A fellow widow at church warned me that the second year of grief was more tough than the first and I thought impossible. The first year you experience all your firsts without your person. What could be harder than that?
Well, she was right! The second year has been tough. It still comes in waves but it's been more tough than I predicted. The first year, being a single mom and doing new adventures ourselves was new and therefore fun. Well that novelty has worn off. I would like a companion to do this all with! Recently on a Disney trip with Harper, I literally had to hold back tears watching a dad hold his baby on the Dumbo ride.Harper gets it now more too. Like a lot more. One day, she cried the entire ride home from the grave saying, "the only thing that will calm me down is Daddy singing to me". Her grief is more visible and evident. They talked about families at school and made a house where they were to put stickers representing their family inside. She asked her teacher, "Can I put a Daddy in my house?" She also said to me this week, "When I see other people's daddies, it makes me think about my daddy." YES sweet baby. So much yes! I get it. She still talks about him constantly but even she misses his presence daily.
This brings us to today. We drove Grandma, Sally, Brian's mom to the airport to start her new adventure living back in England where she is from. I am so happy for her and thinks she deserves all the happiness that a move to England will bring. But I am SAD! It was way harder than expected. Harper and I both broke down right there in the middle of the airport. She's another piece of Brian to me. She's our family. It was nice having her live so close. It was nice knowing I could jump in and help if needed. I feel a huge responsibility to take care of her because she was one of Brian's "girls" that he always referenced in his blogs. Now she will be so far away. We are totally excited for our yearly adventures we will take to visit her. And how cool for Harper that she gets to experience that?! Brian would absolutely love it. I am also thankful for modern technology so that England doesn't have to feel that far away. This is another time I wish he were here!Even though this is all kind of sad, there is still so much joy. For example, Brian's birthday on September 7th was amazing. All our friends filled our house with loud noises and lots of love and my heart was so happy. But there was something missing. Something tall, bald and wildly inappropriate.
I got to go on super fun trip to DC and Harper got to have super fun sleepovers here. I got to be responsibility free for an entire weekend where the only thing I had to worry about was crossing the street safely. I've told a bunch of people it was so nice to have little responsibility because sometimes I forget how much I have. When I walk past a dead bug in my house and it's still there five days later, I am like Oh yeah...that's still me! I got to go on this trip because of friends I get to have in my life because of Brian.Lastly, my job is so great! I LOVE LOVE LOVE my students. They make it fun to go to work everyday. Also, I got to present to parents yesterday about literacy. As part of Brian's job he presented all over. He LOVED it! Maybe because he loved attention so much or because he was good at it, but either way, yesterday was my first time presenting in that capacity and I LOVED it too! Would've been super fun for us to both be able to present together.
