Confessions of a Mediocre Widow

by Catherine Tidd

  Could he later sue me for the therapy he would need after this date?

  After we parked in the dirt parking lot, the kids jumped out of the minivan and started running down the path toward Brad’s plot. Mike and I slowly got out of the car, uneasily not making eye contact. And then we both spotted it at the same time.

  There was a construction vehicle parked on the mountain right next to Brad’s plot. They were digging a grave…not for an urn…a full-on grave in the spot next to Brad.

  This made me nervous for two reasons. First, I didn’t want one of my kids to run around and take a flying leap into a hole that was six feet deep, although that would make it a Father’s Day to remember. (“Hey, Mom! Do you remember that time I fell in the grave?”)

  Second, it made the outing a little less peaceful and a lot creepier, and I wasn’t sure how Mike would handle it.

  But as we walked down the mountain toward Brad, Mike slowly turned, looked straight at me, and with a little twinkle in his eye he said one thing.

  “That’s not for me, is it?”

  I started laughing. It burbled up from my gut and came out of my mouth as my eyes filled with tears at the sheer ridiculousness of it all.

  And suddenly my heart felt lighter.

  Laughing with someone else.

  Absorbing that I could love someone else.

  And suddenly life’s possibilities seemed limitless.

  - Moving Forward -

  time to pull on your tights and become your own superhero

  24

  For the first few years of widowhood, I tried everything I could think of to find my old normal. I wanted to get back to that place where I had the same problems as everyone else I knew because those problems seemed a hell of a lot more normal than the ones that I now had. (Who knew that it was possible to wish for “normal problems”?) From attempting to be both Brad and myself for the kids to trying to recreate a life with someone else that would fit the idea of what I thought life should be like (there’s that dreaded “should” word again)…not only was it exhausting; it was impossible.

  But that was a lesson I needed to learn in my own time.

  I put a lot of pressure on myself when it came to figuring out my life on my own, especially when it came to parenting. I thought that no one would notice if I went a little crazy and no one would really care if I did…as long as it didn’t affect the kids.

  I constantly worried that the girls would pick up on the fact that I was incapable of doing everything by myself and that Michael wouldn’t get enough “guy time.” However, I do believe that with all of this female influence around, he’ll make great husband material. About a year after Brad died, I noticed that he had the most amazing ability to remember things I’d looked at in the mall, and before we left, he’d remind me about them.

  “Mom? Didn’t you like that purse? Don’t forget you wanted to buy that before we left.”

  I mean, who wouldn’t want their husband to do that?

  When he did that kind of stuff I was as proud as a dad watching his son score the winning run at a Little League game. Because, really, what are the chances that he’ll make it to the big leagues? Reminding a woman to go buy accessories is a skill that will serve him well for the rest of his life.

  There are always things that catch you off guard in single parenting, and in my case most of them have to do with my son. Oh, I know that there will be some “lumpy throat” moments with the girls. But I’m good at girl time. I’m good at relating to the girls, even as they go through various changes. Most of my “I’m not sure if I can do this” parenting moments have to do with Michael and worrying that just having a mom around won’t be enough.

  And that was never truer than when, four years after Brad died and Michael was entering the first grade, he decided to join the Boy Scouts.

  I had mixed feelings about it before we even made it to the meeting. I was worried about the time commitment, and I had heard horror stories from my sister, who had had to drag my nephew to every meeting and do just about every project for him during the six months he tried on the Boy Scout uniform.

  But for the most part, I was sad. I was really proud of Michael that he wanted to do this, and knowing how he operated, I was sure that he would make a great Boy Scout. But this was Brad’s deal. Brad had been the Boy Scout. Brad had been the Eagle Scout. Brad had volunteered with the Boy Scouts before we even had kids.

  And now he was missing out on his own son participating.

  I had reached the point that every parent looks forward to: when the kids are old enough to actually do stuff—not just sit in a stroller chewing on a pacifier while we walked through the zoo—like throw a ball, ride a bike, and discuss what had happened at school that day over dinner. Brad in particular looked forward to that time when the kids would be more interactive and he could show the girls how to ride their bikes and Michael how to fix a Jeep. We were just getting to that point with Haley when he died, and in the months before the accident, he loved taking her to the local go-cart track to watch the other kids race, hoping she would catch the bug.

  “Now, I think we need to make a deal,” I said the second time he took her. “We won’t put the kids in activities unless they ask. We’re not going to push our own agendas on them.”

  Of course, I said this secretly hoping they would all beg me for piano lessons on each of their sixth birthdays.

  And now he was missing the magical time he’d always dreamed about as a father. That in-between time when they were searching for independence but still needed to see your face in the crowd. When they showed off because they knew you were watching and actually cared. When they tested their boundaries because your opinion still mattered. When they wanted to go sleep someplace overnight…but still held on to you for a minute when you left.

