A picture is worth 1,000 words

This is one of the first pictures I can remember taking after Steven died. July 2011. The boys and I had gone to Seattle to stay with Stevens mom and dad for a few weeks. Just to get away I guess. I honestly don't remember much from this trip. I vaguely remember watching the boys play in the grass. Jake was crawling still. He also took his first steps on this trip. Steven missed Jakes first steps. Thats hard to let sink in. I also remember the plane flight home. Both boys were crying, I was alone and knew I looked like a crappy single mom when all I wanted to do was tell everyone that my husband had just died so please don't judge me. No one knew. Not one person on the plane knew that my life had just been turned upside down. No one knew I was walking in and living in a fog. The thickest fog I had ever experienced. Makes you wonder what the person next to you is going though. Makes you feel bad for judging that lady in the store or the homeless guy on the street. You really don't know their story.

This picture tells so much. When I come across this picture, I literally feel like I fall into it. I fall into that stage of grief. I get it. That girl in the picture is just surviving. She is breathing and moving and being a mom because her body just does that. I remember feeling like I wasn't living. It wasn't possible. I smiled because that what you do. The pain behind those eyes is so deep and so unimaginable. So lost. Those first few months after Steven died were such a fog. I felt like a zombie.

Being in pictures would get easier as time moved forward. I needed to be in pictures because I needed to keep living. I needed to keep breathing. I needed to feel human and alive. Just that little piece of me.

Today, pictures are a huge part of our lives. With a husband who is passionate about photography, pictures are in so many aspects of our lives. Pictures tell so many stories. Looking back on all of our pictures, they begin to tell a story of a family, a Dad, a widow, a survivor, love again, and so much more. I remember being so glad I had so many pictures of Steven and the boys. When you think you don't want to be in a pictures because you are too big or too old or your hair doesn't look right, remember that the pictures will tell a story of that moment in time that you can never get back.

Here are just a few pictures that tell our story. All of these pictures are worth 1,000 words…

Bryce with his Dad Steven. Jake was in the hospital at Loma Linda. May 2010

Jake with his Dad Steven in Maui. April 2011. A trip I am beyond grateful for.

June 5, 2011

Our new life

Bryce age 3 and Jake age 1. We stayed at my parents a lot in 2011.

Camp Widow 2011

Jakes 1st hospital admittance after Steven passed. 

Lighting a candle for Steven as a victim of crime

Stevens Birthday we spent camping with family.

Fall 2011

Christmas 2011

On Bryces 3rd birthday, Steven was given the chance to travel for work across country and take a class.
I encouraged him to go, Bryce would have plenty more birthdays.
Never knowing that would be the last Steven would be around to see. 

Summer 2012

Blessed by this guy

Bryces 1st Sport. Soccer. Travis as the coach.

We become a family.
Married Travis July 2013

Summer 2013

Hospital trip October 2013

Late nights….

I can't seem to sleep tonight. At 25 weeks pregnant, its become a little harder to get comfortable at night. I hate saying that so early in my pregnancy, I know I have a long ways to go, but its true. So, I'm up and flipping around pages on the internet and started reading my old widowed blog. I have never gone back and read old posts, for obvious reasons. The fear of taking my mind right back to those awfully painful places. Which is what I did. As I read, I found I was so sad for that girl. I was so heartbroken for the me. The girl with the two babies attempting to make sense of a situation that made no sense. That girl that was hurting beyond belief and insanely lost.

Since losing Steven, I have had many friends send new widows in my direction. I am grateful they feel they can do that. I remember after Steven died, I spoke with a friend/family member who was widowed as well. It was the most comforting feeling to talk to someone who said, "I get it and you will be ok, because I am ok. It just takes time." There is something different in those words when it comes from someone who gets it, rather than your mom or friend who knows I will be okay one day, but still doesn't get it.
When I hear these new widows stories, my heart breaks for them. I know the journey they are about to embark on. I know the nights they will drink a glass of wine or take a sleeping pill just to go to bed without laying there waiting for their husband to come home. I know the letters they will get in the mail addressed to their husbands years down the road and the phone calls they will get asking for their husband by name, only having to say they died. I know the looks they are going to get when their kids are throwing a tantrum in the grocery store and you are about to break down too and you feel like all the eyes on you are because you look like a dumb single mom who got knocked up by some loser father who left, when thats not the case at all. (Don't judge people too harshly. You have no idea what their struggles are). I just know. I am glad that my name can be given to them so they know they are not alone. Whether they contact me or not, I just want them to know they are not alone.

Sometimes I don't feel qualified to be a widow anymore. I am remarried, I am happier than I ever thought possible, I am having a new baby. This is not something widows do. But I am, I am still a widow. Right before Travis and I were married last year, it suddenly came to mind that I wouldn't be a widow any more. I wouldn't have to mark the "widowed" box on paperwork. I could fill in Travis' name on the boys paperwork under father, which was something that took time to get used to. I felt like when I did that, it was just washing away Steven. I felt like I would dishonor him by not giving him some sort of acknowledgement to the boys name. Filling out paperwork also made me want the other person to know that the boys had a great dad but he died and thats tragic and he wasn't a deadbeat who left. Travis' response to my quizzical thought was that I was still a widow and will always be a widow. I am just a remarried widow. I was sad and relieved all at the same time.

