i’m struggling.

hard.

i am going through a black season of motherhood and i feel like an epic failure every day. it seems that all i do is harp on the turkey, telling him don’t do this and don’t do that. and halfway through the day i’m just too exhausted to even care any more. i want to cry all the time. i try. i swear i do. i get up every morning with a prayer in my heart and a resolution to be more patient and understanding and positive. and then i find myself yelling and threatening and spanking.

i’m not the mom i wanted to be. i’m not the mom i thought i would be.

Lord, heavenly Father, please lead and guide me to be the mom that you intended me to be; the mom that these boys need me to be. soften my heart, Lord, and slow my frustration. in Jesus’ name, amen.

hard to believe that it’s been two years since i last heard your voice and your laughter.  it’s unreal that life has just gone on without you.  your grandson, who you were so excited to meet, is a toddler now. complete with sleeping fits and tantrums and singing songs and real conversations and just all kinds of amazing. he is ridiculously smart.  you would be so proud and you would have a ton of fun with him. he’s a big brother now. truly, he’s the best big brother on earth. he has a little brother who we named in your honor. the sequel has your hairline, dark hair, and blue eyes.  you would dote on these boys and spoil them rotten; i just know it. the turkey asks to look at pictures and videos of grampy all the time.  it makes my heart smile and ache all at the same time.  i still give him a kiss on the forehead from grampy every night before bed.  i do the same for the sequel because i know you would tell me to and i want him to grow up knowing just how much you would have adored him.

i love you, daddy.  i love you and i miss you every day.

i love how your pride and joy shines through in this photo

the turkey looks just as proud holding his brother as you looked holding him

the nights have been pretty tough.  not just because i’ve got a newborn so i’m up every other hour feeding him but, when i do lay down, i put my hands on my belly and there’s nothing there.  my husband doesn’t get it.  he can’t.  but i feel so much grief over the fact that there will never be life in my belly again.  it will never again grow full and round and heavy (well, unless i keep eating ALL THE CHOCOLATE).  it will never again be filled with the movements of arms and legs and hicups.  two kids is enough.  but it’s so hard to accept that i’ll never be pregnant again.

yesterday afternoon, a guest staying at our condo swam out in very hazardous conditions to rescue two distressed swimmers.  he saved them and never came back.  the helicopters flew a search grid behind our house until late into the night and started again first thing this morning.  around 1100, i heard it stop making passes and start hovering in one place.  i didn’t want to look.  when i finally worked up my nerve to go out to the balcony, i saw that the helicopter was hovering just west of us.  maybe a couple hundred yards over and out.  a few minutes later, rescue trucks drove up and swimmers went into the water.  it took them several minutes to swim out past the waves and as i watched them struggling, i saw the body being washed in the surf a little closer our way.  i watched the brave rescue swimmers approach and apprehend the body.  i was crying as i watched them strap the body to the rescue buoy and start the strenuous swim back in.  i cried and i prayed and i prayed and i cried.  my heart is so heavy for this man’s family.  i cannot fathom.  and i hope that they were not out there watching.  i hope that they were not in the throng of people gathered on the beach as the rescue swimmers pulled him in.

and this just four days on the heals of my hubby’s rescue of two distressed swimmers while he was out surfing this past weekend.  i begged him to never do that.  to never just run out into the water without any kind of flotation device.  it is just heartbreaking when people underestimate the power of mother nature.  i have seen the gulf at its angriest and it demands respect.  i don’t ever want to be the one seeing my husband’s body pulled onto the beach because some idiot thought the rough water looked fun.

i’ve been highly disturbed about my dad this week. entirely different from the constant missing him. i’ve been having bad dreams. not the normal sad “i miss you” dreams but crazy negative dreams where i’m in complete fear of him or filled with hatred for him.  awful feelings that i have no reason at all to feel.  i wake feeling discombobulated and, well, disturbed.  this morning, i noticed that my favorite photo of me and him had somehow fallen over and was face down on it’s narrow little shelf.  i righted it with a thought of how strange it was for it to fall over like that without falling off the shelf.  just a little while ago, that photo crashed to the floor, narrowly missing the turkey who was playing nearby and was fortunately untouched by the spray of glass shards from the frame.  i am… disturbed.

I spent the night last night hanging out with my daddy. We talked and laughed and shot pool together. He knew about the sequel and was happy for us. He laughed about the turkey’s shenanigans. I yelled at him for leaving a day too early. We hugged fiercely when it was time for him to go and Eskimo kissed until my nose hurt. I woke up feeling his presence… And his absence. I miss that man so much but I’m grateful that he reaches out to me when I need him most.