  I sat in on those meetings as the leaders told us all that Boy Scouts was a “family” organization and that the moms were just as involved as the dads. But the moment the leader said, “You’ll have so much fun showing your son how to use a saw and all of your power tools!” I thought…

  His dad should be here doing this with him.

  I spent the entire first meeting with a huge lump in my throat and “I can’t do this” rolling around in my head. I mean, for crying out loud, I couldn’t even sew on the patches. Brad was the one who fixed our buttons and sewed in shoulder pads. (Yes, we were married in the ’90s when shoulder pads were oh so slimming.) So not only could I not do the “manly” part of what was expected in the Boy Scouts, I couldn’t even be a successful mom.

  That night after the first meeting, I went home and sat on the edge of my bed, softly crying while the kids put their pj’s on. “Brad should be here,” I thought. “I’m the one who should be gone. He would be handling all of this so much better than me.”

  Just then, ten-year-old Haley walked into the room and I quickly wiped my cheeks with the sleeve of my sweatshirt.

  “Mom?” she said softly.

  “What’s up, kiddo?” I asked, taking her into a one-arm hug.

  “I…I need to talk to you about something.”

  “What is it?”

  “I…I think I need a…a…”

  “What, sweetie?”

  “A bra.”

  An image flashed into my head of Brad sitting there instead of me. Of Brad taking her to the store to try on bras. Of Brad eventually figuring out the best way to tell his daughters how to use a tampon. (I would imagine it would go something like, “The directions are in the box. Here’s your grandmother’s phone number in case you have any questions.”)

  And then I realized: there’s no right way to do any of it. All we can do is work with what we have.

  Brad is very much a part of their lives, but in a positive way. For the most part, what they want to talk about when it comes to their dad is how much they remind me of him. I
don’t do it too often, because I don’t like to center their lives around what they’ve lost, but every once in a while, I’ll tell Michael, “Oh, you think so much like your dad!” Or to Haley, “Pizza is your favorite food? So was your dad’s!” Or to Sarah, “If you don’t stop that, you’re always going to be in trouble…just like Grandma says your dad was.”

  Okay. So that last one wasn’t very positive. But if there’s anything Sarah has inherited from her father, it’s his mischievous streak.

  When your kids lose a parent at such a young age, it’s hard to find the balance between keeping his memory alive and forcing memories and grief on them that they may not even have. I watch my kids very closely and take their lead on when we talk about their dad. I don’t randomly grab them in a group bear hug and wail about the fact that they’ve lost the best father and they’ll miss his presence for the rest of their lives.

  That will pretty much guarantee that you will be paying for an extra ten years of children’s counseling.

  Still, I’m all about emotion and sharing feelings, and I’m very upfront with my kids. If I’m crabby and one of them asks why, I’ll flat-out say, “I’m really missing Daddy right now, and sometimes I’m angry he’s not here.” Or when they do something great I’ll tell them, “I wish Daddy could have been here to see that.”

  And I know that even though they were young when he died, my kids wish that Brad could have been around to help me out a little. For years, they would hear me say daily, “How many hands do I have? And how many of you are there? Can you see that I can’t make your lunch, put in a movie, and wipe someone all at the same time?”

  I’ll never forget when, a couple of weeks after Brad died, I was trying to get a car seat strapped into my minivan, which was never my skill area. Even though most people deal with this sort of thing every day, when I suddenly found myself alone, something as simple as child safety became completely overwhelming. How is it possible that our generation survived riding on the floor on the passenger side of the car (probably right next to the fuel tank)? These days our kids are not considered safe unless a three-hundred-pound man has put all of his weight on a car seat with a five-point harness and pulled the seat belt to its tightest capacity so that there’s no way that sucker will go anywhere.

  Anyway, I sweated, grunted, and cried, trying to get that seat in, knowing I would never do it as well as Brad, thereby guaranteeing a death sentence for Sarah, when Haley, who was five at the time, looked and me and said, “I bet you really miss Daddy right now, huh?”

  One of the hardest things about grieving the loss of your spouse when you have kids is the fact that you have to kind of schedule your grief. You can’t just lose it in front of them all the time because kids are very sensitive and they know when you’re not yourself. As far as getting into what Oprah likes to call the “ugly cry,” I really try to do that when they’re not around or when they’re sleeping. And that’s hard. But if I’m having a nervous breakdown, they’ll think that they should, too. And even though I do everything I can to keep my husband’s memory alive, I really try not to force them to remember things that, frankly, they were just too young to remember.

  I know some kids who have lost a parent pull what I call “the death card” when they’re doing their best to get out of something they don’t want to do. And I know a lot of parents who fall for it. How can you help it? When a kid comes to you and says that they’re too grief-stricken to clear their dishes off the table, it’s hard to be anything but sympathetic. But I do believe I’ve gotten to the point where I can tell when they’re really having a “Daddy moment” and when they’re just trying to get out of picking up their room.

  My kids go through a phase every once in a while when they want to know what Daddy liked because they seem to want to connect with him in a certain way. They’ll ask me, “Did Daddy like to watch football? Did Daddy like to play in the snow?”

