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Hypochondriac
When I was a kid and somewhat sick from a cold or other bug, my dad would take a look at me and if I wasn’t actively throwing up or profusely sweating, he’d send me to school. I always hated it – why didn’t I get to stay home like every other kid? “You’ll live,” he often said when I whined about something that wasn’t life-threatening. That’s the thing about growing up with a parent who is a medical professional – you cannot be wimpy about illness. They’ve seen worse. I’m not sure I was a less-whiny kid about my minor illnesses, but as I grew up, I knew that…
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Homesick
It surprised me that Halloween was my breaking point. Here’s the thing – moving to Colombia in August was really hard. Seemingly everything was complicated and the kids took a long time to get even remotely comfortable with life here. People were super friendly, which was wonderful, but it didn’t really help much when (for example) I was trying to help a teenage girl navigate middle school social structures in another country and language. The kids each had their moments when they were sad and wanted to go home. Claire’s lasted the longest, but the volleyball team seemed to have done something incredible that really lifted her up. Once she…
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Widowhood is Stressful. This Survey Proves It.
It wasn’t until after Shawn died that I realized my hair had been falling out. The bald spots on my head were growing, once again. Because that’s what every newly widowed 38-year-old wants….to be bald! It was like the universe or God or something was just adding yet another “fuck you” to the list of things that could go wrong in my life. Wasn’t it bad enough that my husband had just died? Now I had to contend with a bald spot that was spreading? Stress causes me to lose my hair. (Luckily, it’s mostly in the back of my head, but sometimes the spots can get really big.) This,…
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A Countdown Calendar for Grief?
Sometimes, I just can’t believe what I find on Google. The other day, I was trying to look up something for a blog post, and so I googled, “widowhood.” My eyes scanned over the first few hits, and one really stood out to me. The title of the article was, “First year of widowhood most harmful to mental health, according to a sample of over 70,000 middle aged women.” It’s an awkward title. But it made me think. And what I thought was, well no shit. I mean, of course the first year of widowhood is the most harmful to mental health, at least compared to the years that follow.…
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It Is a Lie
I knew I had to tell my children, as they’d find out from their friends eventually. I knew I needed to tell them quickly and in a way that made them feel safe. I would keep it simple, tell them only the basic facts. Yes, there was a shooting at an elementary school. Yes, children died. Yes, it is very, very sad. No, they don’t need to worry about their own safety. And so I did just that. I thought I was doing a good job until Tommy looked up at me with his big eyes and said very slowly, “why?” It broke me. Claire, in her typical reaction, immediately…
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Things That Remain: Fear (Part 2 of 4)
In this four-part series, I discuss the things that remain for me (and for some of my readers) in the years after widowhood. Here’s one of my dark little secrets: Every morning, as I kiss my kids goodbye and watch them leave the house for school, one thought always enters my head: I hope they don’t die. I know – what a morbid thing to think! I don’t know if I ever worried about this before Shawn died, but I know it was a bit of an obsession of mine after he died. I knew I would be broken without my children and even though I tried not to think…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
