Clinging to 2012

I am posting this Chapter today, 12/31/2016, even though, chronologically, I have only posted about the first month (March 2012) following the loss of my husband.  I thought pulling this post up and sharing it tonight might help others who experienced a heartbreaking loss this year. 

December 31, 2012 was nearly ten months after the passing of my husband.  I woke that morning with conflicting feelings.  Part of me wanted to run, somewhat literally, into 2013, away from 2012, which had been the worse year of my 43 year life.  But a bigger part of me wanted to stay in 2012.  Why?  Because Gordie was alive in 2012, even if it was for just a short period of time.  It sounds ridiculous but I wanted to stay living in a year in which my husband actually lived.  Moving into a new year felt like moving on and I was not ready to move on.

I peeled myself out of bed, got the boys some breakfast and went back to my room.  I dragged out old picture albums and my computer and spent hours looking at pictures from our life together.  I sat on the floor and hugged our engagement picture.  

“Please come back”, I whispered.

I finally put the pictures away and got my running clothes on.  I dressed the boys, brushed their teeth and took them over to my parents' house so they could watch them while I went for a run.

As I ran, I tried to think positively about 2013.   

It had to be better.  Right? 

But as I headed up the street towards an entrance to Mount Diablo Park, a thought popped into my head that nearly made me halt. 

What if it’s not better?  What if something worse happens? 

For me the only thing worse than losing my husband would be losing one of my children. 

There is no way God would do that to me… right?

But what if other bad things that I constantly worry about happen in 2013?  What if I do not have enough money to meet my obligations and give the boys the life I want to give them?  I spent a lot of money during December.  I just kept throwing money at things trying to get through the holidays.  I did not even think about it.  If it made my boys happy or gave me a moment of happiness, I spent it.  What if I had been reckless? 

What if I lose my job? 

Worry.  Worry. Worry. 

What if 2013 is a financial disaster? 

What if something else bad happens in 2013?  I will not be able to survive another bad year.

I started running faster.  The fear and the worry were pulsating through my body and driving my pace like an electrical charge.  I ran five miles and barely felt it.  All I felt was a mix of horrible emotions:  worry, fear, and sadness. 

We had no invitations for New Year’s Eve so the boys and I spent it at home.  I tried to make it a special evening with small things that make boys ages 7 and 2 happy.  We went and got their favorite pizza.  We bought ingredients to make ice cream sundaes.  We toasted Gordie with a bottle of sparking apple cider.  We used Nathan’s new video game and had a Dance Party contest.

I let the boys stay up until 10pm and then put them to bed.  We said a prayer for a better 2013.   

I went back into our family room and sat on the couch.  I grabbed the remote and started searching stations.  My heart stopped when I saw South Park on the listing.  After Nathan was born, Gordie and I had spent many New Year’s Eves watching South Park marathons and eating a special dinner after putting Nathan to bed.  I never, ever watched South Park except on those New Year’s Eves with Gordie.  I quickly flipped past the listing on the remote and turned to Dick Clark instead.

PitBull eventually came on.  I thought of last year, watching the same show with Gordie. 

“That’s him?  That’s PitBull?  He’s a short, white, bald guy!”  Gordie said with amazement. 

Me laughing.  “Yeah, but he rocks!  Just wait.” 

After PitBull’s performance Gordie said, “You are right.  He rocks.  I like him”.

I watched PitBull again on New Year’s 2012, but this time alone.   I then wrote a letter to Gordie. 

Dear Gordie:

Tonight is New Year’s Eve.  It is the last day of the worse year of my entire life.  A year where the word pain took on a meaning I never wanted to understand.  Today is also the last day of the last year of your life.  When I wake up tomorrow it will be 2013, a year that you never lived.  All day I have both dreaded and welcomed the end of the year.  I dread it because there will never again be a year where you were with us for at least part of the year.  There will never be another day when I can think “earlier this year when he was still with us…”.  So many times today I sank down against a wall and sobbed as I thought about this.

The other part of me welcomes 2013 because of how awful 2012 was for me and more importantly, for our sons.  Part of me wants to end this year by throwing it in the garbage can or throwing it off a cliff.  2013 has to be better.  It just has to.  I need it to be better.

Tomorrow is the final day of the holiday season.  I started dreading the holidays in early October.  I knew they were going to be terrible and they absolutely were…for me.  But I feel proud to tell you that I think they were more than OK for our sons.  I pray you were able to see how I busted my ass to provide them a special, festive, and fun holiday season, even though all I wanted to do each day was crawl in bed and cry.  And despite how difficult and sad the season was for me, the smiles and joy on our sons’ faces made it all worth it. 