As I read back through my old blog posts tonight, I felt the urge to rush upstairs and cuddle my boys. I am so grateful Steven left me these two vibrant and exciting kids. (I say that in the most sincere way possible. LOL.) They are fun and full of energy and although most days I spend yelling at them, I am so so so glad I have them. In the year after losing Steven, they were my huggers, my criers, my cuddles in bed and the reason I got up each morning. I also remember being glad that I had a 3 year old that could hold an adult conversation. Who could communicate all his needs and was insanely helpful. Bryce is and was an awesome kid. I don't know how I would have ever made it through those first few months without them. I am glad I had the ability to blog about it. Those 3 months after losing Steven are such a blur. I lived in such a fog. Reliving that fog is painful, but it is also so real.

Off to kiss my sleeping boys, and my sleeping husband. Whom I am beyond grateful for. He's for a later blog….which Im sure he would appreciate. xoxo

A grieving child = a grieving mom

You would think that after almost 3 years past losing Steven, a childs grief would be done. They're children, they're resilient, they take things better than adults and continue to move forward. Right? Wrong. Bryce will of course grieve in a much different way than Jake. Bryce has always been older for his age, he knows things all too well. Jake had just turned 1 when Steven died. He knows who Dad Steven is in pictures, but never asks any questions beyond that. Bryce on the other hand, is so much like Steven, we often remind him how much  like his Dad Steven he is. I think that as Jake gets older, we will see a lot of Steven in his as well.

The night Steven died, Bryce knew. He was asleep in the car with Jake when we made it to the hospital. I had jumped out of another car to get inside, only to find Steven was already gone. The boys I had left in the care of my Aunt Christie and family in another car. From what I know, they had remained asleep. After seeing Steven and being with him, I was told Bryce needed me. I walked out of the room and someone handed me Bryce and his blanket. He was hysterical. He was crying for his Daddy, he was grieving. As I walked around the ER with him, trying to console him and make sense of what was happening, I was looking around yelling at my family and asking them who had told Bryce Steven had died? I was furious! Who had told a 3 year old his Daddy was gone?! I can remember people looking at me with big eyes and my mom telling me that no one said anything. I will never doubt that Steven came to Bryce in his dreams as he slept in the car. I believe in the depths of my soul that he kissed him goodbye as he slept. Bryce was 3, he grieved.

I remember going to a seminar at Camp Widow in 2012. It was for widows with kids. The woman hosting the seminar had 3 kids with her late husband another son with her new husband. She made a point that really stuck with me. She said that children will grieve in different stages.
When Steven died, Bryce was so young that telling him Steven was in heaven with Jesus was like telling him Grandma lives in Washington with Papa G. The relevance of Heaven was not there. It was a place. He never asked to call him, like we often had while Steven was at work. He knew we couldn't do that and that was something I never had to explain to him. But he did make comments about wanting to go to Heaven. Imagine your three year old making statements like, "When I go to heaven, can I take my blanket? Can we go to heaven and see Daddy? I wish I were in heaven with Daddy." All comments you never expect to hear out of a 3 year olds mouth.

Bryce is almost 6. He is at a new stage of his grief. His comments are new and in a different form. Its a 5 year old attempting to make sense of death. The other day he asked me, "Mom, I think dad Steven sleeps in an ambulance in heaven." I asked, "Why would you think that?" Bryce said, "Because he had really big owies when he died and since he still is hurt he must sleep in one too." I tried to explain to him that Dad was not hurt any longer. In heaven there is no pain. You are healed. He then asked, "Then why can't Dad come back?" A completely honest question which completely broke my heart. His question made complete sense and I don't think he has ever asked why Steven couldn't back. Why can't he come back if he is better? Again, I had to explain that once you go to Heaven, you don't come back. Conversations I wouldn't wish upon any mother and conversations I never thought Id have with my child.

Bryce is at an age where therapy may benefit him. Before his questions were questions I could manage. At this new stage in his grief, they are becoming too much for me to even understand. So….here is a bit of a frustrated rant about our screwed up mental health care system in this country. I have no doubt why crazy people go into buildings with guns and do what they do. I am not saying this is where my frustration is heading, I am saying that the lack of services these people need to help them with their mental issue are near to none. I have been trying for the past 2 weeks to get Bryce into therapy. I know where I want to take him. I have been given 10+ phone numbers, each from the next person I am transferred to who is supposed to put me on the right track to getting me help, yet none of them have any idea how to help. I am told he needs a referral  from his doctor and then I am told he doesn't because therapy is a private matter. I am told that one insurance will cover it and then I am told there is a new program in place and I need to get a hold of them. I am then told that the program does not qualify him for mental health and I need to go through Medi-Cal (which is a screwed up system in itself). I am a mom on a mission, who will not give up until my son gets the help he needs, but the process of it is such a joke and beyond frustrating that when you mess with a pregnant woman, you are going to get your head bitten off a few times.  I have a grieving 6 year old who cannot get help.

I know the stages of grief for Bryce and Jake will be different as they grow older. Their grief will not go away. It will not go away just because they have a second Dad in their life, it will not go away as time moves on, it will always be there, in different forms in different stages of their understanding of the world around them. As for Jake, I think it will be something he deals with as he gets older. Understanding and realizing that he never knew his funny, smart, hyper and loving Dad.

Its not fair, but it is life. We will continue to deal with grief as it comes in its waves and its questions. Just know that children grieve. No matter how long it has been since they have lost their mom, Dad, sibling or grandparent, there are always questions. As their brain develops and beings to understand the world around them, their grief will come in new forms too. I am starting to see these new stages. Its easy to tuck away our grief and move forward with your day, but it comes up in waves and sneaks up like a cheeta on its prey. It comes out of dark places and having to deal with it has become part of our norm, yet I don't know think I will ever feel a sense of normalcy about it, because life is not supposed to be this way.