This weekend we front up to Fathers Day in lockdown.
And frankly, I’m tired of having to adult and parent through these days, and I don’t want to have to navigate it.
Because even though Pete hasn’t been dead for 3 years, we are having the third of everything without him because his beginning of the year death means we get to endure the whole year of things without him before we get to his death-aversary.
Lockdown and the anxiousness and drama and exhaustion around that and remote schooling is only doubling down to make this one feel … Urgh.
It has nothing to do with us not wanting to celebrate Pete as a good Dad. Not at all. He was a bloody good one (damn him!) It’s the whole celebrating him without him being here, and that he won’t ever be, again.
Often when I lament the things we have to do without him, people will say: Oh I missed/am missing that too…I was away last year…
What they forget when saying that, is that they get have that thing, go to that thing, do that activity with their kids … next time. Or next year.
We don’t.
* I know people say this to try and make us feel better. I really do.
The kids know reality of what they are missing - without anyone saying anything -because junk mail and advertising has been shoving it in their faces for weeks leading up to it.
Even worse, this year we can’t DO anything either.
The first year we made hot chocolates and got socks and sat in bed and filled individual photo albums with printed photos of Pete and the kids. The kids spent some time at a friends’ house. We cooked one of his favourite meals - crumbed cutlets.
Last year we had bacon and egg rolls, played golf - badly - with Pete’s golf clubs. We cooked his other favourite meal - chicken schnitzel and pepper sauce - for dinner.
This year, doing something to acknowledge a dead father isn’t one of the 5 reasons to leave 5km from home.
There have been so many tears. Already.
It’s our third one and people seem to think things would be easier, but instead of the tears being about the hurt of the immediate loss, those tears are now: I’m scared I’m forgetting Daddy.
People say be kind to myself.
But it’s not about me. As I have had angry teens remind me, I’ve still got my Dad.
So this is about making it the best I can for the kids by the kids creating a menu for the day.
The plan is: make a ‘breakfast of champions’- eggs, bacon, hash brown, spaghetti & toast; something he’d like for lunch - burgers; and dinner? This year it’s back to crumbed cutlets.
All of which I completely agree with. And will do. And despite being completely exhausted about all of the things I’ve been managing, I’ll cook and clean up breakfast and cook and clean up lunch, and cook and clean up dinner because that’s what I would have done and the kids would have wanted for Pete if he were here.
*I’m drawing the line at watching motor racing or American Pickers or Outback Truckers or M*A*S*H, which would definitely have been on the screen if he were here.
But this year with so much lockdown fatigue, remote schooling fatigue, looking at one another fatigue, it all just seems … harder.
We’ll try for a walk to get fresh air (the forecast is cold & miserable) and get some non screen time … all the things I know should help.
The reality is, though, everyone in the house will be very raw emotionally. Which - if the last few years has taught me anything - means that arguments, raging tempers, tears, and meltdowns will be very very close to the surface. And once that thin ice surface holding it all together cracks, those fissures will run deep and hard and fast.
It’s just so much harder when everyone is already so resilience-challenged. And I can be as kind as I want to myself, but there’s no one else and there can’t be anyone else to manage the day, help mend the cracks and ease the spikiness and soothe the tempers and give the hugs. I have to do that.
So I’m taking a deep breath for the third fatherless Father’s Day…
The first year we were still in the first year fog.
Last year it was glorious and sunny.
This year… I’m just hoping maybe the weather forecast will mean we see a rainbow.
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