I am current sitting on a hill.
With a glass of wine.
Having dumped a crying child under a tree where her father's ashes are spread to tell him all of the things she is crying about.
Including the fact she is just missing him.
And it was Christmas.
Christmas is all sorts of shit when there is someone missing.
I’d love to sugar coat it and being our second without Pete, say it was easier, or we navigated it better.
But in actual fact, it was just ... well, I don’t know.
I don’t know that it was worse.
I don’t know that it was better.
There was less awkwardness.
But a greater sense of loss.
The last month has been - for want of a better word, shitful.
Sorting through our life to move house and get into a new house and still trying to work and farewell special people and finish the school year and be social and try and unpack boxes and feel settled and welcome people to our home and be happy and buy Christmas presents and get them in the mail and navigate grief and get home with fluid Covid restrictions and missing dearly-wanted-to-attend events because: too hard and and AND... did I mention I also hadn’t slept properly?
A wise widow woman rang me this year and told me Year Two was harder than Year One.
She apologised for telling me this. But she felt I should be forewarned and forearmed.
Also, she didn’t want me to feel like I was failing because this year felt harder. It’s normal.
Year Two and the second round of The Hard Things ... coupled with Covid, and remote schooling for 2 terms and restrictions on visitors and state border closures ... and This Christmas just feels like so much Hard Work.
Also - with everything going on, I was slightly less organised.
I laid out all of the Christmas presents during the week of Christmas and realised I didn’t have Santa presents for one child. Three of them - sorted. One - nothing!
That was after I’d realised about 8 days before Christmas I didn’t even have a tree up!
What sort of Christmas was I giving my kids?
Last year I had that sorted.
This year - nope.
Covid restrictions being fluid around State borders did my head in.
As did a lack of sleep.
And a lot of emotion in the week before Christmas which left me, on one day of Christmas week, completely non functioning.
On another, like I’d been run over by a truck with a snot riddled nose and sinuses blocked to the hilt.
It wasn’t Covid.
I haven’t been anywhere for it to be Covid.
It was my body telling me to stop.
It was my physical and mental self saying ‘for fuck’s sake lady, this is TOO MUCH!!!
I was classy AF on Christmas Day shoving tissues up my nose to stop it running without ruining my make up (because: also insanely vain) before I walked in and was nothing short of pleasant company.
We took photos on the day.
Because everyone scrubbed up all right.
And because photos show only a one second snapshot of the day.
I looked at the photos of my children and wondered where the babies I had to tell their Father had died almost 2 years ago had gone.
How much they had grown.
How much they had been forced to mature (mostly in the last week when I fell apart and they basically had to fend for themselves for 24hrs).
I also wondered why there seemed to be some height discrepancy in the photos and found this scenario...
The day was fine.
That night: Not fine.
There were tears from children who had missed their Dad.
Inconsolable, sobbing tears.
With everything else I was dealing with, I’d probably forgotten to check in with them about it all.
They’d dealt with the day without question but that night, reality hit.
(I’d also forgotten to put sunscreen on them and they all got sunburnt, so Mother Guilt levels were at approximately 182% on Christmas night...)
The thing with grief, I’m learning, is that - just like child raising - as soon as you think you’ve got a handle on it ... it shows you you know nothing.
And so now, I’m sitting on top of a windy sand hill in the Riverina.
It is 7pm.
The wheels have well and truly fallen off one child’s wagon.
I have sat her under the tree, on Old Dog Hill, where Pete’s ashes are scattered and told her: Tell Daddy all about it.
She had stopped out of the house saying: What’s the point, he can’t hear it anyway...?
And I had stop myself from crying and just say: I know... but do it anyway.
Sometimes we just need to say it out loud.
Even if no one can hear it.
Write it down even though no one might read it.
Feel it even though no one can fix it.
There’s every chance I’ll find a child asleep on the Billabong rug when I wander back over to see how she’s going shortly.
The other down side of widowing is, that sometimes you’re not strong enough to carry the children.
Physically and metaphorically...
And that’s a brutal realisation to have.
Because I know, in his well self, Pete would have easily scooped up this emotional mess of a child and carried her.
And I cannot.
*footnote*
She didn’t fall asleep. But her tears are too much. So I’ve come to sit under the tree with a wine. Because: Merry Christmas, Pete. Wish you were here.
Comments