This time it’s not mine we are talking about but Harps. Lately Harps has really been feeling the loss of her daddy.
Randomly after picking her up from my parents one day she says, “Mommy you are lucky!” Assuming she’d tell me it was because I was lucky enough to get to go to Publix, I asked why and she said, “You still have Bampy.” I said, “I sure am.” Then in the saddest voice ever she says, “Luckier than me.”
Rip my heart right out. Every time she cries hard in bed at night missing him it makes me sad. Every time she says she misses something special about him, I tell her that I miss that too or remind her of something else amazing about him. These things are happening way more often these days.
Is this resurfacing of grief because she is more mature and understands what she doesn’t have? Is this COVID grief just caused by the missing of so many things in general? Missing friends? Missing Disney? Missing random trips to Target where she could convince me to throw something extra in the basket? And her little brain associates missing with missing Daddy because that’s the missing she has known since she was little? Is it just more time at home and more time to think?
I don’t know, but’s it’s sad!!! It’s hard to see your baby realizing her loss. It’s hard to hear her say she wishes she could hug him again. It’s hard when she cries about others making Father’s Day gifts and she doesn’t need to. It’s just hard. I need a live-in Hospice social worker, the one that helped me so much when harps was turning 3 and had to learn that her daddy would die, to be here now, telling me how to help her little heart.
We read the book Brent wrote about her daddy. We visit the grave. I cover her with her Daddy blanket with all the pictures of him. We find the million stuffed animals that were made specially for daddy or have a memory of daddy attached with them. I hug her. I listen. I cry too. I tell her the amazing things. I offer to look at pictures. I hold her but man oh man is it hard to not be able to make it better for her. If anyone has more ideas for special things to do this Father’s Day send them my way.
Brian would absolutely have loved to see her at surf camp. His Daddy heart would be so insanely proud. She got the perfect Brian type surprise when the Bechtolds left a surf board in her porch the last day of camp. She is loved. We have amazing people in our lives. I pray and hope that she will be okay as time passes but grief is tough. And a six-year-old’s grief in full display is even tougher.