Tonight the boys and I ate pizza from one of their favorite pizza places:  a place that we never went to when you were alive.  We said a toast for the new year and for you with Sparkling Apple Cider.  After dinner Nathan made us ice cream sundaes and we toasted you with our spoons before we dug in.  Then we played Nathan’s new Dance party game on the Wii.  All three of us danced, even Wyatt.  Tears fell down my face as I watched the boys dancing.  I wished so much that you could see them.  Wyatt’s moves are just hysterical.  I think he got them from you.  In our prayer for you tonight we said “please let 2013 be a better year for us but it will never be as good as the first couple months of 2012”.  It’s so true.  No year will ever be as good as the first two months of 2012 because you will not be a part of it. 

I am still so, so, so angry and sad.  The 10^th month anniversary of your death is in two days and I am just as angry and just as sad.  I am still somewhat in shock and disbelief.  There has not been one day since you died that I have not said “how did he die?  How did this happen?”  I still lie in bed at night or in the morning and think about that day and how you possibly could have fell in the pool and died.  It still makes no sense to me.

As I sit here tonight I can’t help but think about past New Year Eves with you.  Our first one together was in 1996.  I think we were in Tahoe.  There are pictures of us in Tahoe on a NY Eve but I can’t remember if it was that year or in 1997.  I remember 1998 when we went to New York for New Year’s Eve, saw the Lion King, and then counted down the new year in Times Square.  I will always be glad we did that together.   But the New Year’s Eves that I will always treasure the most are the ones after we had Nathan.  We would put him to bed, you would cook a special dinner, and we would watch the South Park marathon.  We never watched South Park except on NY Eve but we did this ritual for years after we became parents.  There is a South Park marathon on tonight but I can’t watch it.  It would put me into a state of despair, which I am already nearly in.

For the past few days I have thought about what my New Year’s resolution should be.  Honestly I feel that I really don’t need to have one this year because of what I have been through but I’ve still been contemplating what makes sense.  I would love to resolve to be happy and not sad anymore but I know that I would fail.  I’ve considered resolving to find a new career that would allow me to spend more time with our sons and lighten my stress level.  I think that would be a good one to focus on but I worry about not figuring it out and disappointing myself.   However, I remind myself that I have pulled myself and our sons through this devastating loss thus far so I should feel confident that I can make anything happen.  So, that’s going to be the one.  I resolve to finding a new career that allows me to be the kind of parent we wanted you to be when we decided you should work only part time for the next several years.  I’m going to give it my best try. 

Oh, and Nathan and I decided that I should resolve to clean up my language.  I am sure you are not surprised:  you always told me I needed to clean up my truck driver’s mouth.  Well, now Wyatt is saying some naughty words.  So, it’s time for me to clean up my mouth. 

So, those are my New Year Resolutions.  To figure out a new career and to clean up my mouth.  I hope those sound good to you.  And, if I can find a way to be a little happier and a little less sad in 2013, I will.  But I can’t make any promises on that one.

I’m still struggling with the existence of God and the Afterworld.  I want to believe but it’s so hard to believe that a God would do this to the boys and me.  However, I hope that if there is a God and Heaven, you are looking out for us and doing what you can to bring us good things in 2013.  We could really use a happy and easy year with a few good surprises. 

I miss you Gordie.  I will miss 2012 more than any year because it was the last year that I saw you, heard you laugh, watched you with our sons, slept next to you, and shared every important moment with you.  But I refuse to say it was the last year that I was your wife.  I will always be your wife.  Always.

I miss you.  I love you.

Staci   

At 11:10pm, I finished my letter, closed my computer, and got ready for bed.  I looked at myself in the mirror as I brushed my teeth.  Tears rolled down my face, slid into my mouth, and mixed with the toothpaste.

Tomorrow I will wake up in a year where Gordie never lived, I thought. 

I got in bed, took one of my pills to help me sleep, and thankfully, fell asleep before midnight.

The Christmas Choice

My Running with Grief blog is slowly chronicling the first 13 months after I lost my 44 year old husband (Gordie) and how I used running to pull myself and my two young sons through grief.  However, tonight I found myself compelled to write about Christmas five years after our loss.

