Right after Chris died, I made a very long, categorized list of things to do. Many of them were consequential to ensuring the financial future of my family while maintaining good legal standing with the IRS. I added more to the list than I crossed out for a good long while, and it was stressful because most of those "big ticket" items on the list were poorly understood by me. One of the best things I did was to outsource them. For example, I do not care to spend hours understanding tax code when I can pay someone to do this for me and be assured that she did it correctly... Yes. She. By happenstance, I have a team of women professionals! Financial adviser, estate lawyer, CPA. All women. All defined by the words competent and efficient. I love them and find myself inspired by them!
I don't want to go any further without acknowledging and appreciating my place of privilege in this situation - many in my shoes would be unable to access the professional support I have leveraged. Not a day goes by without feeling grateful for the resources I have and, especially, the person who made sure that they were there. Chris. Trust me, it's plenty hard without worrying about money, and my heart goes out to people who shoulder that weight, too.
(This little journal exercise is seriously rambling and veering far from my original intent! oh well, it's for me. I have precious little time right now to write even though I often want to, so I'm choosing to throw it all down instead of trying to make it decent this time.)
Back to that massive to-do list. I set up headings to keep myself on track - financial/legal, thank yous, accounts and bills to change names of, and personal. I tried to keep attacking tasks under each heading so that I could cross off low-hanging fruit for my morale but still keep my eyes on the urgent priorities. J saw my list once and was interested in something under the personal heading. I wrote that I wanted to make memory books. She liked this idea and kept asking about it. All year long. Obviously the time-sensitivity was low compared to other things and, in a way, there is nothing but time on my hands for ruminating, remembering, etc. I did not get it done for the kids' birthdays nor for Christmas. She was disappointed. So, I got the idea to have her help me after the holidays.
It's kind of silly that I didn't do this earlier because the hard part was already done. For Chris's service, I went through our entire collection of electronic photos. At the time, I saved copies into folders, one for photos of Chris and J, one for pictures of Chris and N, one for Chris and me, and another for family photos. When J and I sat down together, I uploaded her special collection and some family pictures to a photo site, and then she happily dragged pictures onto pages. J wrote some captions, picked background colors, paged through and made rearrangements. I added several touches, too. We spent a few evenings on the project and we had a lot of high quality time together, focused on Chris.
The book arrived earlier this week. It came out great! My heart nearly exploded as we turned the pages for the first time, but it was a good push on the bruise because Chris is there with love shining on his face as he looks at J, both kids, our family. Love simply oozes out of this memory book, you cannot help but see it on every single page.
As I looked through the book again, I had a flash of an inclination to text Chris to tell him that the book was amazing and the perfect thing to do for J to remember him.
Let that sink in.
I wanted to write to my dead husband to tell him about an album of pictures meant to remember him. You know, because he died. We made the book because he is dead and I still had the reflex to tell him about it.
You can laugh. It's OK. I did. Most of this experience has been ineffably sad, but some is just outrageously crazy. The brain is not quickly rewired. You have to laugh or else there is nothing left to do in those moments. As my good friend simply says, life is strange. Yep. I'd file this one under Insane.
Honestly, I could not be more pleased with this project. I choose to mentally file this anecdote under Proud, too. I am very proud that I finished this item on my to-do list. (For the record, that entire list is almost history, hurrah!) Better than that, it turned into a project that allowed us to naturally connect with memories of Chris. He had been so worried about her, in particular, that she wouldn't remember or know him because she was so young when he died. I promised him repeatedly that he would not disappear from our hearts and minds after he died. It's easy to keep that promise for myself because I couldn't stop thinking about Chris if I tried, but it's harder with the kids. I try to encourage them to speak of Dad, and they do, but it is difficult to make someone feel present when he is physically not. Time passes more quickly for a child, it seems.
As I think back to my knee-jerk reaction to text Chris, I'm glad I still had it. He's still my co-parent, still their Dad. With any important thing that I do for the kids, I have Chris in mind. And even though it does feel a little insane to want to tell him about our efforts and projects to remember him, it's because we shared deeply when he was alive including some serious grappling with mortality. I am honored and grateful that he shared his fears with me. It is only natural, not actually insane, to wish to report back to him regarding them.
Chris is my partner at my core. That is still true.
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