Scrappy, Joyless, and Dark

It been a busy five weeks. Working full time as a solo parent is no joke, it’s hard. There is so much to do! I’m realizing that I basically have to be in motion all of the time for things to stay on track, food to get on the table, lunches packed, minimal tidying up, laundry done, homework supervised, permission slips signed, bills paid, financial meetings to occur, the car to be maintained, the dog walked, and oh yeah, my professional work to get done. Not to mention the emotional work of figuring this all out and trying to support everybody’s moods and needs while walking on eggshells at times.

I’ve been hesitant to write this out because it sounds whiny, I know it does. Poor me, my life is so hard… The crazy logistics of raising kids and caring for a home with only one adult CAN be managed and I am learning how to do so. It is not always graceful or smooth, but life is moving forward. The kids are growing, learning, participating in activities, and happy at many times. There are no pressing problems to be addressed. We are actually very lucky in the scheme of a young-ish family that lost its primary bread-winning parent. Many people in my situation would have to move and/or find a different, higher-paying job. Thanks to Chris’s hard work and amazing career, we are fine. We have no real financial issues, just new details to be put in place. Whenever I feel stressed about this, I try to remember what a privilege it is to not worry about money, to not have to make other monumental changes to our already different life, and to have healthy children who do not struggle in school. Our lifeboat has been wildly rocked, but it has not been tipped over.

Yes, I can accomplish the tasks of my life. Indeed, I can make calls, ask questions, stay up late, get to the orthodontist, bike home from the car repair place. At work I can teach my classes, learn how to carry out the responsibilities of my new and temporary position, look at student records, write careful emails to people I don’t know, operate out of two buildings. On the one hand, I am realizing how capable I am. This is good, I was reluctantly empowered by the terrible situation and now I’ve risen to the occasion. On the other, my scrappy operating mode has a harder edge than I imagined I could have. I hate to admit it, but sometimes I’m not as kind as I should be to my children or even the dog. My patience for others runs short quickly and, though I try to conceal it, I bet it has been noticed. I’m not so proud of this hardness. Has it always been there but Chris softened it? Or, is it new, the straight slash mark of a deep loss?

Regardless, there’s nothing I can do right now to sand it down. The one person who could help me with that is not available. Once the chaos of the day is over and the kids are in bed, the old familiar enjoyable part of life is painfully absent. There is nobody with whom to go over it all, laugh it off, and relax. There is nobody to talk to. The one thing that made all of life easy to bear and fun to experience was Chris, and he’s just not coming back. Everything is joyless to me now.

The saying that your spouse is your “better half” was true for us, I think. He was so good, so steady, so patient, so fun-loving. Better. He would have been better at this. If the roles were reversed, I know Chris would have been sad and he would have had to make drastic life changes that would have been logistically challenging, but I doubt he would have some of the ugly feelings of grief. He always said, “it is what it is” in the face of his unimaginable burdens and he never really asked “why me?” I remember all of this and put it together, and I wonder if Chris would have been as unable to be happy as I am now. I can’t say for sure, but I have this dark feeling it would have been better for everyone if it had happened the other way around instead of how it did.  

There was no choice in the matter, though, was there? You get your cards and can't change them, you can only play them. I was the one who survived. I feel guilty for surviving and at the same time, I know that I should appreciate my survival more. I should do more than just get through each day and take more notice of the wonderful things about being alive.

Sometimes I wish I didn’t have to keep going on in this way, but I will. Just like Chris, and just like Paul Kalanithi, who quoted Samuel Beckett:

“…in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.”