract me, otherwise I would just think about where the car was taking me. I drove like a mad woman. I was honking, swerving around cars and yelling at every idiot driver on the road. I just could not get to you fast enough this morning.

The last time I visited the cemetery your grave was barely filled in with dirt and there was no sign indicating where you were. I called a while back and complained that your grave looked terrible. I had totally forgotten that I had even done this until today.

I walked into the cold, dreary and desolate cemetery and started talking to myself. I always look at all the graves as I meander through and notice there are a lot of couples buried together. It is a very, very old Jewish cemetery and all the graves are mashed up and on top of one another. I always picture these old Jewish men and woman sitting around the cemetery waiting for someone to visit them. I feel like they are watching me as I walk past their tombs, head down, hurrying along.

“Look”, they would say to each other, “There’s that girl again. Poor child, look how sad and alone she looks. Doesn’t she have anything better to do than to come here?” I have this whole show in my head about all these dead people talking to me and about me as I walk toward your grave. I guess sometimes it is easier for me to live in my own made up world inside this cemetery, then to think that I am here to visit my husband.

I always get lost in here. This has become a running joke to me. I feel like you would be laughing, if you saw me each and every time standing at the cross roads. Sadness to the right and misery to the left – which way do I go? I need GPS to work my way around here.

When I do get to your grave I notice that they have filled in the dirt and it looks much better. Then I see the marker sticking out of it with your name and the day that you died. I open my mouth to say hello and the hysterical sobs just come pouring out instead. I am leaning against a very tall tombstone crying and crying and crying. I can’t breathe and I am shivering and freezing and crying hysterical.

I didn’t realize the impact of seeing your name stuck in a pile of dirt could affect me so horribly. It just destroyed me.

I am struck by how absolutely horrible this is. How awful my situation is. How really terrible it is that you killed yourself and now you are dead. I just can’t believe you are in this pile of frozen dirt and I just cry and cry and cry some more. I forgot my tissues in my haste to get to you and I am wiping my nose on my scarf – gross I know – but I was desperate.

I look around and wonder what your neighbors must think of me – that your crazy sad wife is here again and she is hysterical again. I decide since I can’t stop crying, I will just talk through my tears. I tell you whatever random thoughts pop into my head and I know I am not making any sense. Then again, standing in a grave talking to my dead husband – what could possibly make sense ever again.

I tell you that I have forgiven you and hope and pray that G-d has too. I tell you about your children and that I am so sorry and miss you so much. I can’t really talk to you like I did the visit before. I am just starring at the sign with your name on it and all I keep thinking is, this isn’t real. I am so annoyed with myself for calling the cemetery and complaining. I want to take the sign and throw it away. Visiting your grave is hard enough. Seeing your name on a plastic sign is just horrible beyond belief.

I am thinking about how one day I have to get you a headstone. I don’t think I can do it. I don’t think I can even think of words appropriate to put on a slab of marble that can tell the world how much I love you and how much you are missed. Nothing carved in stone can relay these feelings – I don’t even see the point.

I am still crying and now I am really really cold. It is 9:30 in the morning and I am numb. I head back to the car now much slower than before. I start to drive home much much slower. I am more respectful of my life now and not in a rush to go anywhere or do anything. I am just driving and crying and trying to collect myself.

As the day progresses and I immerse myself in normal life I start to feel a little better. It is sometimes easiest to not think about where you are and what has happened. It is easier to just take deep breaths and move forward with the day and with my life.

Your four year old daughter started a sentence today with, “Remember when daddy was alive and he used to meet us at the park to play?” I just kept thinking that no sentence should ever start this way. Even though she speaks without tears or remorse there is a little sadness in her eyes and my heart is just breaking.

Tomorrow when I wake up and get the kids to school I will go off to work. I will not let the car take me anywhere I don’t want to go – unless it involves strong coffee and donuts . . .