As I will write about in other chapters, after you lose someone people will soon start asking “is it getting better?”  It’s kind of an insane question but it’s, generally, asked out of love.  When my friends and family ask me this question, it’s because internally they are desperately hoping I will say yes.  They love me and they want to know that my destroyed life is getting better.

There is another group of people who ask me this question…the people who have lost husbands, wives, children, parents, and other loved ones.  They ask it a little bit differently.

“Does it get better?” they ask. 

They also desperately want me to say yes because they can’t imagine living with the level of pain they are currently experiencing for the rest of their lives.

Here is the honest answer.

It never gets easier.  It never gets better.  But you learn to live with it.  And you make a choice on how it’s going to affect your life, your days, and things like Christmas.  I will talk more about making a choice as I release chapters from those 13 months following Gordie’s death.  But for this chapter, I will talk about the Christmas choice my sons and I make each and every year.

For the fifth time since Gordie died, I have chosen to do whatever I can to make this a festive, happy, magical time of year for my sons.  Even when I just want to go to bed, pull the covers over my head, and stay there until January 2^nd.   My sons were ages six and two when Gordie died.  There was no fucking way that I was going to rob them of what Christmas should be:  magical, celebratory, and fun and I still feel that way today.  My kids got screwed when their Dad died.  As long as I have control over it, they will never get screwed out of a magical Christmas season.   

I have strategically created a balance of traditions that are a mix of traditions BGD (before Gordie’s death) and traditions AGD (after Gordie’s death).  Even though I felt like clinging to the past in that first Christmas of our new life, I felt it was important to create some new traditions to help my sons and me move forward.  Five years in, my sons look forward to the old and the new traditions. 

Are there tough moments and days this fifth Christmas season of our new lives?  Absolutely.  The worse one for me is when I take the Christmas totes down from the garage shelves and open the one with Gordie’s stocking.  It nearly leveled me the first Christmas after he died.  Five years later, it was the same.  I opened the tote, saw the stocking, lost my breath, sat on the cold garage floor and cried…hoping the boys would not walk out. 

There are tons of other things that still suck and there are so many moments that, year after year, make me silently whisper I wish you were here:  watching the kids sit on Santa’s lap, reading their Christmas lists, deciding what gifts to purchase for them, watching their school Christmas plays, decorating the tree, and putting the Santa presents out on Christmas Eve.  There are so many things I miss and would pay heaps of money to be able to do again like begging him to put the lights on the house even when it’s snowing like heck outside, watching him watch his favorite movie The Christmas Story and laughing at him laughing at his favorite parts, and giving him the carrot to bite into and then throw on the lawn so it looks like a reindeer ate it.  Similarly, there are lots of hard moments for the boys, particularly Nathan since he has memories of the Christmas season with Gordie.  I see it on his face when he finds one of Gordie’s ornaments in the tote as we decorate the tree.  I know what he’s thinking when he hears about Father/Son football games on Thanksgiving or Christmas Day.  And I know that Wyatt is desperately looking for a connection with Gordie when he begs me to tell him the same Gordie Christmas stories year after year. 

So, no, in the absolute, it has not gotten better.  Even though our lives have moved forward and there are new people in them that make us happy, it’s still not the Christmas Season the three of us want.  But here’s the thing.  We have two choices:  we can be miserable through the Christmas season and long for the past, or we can choose to be happy and make the most of the Christmas season that we have been given.  The boys and I chose the latter that first awful year that Gordie died and we continue to make that choice every Christmas.  We make cookies, we decorate the house inside and out with BGD and AGD decorations, we continue our Advent tradition from when Gordie was here, we drive around and look for crazy Christmas lights, we watch Gordie’s favorite Christmas Story movie, we spend a night in the city, and we bring a small potted Christmas tree to Gordie’s headstone.  And I run.  A lot.  Five years later, I still cry on some of those runs.  But, not all the time.  Progress.

Most importantly, we laugh and we celebrate.  The boys’ excitement for Christmas morning builds as each December day ticks by and culminates with them waking up ungodly early on Christmas morning, running to the door of my room, jumping up and down (mostly Wyatt) and yelling “can we go out there Mom?”

So, even though we would pick a different Christmas season if we had one Christmas wish, we are just like most people.  We look forward to the Christmas season year after year and we have a blast. 

We don’t hang Gordie’s stocking though.  The boys wanted to that first year.  I just could not do it.  It makes me so sad to look at that stocking.  I’m not sure why.  So, every year, I close the tote with Gordie’s stocking in it, put it back on the shelf, wipe my eyes and go back into the house to finish decorating.  I have a magical Christmas to get started on.    