I can’t believe it’s been a year since we last talked.  I talk to you all the time but it’s not the same without hearing your silly responses.  I miss your phone calls.  I miss your love and concern.  I miss all the fun you would have had with the turkey.  I miss you telling me to give him a kiss on the forehead for you at the end of every conversation (but I do give him that forehead kiss every night on your behalf).  I miss your grumbling and your griping and your helplessness with technology.  I miss your quirkiness and bluntness and ridiculousness.  I love you, daddy!

one year ago today, i heard words that made me genuinely worried about my dad.  those words set into motion a series of events that resulted in me being there on my dad’s last night.  hindsight is an ugly thing.  there are so many things i wish i had done differently last october but i know that, when it comes down to it, all that really matters is that i was there and he knew that.  i’ve been having a lot of dreams about him lately.  most of them have been peaceful but a couple have been horrible nightmares about losing him all over again.  it’s so hard to wake up from those and realize that it wasn’t just a dream.

It’s been almost a year since my dad died.  He had been sick for a while so it wasn’t exactly unexpected but I didn’t think it would be such a sudden event.  I guess no matter how much you expect it, you’re never ready for it.  It’s silly because I have no doubt he knew how I felt but, if I had known the end was coming, I would’ve done last October so much differently.

it’s been almost six weeks since my favoritest CIL died.  he had health conditions that made a shortened lifespan expected but this was still a complete shock.  or at least it was to me; i guess that might be due to an estranged relationship.  it was just so quick.  my cousin dragged him to the hospital sunday night, within twenty-four hours he had slipped into a coma, and friday night he was gone.

eleven days ago, my brother’s live-in MIL was diagnosed with cancer out of the blue.  yesterday, she passed.  ten days from healthy, normal living to dead in a hospice center.

that’s my three.  i don’t want anymore death in my life.  i’m done with these awful surprises.

I dreamt about my dad last night.  He came to me and asked me to write down a letter to my sister and me.  I was upset because I was out walking with the turkey so I had nothing to write with.  I tried grabbing the diaper pad and ointment tube but, obviously,that didn’t work very well.  Just like a phone call with him, daddy was talking talking talking and I couldn’t keep up even if I had a way of capturing it all.  I tried so hard to pay attention; I wanted so badly to remember every word.  When I woke up, all I had was a few little snippets and a sense of calm – no tears for a change.    I remember him saying that he was good and he felt wonderful.  I know he elaborated on that but, for the life of me, I just can’t catch it.  The clearest thing I remember was him asking me to tell my sister how proud he was of us and our kids.  He said we all made his life worth living.  Mostly, I remember the feeling of his love and of my love for him. 

It was so good to talk to you again, daddy. Until next time…

It amazes me how much it still hurts.  I just keep waiting for it to get easier.  For him to not be constantly in my thoughts.  For me to stop expecting him to call.  For the fiery pain of missing him to subside.  Surely, that day is coming.  I spent a day last week watching the few little video clips I have of him.  Strange that if I hadn’t had a kid, I wouldn’t have his voice at all anymore.  I went running in the woods a few days ago and kept waiting for my phone to ring because he always seemed to call when I was walking back there during the pregnancy.  Now he’s completely gone from my phone history and I’ll never see a call from him again.  There are days that I just feel like a zombie wallowing around in melancholy, brightening up briefly while the turkey is awake. It seems like the peace that I felt about his death when my mil was doing so poorly has loosened now that she’s recovering.  That’s really crappy of me… It’s not like I’m not ecstatic that she’s doing so much better… I just wish so hard…

Happy birthday, daddy.  I love you!

I just noticed that the call history on my phone is already wiping out October’s entries.  In a few short days, I will officially never see a call from my daddy again. 

The last calls I see with him were the 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 14th, 15th, 17th, and the 19th was our last phone conversation ever.  We talked almost every day that last few weeks.  I miss our talks so much.  It was so hard having a birthday without being assaulted by his awful singing first thing in the morning. 

I’ve struggled with the inner turmoil for years of what should I do and how I wish things were different.  The last couple years, becoming a follower of Jesus and a mother and losing my daddy, have made me fret over “the right thing” a lot more and renew my efforts at reconciliation.  I thought my first efforts were bearing fruit but Was proven wrong last Easter.  I have picked myself up and tried a couple more times since then.  I’m officially done.  I’m used to getting the pleasant looking greeting cards filled with nasty notes but she took it to a whole new level this time.  She somehow managed to take all of my heartfelt olive branches and twist and warp them into ugliness that I didn’t even think was possible.  I can’t fathom the sickness of mind that it takes to do that.  I used to lament our relationship and the loss of that special call every year on my birthday but now I just wish to never receive anything from her again.  I feel like I have done what I was called to do but now it’s time to let it all go and focus on the good things in my life.  I cannot continue to expose myself to that toxicity and I will not expose my child to it.  I pray that she finds help one day but I have finally come to realize that i can’t be that help.