If you weren’t there during all this, and you’re reading these blog posts for the first time, you might think I was in a midst of denial and perhaps trying to act like nothing was wrong by how busy I immediately became. Distraction was a major draw. I WANTED to be distracted. The less I stopped, the less I had time to let sadness, fear, anger, and depression land a few extra shots. If your familiar with boxing, distracting yourself from grief is kind of like clinching, or leaning on, your opponent. It just buys you time before the inevitable and you get nailed with a surprise left hook.
The other reason to my “Go, Go, GO” attitude then was because I now needed to put on a red cape with a giant “S” on it, but it was not Superman’s cape. It was Superwoman’s. Kim made being a mom look like something you studied, practiced, and perfected. I knew then, as I do now, I was no comparison. I could braid hair and I knew I was crafty enough to figure out how to make her Halloween costume if need be, but I knew I didn’t have the same level of natural, innate compassion and consideration for the world that she did. Her patience and mine were night and day. She was the calm, patient, allowing mom. I was the stern, authoritarian, dad. We balanced each other. Now the scale was so, so tilted in the wrong way. I had work to do.
This was the year I had agreed to be assistant coach on Ava’s soccer team. Kim was looking forward to taking Ava for her first big kids haircut. So many things had just started to go right for her. She loved genealogy and was so happy when she found and joined a group in somerset, the Bristol County chapter of MSOG. After some time, she was elected to the board and became editor of the newsletter. I couldn’t let any of her passions just be neglected. I needed to care for her legacy as well as Ava, and maybe if there was time, myself too. This was what I shared at that time about a week and a half later:
“Trying to stay busy…. so much to do so not that tough. We have a soccer game Saturday but I made Ava an appt at Kim’s salon for her first ever big girl haircut. God, Kim was so excited for this, I know I’m going to lose it. I warned the stylist ahead of time. I am begging Kim to somehow be there with us…. to watch her big girl, grow up some more. On Sunday we have counseling together. Tuesday is extra busy… after school its flu shot and visiting a group counseling center for kids in Warwick called Friend’s Way that specializes in what we are going through. They start with kids at age 3. I also need an oil change tomorrow. All of that should distract me a little. I figure do it while I’m off from work anyway. Another commitment I’m really looking forward to is sitting in on some of the genealogy meetings that she attended. I never really took interest in it. I should have tried but then again it would just be another thing we did together that would pain me to ever do again. Definitely a million things going on in a million different directions will help distract but I know it is not going to fix anything. Then again, nothing really can, so I’ll just do my best to cope w what I got.”
Even back then, I knew it was all about distractions, but, I don’t feel weak or bad about that. Bottom line is this. People would say to me throughout this time, “I don’t know how you do it”, to which I’d reply, “I don’t have a choice”. That was not a thought-out response. I DID have a choice. I still do. There are people, every day, that enter into a challenging situation that have a choice, some just make the wrong one. As this ship was at sea and the weather all of a sudden turned rough, and the waves were 30 feet high, and the rain was coming in sideways with the wind beating my little first mate and I up at the wheel, I had a choice. Turning back wasn’t an option. It was abandoning ship or go forward and hope we see land. I made a choice. We went forward. I may not fully have made it to land yet, but I see the lighthouse.