Back to Work

I work in Innovation at The Clorox Company.  When Gordie died I had worked there for a mere 16 months.  The position I had back then reported into a function in the Oakland Headquarters but I did nearly all of my work for a small innovation group located at the Pleasanton R&D campus.  The function I reported into is a large group with some politics that, frankly, drove me nuts.  The small innovation group that I did the majority of my work for had become a family to me and had, from day one, provided an environment where I felt safe and happy.

In the week following Gordie’s funeral the thought of returning to work caused me significant stress for many reasons.  First, I was terrified I would not be able to control my emotions and that I would embarrass myself at work.  Second, I was worried that I would not be able to function and perform my job at the level I was accustomed to.  Third, I was a ticking time bomb with the anger that raged inside my body.  What if I totally lost it?  Fourth, would people quietly talk about what had happened to me as I left meetings or as I passed by them in the halls?  Finally, I was scared shitless about how I would manage being a solo parent while working full time in a demanding job, at a demanding company.  That last fear was, at times, absolutely paralyzing. 

Honestly, I did not want to return.  I wanted to take a leave of absence.  But I was afraid of the financial consequence and the long-term implications at work.  I knew that Clorox would accommodate a leave of absence but ultimately I was afraid that I would lose the Innovation position I had back then.  There was no way they could have held my job open.  They would have to fill it and find a new place for me when I returned.  I loved that job.  It was the only job that I wanted at Clorox.  And it worked well with my life.  It was located in Pleasanton.  Most of the other positions at my level in my function were located in Oakland.  And they were not 100% focused on innovation, which was my passion.  If I was going to continue working at Clorox, that was the only job I wanted.  I had to go back.  I felt there was no other choice.  Ironically, years later, that position would be eliminated.

I officially did not return back to work until three weeks after Gordie died.  However, ten days after Gordie’s funeral there was a meeting with my small Innovation team in Pleasanton that I felt I had to attend.  Two of the projects I was in charge of were on the agenda.  Even though work was the last place I wanted to go, I felt compelled to attend the meeting.  I did not tell anyone I was coming.  I woke up that morning and went for a run.  I thought the running might help calm my nerves before going into the office.  I was so nervous that it impacted my run; every part of my body was tight and the run hurt.  I tried to relax my body into an easy pace but my body would not cooperate.  My mind was racing.  How on earth was I going to walk into my office?

After my run, I got myself showered and decently enough dressed.  I put on just enough make-up so that I did not look like death.   I drove to work, all the way saying out loud “please let me not cry, please let me not cry, please let me not cry”. 

I walked into my building and up the stairs.  Nobody saw me.  I headed to the conference room and took a deep breath just before I opened the door.  Everyone looked toward the door.  The surprise on their faces was notable but short.  One by one people came up to me gave me a hug and said things like “it’s nice to see you back” or “welcome back”.  Nobody said the dreaded words “I’m sorry”.  It was like they knew I could not hear those words.  And then we got down to business and everyone treated me normal. 

One week later I returned to Pleasanton full time.  Again, everyone treated me normal.  Over the weeks a few of the people I was close to would ask me how I was doing or ask about the kids and I would open up and talk to them.  One of those people was Lisa, a woman who lost her husband years ago.  She had told me her story months before Gordie died but I did not truly understand her life until now.  In an email while I was still out, she wrote “we are sisters now”.  Indeed we were.  Over the next few months and years Lisa would become very important to me.  I talked to her.  I cried to her.  I asked her questions that nobody else could understand or answer.  I would look for her face when I was presenting or talking in a meeting.  She was comforting to me for reasons I am still not able to explain. 

I made it until about 3pm on that first official day back to work.  I then hit a wall emotionally and physically.  I was exhausted from holding back the tears for over six hours.  I quietly slid out the door and drove home, crying all the way.  For several months after Gordie died, I would often leave at 3 or 4pm, just before the tears broke through the dam and started to fall.  I would finish my work late at night when I was looking for an excuse not to go to bed alone.  I am very, very grateful to Clorox and my bosses back then.  I got my job done, and I did it well, but often not during regular work hours.  Nobody ever said a word. 

So, at least three out of my four fears did not come true.  I never embarrassed myself at work with a crying breakdown.  I never went into an angry rage.  I was able to perform my job at the level that I was accustomed to.  I don’t know if people talked about what happened to me as I left meetings or after they passed me in the halls.  I’m sure they did but if they did, they were very discrete.  I never heard anything…at all. 