Not Funny

I tackled the GWB today. I figured if I am going to spend a lot of time with this bridge, I really need to get over it soon. It was the hearse that seemed to follow me all the way home from New Jersey that really pushed me over the edge. I am wondering if you are sending me bizarre messages from the grave. Trying in your own sick sense of humor to tell me that you are around, watching over me and protecting me.

I have a better idea honey – send me mysterious flowers or make me trip over something while a Led Zeppelin song comes on. Hearses following me home for over 30 minutes – so not funny!

Overall I think the day went well. I didn’t get fired and I didn’t get lost. I was able to pick up my son from school, while a friend picked up my daughter. Another friend had pizza delivered to my door so I wouldn’t have to cook tonight. I received a lot of encouraging texts from my fab five. I have really really awesome friends!

The only thing I kept thinking today was, OK I got through this day – what about tomorrow? I know I really can’t think about tomorrow in this way. I have to look forward positively and joyously and believe tomorrow may bring a great many things.

It is amazing to me that I spent all day missing my children, all day thinking about them and hoping they were OK on the their first day back. Then when we finally get to sit down to a family dinner they are yelling and fight about silly things. They won’t eat their vegetable and only want ice cream and I am wondering if I can start sending them to school for 24 hours.

I am exhausted and am missing my husband tonight. I still every once in a while go to pick up the telephone to tell him something. I do this in a very absent minded way. I never actually get to phone as I seem to catch myself as I am looking for it and then I realize I can’t call you. It is very upsetting to me when this happens. For a split second I have forgotten you are gone and then I am reminded painfully that I will never hear your voice again. Will never hear your reassuring voice and will never be able to share how wonderfully annoying our children are these days!

I still have not had any dreams about you. Maybe the Ambien is a dream blocker. Maybe you are just too busy to come visit. I keep seeing signs in the world and think maybe it is you. There was a Blue Moon on New Year’s Eve - for anyone who knows me – they know how significant this is for me. I thought this truly must be a sign from you. You somehow wanted to share this night with me and this was your only way.

Maybe I am going crazy and just really looking for some sort of connection to you as time moves on. I am really feeling like I want to visit you again but the fact is I am such a woose. The idea of standing in a cemetery freezing my ass off crying and chatting with you – well we’ll see.

I wonder if I will ever be able to take the children to see you. If I will ever have the strength to bring them. Not until they are much older of course – maybe they won’t want to go. Maybe it will just be my thing that you and I do alone.

I miss you and your really bad sense of humor. I need a good laugh right about now. I wish you were here tonight to make me laugh. But if you are watching and you have an inkling of what I am going through – no more hearses please. Anything but that . . .

New Life

My new life starts tomorrow and all I want to do is vomit. I am so sad and missing you today and I am so resentful too.

Tomorrow will probably be hard for a lot of people I know. Tomorrow school starts after a long winter break. Tomorrow my glamorous, luxurious life as a stay at home mom comes to an abrupt halt. I start a new job in New Jersey and I am terrified. Not of the job per se but being so far away from my children. It gives me anxiety.

I am putting my four year old in school for a longer day and have all kinds of back of plans if I am late to pick up my son. I have a laundry list of changes that will occur tomorrow and I can’t breathe. I must now rely on my friends more than ever and I feel bad. I feel frustrated that I must ask so much of others when I was once so independent and able to handle my life and my children on my own.

Forget about the millions of other items I must care for on my own – I feel like I have more pressure on my shoulders than any one person can handle. I am trying to figure it all out and yet just when I think I am doing OK, I realize that I still just want to sit in the dark and cry and miss you and not do a dam thing!

I have this house to worry about, bills to pay and a budget to sort through. Dinner and laundry and a home that looks like a wreaking ball went through it. I don’t know where to start and where to find the time to even think about doing something. At the end of each day my children are still crying for their dead daddy and are having nightmares and I just lie in bed unable to sleep and weep for us all.

