A single dad raising a little girl.

Immediately I acted like she did not own any clothing and went crazy shopping. Looking back, I did not shop because I thought she needed a bunch of new stuff. Ironically, I wanted to keep dressing her in stuff Kim bought her, and I did until she outgrew every single item. We still have quite a bit that she fits in. No, I bought a lot of new stuff because I wanted to shop the same stores and websites Kim used to shop at. I wanted her presence to not be missed from this planet. I didnt want the store manager at Trader Joe’s in Warwick to think something was up because sales dropped on the days Kim would stop there. Maybe I wasn’t really going to this extreme, but I wanted to be present in the places she wouldve been present in too. It allowed me to connect with her. Yes, I would often cry while walking these aisles, especially like the natural foods aisle at Stop and Shop. Funny, they actually remodeled recently and took that aisle out. I think they were tired of seeing me have mini breakdowns in there. I just needed to keep the connection going. 

The pain I feel…. it was a bond with her. They say “grief is love with nowhere else to go.” I get it, I do. Over the rest of the month I continued posting videos of us all together as a family. I struggled because Kim was about to start a new job, a few weeks after she passed. She was being treated so badly at her last job and she tried for over a year to escape it, coming close so many times. She had gotten an offer a few months earlier that she ended up declining due to the commute. Its crazy because I can’t help but think of all the what ifs. What if she took that job? What if we moved to New Hampshire as we had come close to doing once? Maybe, just maybe she would be here. Then again, maybe none of us would be. Maybe something far worse would have happened. It is easy to say this, but, you cannot live in the “what ifs”. At some point, that has to be part of your healing or you will become stuck. 

I posted about her not getting to start her new job: 

“She would be starting her new job Monday. She fantasized what this week would be like, working her last 2 days at her current job. She had too much class to just screw them over but she was looking forward to not letting anybody make her feel like they did over the last few years. Monkey, I was always so proud of everything you did. I’m so sorry you didn’t get to reap the rewards that were coming your way… You are going to change me in a positive way, slowly but surely because you are truly my inspiration in life. Through you and through Ava, I will be a better person. I will try to be more compassionate when I am thinking more of myself. I will try to be more patient what I feel everyone else is just not doing things the right way. I will try to be more appreciative of what I have as I struggle with what I have lost. Every day when I think of you I will think about these things. For those who truly got to know you I think they will all do the same without even realizing they are doing it. For those who did not know you as well, I am sorry for your loss today also because she truly was one of a kind.”

If this story had been playing out on your television back then, you would have known that this is the point I really started to get angry at everything. I resented so much. Why were others allowed to be happy? Why couldn’t we have our lives back? I had so many questions that I knew would never truly be answered. However, for every question I seeked an answer for, there was one I already had figured out. I knew in the end it would be up to me to decide what the next right thing to do was. A lot of times I hear people in tough situations answer people when asked, “How do you do it”, with a simple, “I don’t have a choice”. We always have a choice. Granted, it may seem like we don’t, such as in my position, where my choice is to move forward and do right by Kim and Ava, I still have a choice. There are many parents who do not do right by their children and they have not lost a spouse. What makes my situation different is that I made a different choice. Writing really helped me reflect, and I urge you to try it no matter what your going through. Keep it private if you dont want to share, or, submit it to our “Reflections” Page here. Whatever you decide, it’s always your choice.

As I fought with the angst of that time, I was able to transcribe my emotions in this post I made below 16 days after she passed:

“Less than a month ago Id listen to songs on the radio and sing along…. Id read posts on Facebook about anniversaries and say congrats to that person. Id look at pics of families making memories and think about what the 3 of us are gonna do next. Driving around today, I resent every song on the radio blabbing about the love of their life… I scroll past other peoples happiness on facebook as fast as I can… and I ask myself how long will my memories last before I lose those too?

I’m never going to tell you that this walk is easy. But I never fathomed it was going to get this hard.

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