  Usually when they ask me something like that, I know their little minds are on the verge of a remembering something and I’ll tell them, “Yes, Daddy loved to watch football. Do you remember the time he sat with you, and you all wore your Steelers jerseys and we watched together? Do you remember the snowstorm when he ran around with your sled and threw you in the snow?”

  I’ll usually get a little nod and they’ll start telling me more details about what they remember. And it always amazes me how far back they can go and what memories are significant to a three-year-old. It may not have been that Dad was important at his job, but he made the best peanut-butter sandwiches ever and could fix anything.

  I will admit that I have been guilty of using these inquiries to my advantage. When one of them asks if Daddy liked broccoli, I will tell them that he loved it and ate it every chance he could.

  Hey, don’t judge me. I can use all the help I can get.

  • • •

  Life goes on, even after death. Kids grow. Happiness starts hanging around a little more often. And things change when you least expect them to. It’s a little clichéd to say that bad things happen to everyone; it’s how we deal with them that shows us who we really are. But it’s true. Brad’s death had shown me who I really was and what I was truly capable of. There were so many days that self-doubt would sneak its way into my brain and I would have to force myself to think, “Don’t think of the mistakes you’ve made. Think of the things in your life that you’re proud of.”

  And sometimes that’s easier said than done.

  As I started nearing the fifth anniversary of his death, I felt myself going through what I now call growing pains: I knew that things were about to be different. I didn’t know exactly what they were or where I was about to end up, which was torture for a planner like me. But I’d gotten to the point where I could sense it coming, like the darkening sky before a tornado. I would stand there and hope it would pass me by, but as life has a tendency to do every once in a while, change would pick me up, swirl me around, and leave me stunned in a place I didn’t quite recognize.

  And I would be left to pick up the pieces once more.

  25

  In the fall of 2012, five years into widowhood, I found myself in the pedicure chair once again. The RX8 had been sold, the house needed a new roof, and I was single again because Mike and I had broken up after three years together. Needless to say, I was not in the mood for brightly colored “Big Apple Red” on my toes. I was into more of the darker hues like “Midnight in Moscow.”

  It would be easy for me to say that I sat there, vibrating in that chair that had become so familiar to me over the years, wondering, “What has happened to my life?” But I didn’t wonder. I could link every decision I ever made that had gotten me to that point—from saying “I do” to Brad, to sadly nodding my okay when he bought that motorcycle, to dating and meeting Mike, and to ultimately saying the relationship wasn’t working for me anymore—and I take responsibility for them all.

  Because all of those decisions, the good and the bad, had led me to where I was and had shaped who I had become. And if I couldn’t accept all of it, it was as if I was saying I couldn’t accept myself.

  I have discovered that the worst kind of breakup doesn’t come in the heat of the moment, during a fight, or because you can’t stand the thought of seeing someone ever again. The worst is actually when both people are good, kind, and caring. And when one of them decides that it’s just not working anymore in spite of all of those things.

  My decision to try life on my own again came as a surprise to many, including the kids. They had spent years with Mr. Mike a part of their lives, and it didn’t occur to them that it wouldn’t always be that way. Since Brad’s death, I had always tried to stay ahead of the three of them emotionally, doing my best to anticipate their needs before they even knew they had them. But on the day I told them that Mr. Mike was going to be in our lives just as a friend from then on and that we wouldn’t see as much of him as we used to…I�
�ll admit that I didn’t see what was coming.

  The kids had weathered the storm of Brad’s death so well that I underestimated how hard this breakup would be. That, in fact, it would be another loss to them and hit them at a time in their lives when they were old enough to truly understand what was gone but maybe not old enough to understand why. I watched in horror as tears began to flow down Haley’s eleven-year-old cheeks. Michael’s face twitched as if trying to hold everything in, and Sarah started to sob.

  “This is the worst change we’ve ever been through,” she cried. And I realized how naive I’d been, assuming that she would remember how hard our lives became in 2007 when she lost her father…when she was really too young to remember it at all.

  I held my children that day and cried along with them. That the pain they were experiencing was a result of something I had done—and not because of some outside influence I had no power to control, like death—was something I almost couldn’t take. We were careful around each other the rest of the day as if one false step might break the balance that was now just the four of us again. The kids were quieter than they had been in a long time. Which gave me more time to digest what I had done.

  The next day, I packed them up in the car for the sole purpose of getting us out of the house. Our faces were drawn and tired, but I had hopes that if we could just get out in the fall sunshine, the world would look a little brighter to us all.

  “We’re going on a short hike,” I said as I backed out of the driveway.

  While I drove, the kids pointed out the blinding fall foliage. They had a conversation in the backseat about how Halloween was in just a couple of weeks and brainstormed about costumes. They hopped out of the car when we reached our destination, a trailhead not far from our house. And as we hiked, my son taking the lead at a breakneck pace while my daughters and I struggled to keep up, Sarah took my hand.