Sometimes I think there isn’t even time to grieve. Maybe this is a good thing. I am just too freaking busy. I know I said I would look into therapy for my children and myself. I can’t even keep up with the day to day life that I wonder when I am supposed to squeeze therapy in for us all. I have to get the children their 2nd dose of swine flu and I have no idea how long it has been. My almost 4 and half year old never got her four year check-up. I am so annoyed with myself. This used to be things I was on top of and now I just can’t keep track or keep up.

This crazy I life I lead would be so much better if my husband were still alive. I need his help so much and he isn’t here and I just can’t stop crying. I am so tired and I can’t sleep and I am so stressed out that I just feel stuck. I know deep down I have the strength to do this – I just need to focus and not let every little thing drive me crazy. Sometimes I just get overwhelmed about being a single mom it is a terrifying thought – that for now and forever it is just me me me.

It doesn’t matter how much help I have or who is there for me – nothing matters when the one person who was supposed to be here with me day in and day out – to help with all the minutia of life is just gone.

Well I have to stop feeling sorry for myself. I must be strong for my children and myself and look at change being a good thing. My new life will better – it just has to.

The Movies

I thought somehow my first post of the New Year would be more positive and uplifting. I am kidding myself if I think something as inconsequential as a change in the calendar is really going to alter anything in my life so quickly.

I woke up this morning and decided to take the children to the movies. After spending yesterday in the house, I thought we needed to get out and do something.I tried not to think about the Saturday that occurred ten weeks ago. I tried not to think about it – but all I did was think about it.

Ten weeks ago today was a rainy, yucky day. We ran out of the house so we wouldn’t miss the movie and said a quick goodbye to you. You were supposed to be going to work shortly after we left. Instead you wrote me a note, left the house and killed yourself.

I tried not to think about that day. How the line at the movie theatre was so long I thought for sure we would never get in on time and I almost left. How much I wish I had just come straight home. Maybe I would have found you in time to save you. I really try and not think about this a lot.

I unsuccessfully tried to get the children to go to a different theater, but they said no. So off we went today to the movies. I really didn’t think I would ever go to the movies again. But on a cold Saturday with nothing else to do and the winter break feeling like years, I thought maybe I can do this again. I tried to think of ways to make this experience different. I ended up doing everything almost the same.

I sat in the theatre with the children eating a large popcorn all by myself out of stress and tried to focus on everything but what happened ten weeks ago. Of course the first preview was of the movie we saw that fateful day coming out on DVD and I almost threw up all the popcorn. The next image on the screen was a car commercial for your car – the one you killed yourself in. Now I am really dry heaving and wondering why you are torturing me. I have never ever seen a car commercial in the moves before and a part of me is thinking maybe this is your way of saying hello to me.

The movie begins finally but I am already crying. The children don’t notice as I am covering my sobs with fistfuls of popcorn and trying to calm myself down. I am trying to just get through this first movie experience without having a nervous breakdown and so far I blowing it.

I don’t remember the movie at all. I remember the children giggling and repeating funny lines and a lot of annoying squeaking from the chipmunks. That is it. Mostly I just sat there reliving the day you died over and over again and thought about how different life is for us all now.

We came home and I tried to get the children to go play. I needed a moment to myself to collect my thoughts. They never left my side all day. They just wanted to fight and scream and play and do it all on top of me. I let them help me make dinner instead of trying to get them to go away.

I feel like every Saturday at 4 pm my life unravels before me and I am left gasping for breath. It doesn’t seem to matter how many Saturdays go by and what I do differently on each and every one – the same thing happens every time.

I think about finding your note and then your body and I think about how much I lost on that day and I just can’t do anything but sob.

I miss you more than I did yesterday and will probably miss you even more tomorrow. I stayed up and watched the New Year come in. I can’t believe it is a New Year and you aren’t here. I just still can’t believe it. You were always so funny and so alive that it is very difficult and painful to realize that you are dead.

At bedtime tonight I asked your four year if she missed her daddy. She said, “No”. I asked her why not. She said, “Daddy is still here – he is just at work.” I didn’t say anything because the truth is sometimes I still believe this too.

Maybe next Saturday will be better. Maybe we will go bowling.