Unfortunately my fifth, and biggest, fear was valid.  Working full time and being a solo parent would prove to be more difficult than I actually feared.    

Back to School

Nathan missed the entire week of school following Gordie’s death.  The Friday following Gordie’s death was “Hawaiian Day” at school.  Nathan was sad to miss it because he had all of his Hawaiian stuff from our trip a week before Gordie died.  I think he would have gone to school that day had it not been the day of Gordie’s funeral.  The day after Gordie’s funeral, which was a Saturday, I sat down with Nathan.

“What are you thinking about in terms of school Bud?  Do you think you want to go back on Monday?”, I asked.

“I don’t know”, Nathan replied, looking at me with those big, sad brown eyes.

“OK.  Well think about about it over the weekend and we can decide tomorrow night”. 

“Who will take me?”, Nathan asked.

“Me”, I replied.

“Are you not going to work anymore and take care of me and Wyatt?”, he asked.

“I would love to Bud but I have to work so that we have food and clothes and sports stuff”, I replied with a little smile. 

“Oh.”, he said.  And then “who’s going to take care of me and Wyatt?” he asked.

Good fucking question I thought.

“I’m going to start looking for a Nanny”, I said.

“OK”, Nathan said.  He did not look happy. 

Nathan was cared for by a Nanny his first 3.5 years of his life, until Gordie was laid off in the economic downturn late 2008.  Gordie cared for him from then until his death.  Nathan had never been happier than when Gordie was what I jokingly called “the Manny”. 

“Don’t worry Bud, I will find a super fun Nanny”, I said.

“OK”, he said but he looked worried. 

On Sunday afternoon, Nathan told me he wanted to go back to school.  I was actually pretty surprised.  Although I really should not have been surprised.  Nathan had gone to baseball practice the morning after Gordie died…which was his choice.   

The next morning I woke him up.

“You still want to go to school today Bud?” I asked as he wiped the sleep from his eyes.

“Yes.  I miss my friends”, he said.

“OK.  Let’s get up and get ready”, I said.

I helped him get dressed, fed him breakfast, made his lunch, and helped him pack his backpack.  We drove to school.  I felt like I was going to throw up.  What was this going to be like for him?  How would his friends treat him?  Would people mention his Dad?  Would he cry?  Would he want to go home early?

I parked my car and walked Nathan to the front of his school.  The whistle blew and it was time for the kids to line up with their classes.  We walked toward Nathan’s class line.  His friends were already in line. 

“Nathan!” his best friend, Cade, yelled. 

Cade ran over to Nathan and gave him a hug. 

Nathan’s other friends gathered around him.

“Hi Nathan”,

“It’s good to have you back”

“We missed you”

I looked at Nathan’s face.  He looked happy.  It was the first time I had seen a happy look on his face since this nightmare started.  The tears started rolling down my cheeks. 

I walked over and touched his shoulder.  “You OK Bud?  Should I stay?” I asked.

“You can go Mom.  I’ll see you after school”.

I walked back to my car, my dark sunglasses on, tears still falling from my eyes.  I drove home.  I was so happy that Nathan had such loving friends in his life.  But I was also so angry that he was now the boy at school, and everywhere else, “whose father died”.  That angry feeling in my gut started to boil again.  I needed to run.   

Before that day I had never, ever run with my phone.  I don’t like how heavy it is.  I prefer to run with a lighter iPod.  When I got home from taking Nathan to school, I grabbed my phone and my iPod.  I put my phone into the pocket of my running pants and clipped my iPod to the waistband.  I left my parents’ house and started running down the street.  The weight of the phone bothered me, in fact, as I ran, I felt like my pants were going to fall down.  But there was no way I was going to let that phone out of my sight just in case the school called because Nathan needed me.  I ran through the streets of my parents’ neighborhood thinking of Nathan’s happy face when his friends gathered around him at school.

He’s going to be OK, I thought. 

Nathan stayed at school all day.  When I picked him up, he walked up to me with a happy face. 

“My friends all made me cards”, he said.

I smiled.  “That’s so nice”, I replied.

When we got home from school, Nathan and I sat at the table and looked at each and every card that expressed his classmates' sadness about him losing his Dad.  Nathan loved them and so did I.  There is something so simple, honest, and sweet about first grade condolences cards.   

When I put him to bed that night, I marveled at his strength.  I could not believe that he went back to school one week after losing his Dad.  As I turned off the light in the boys’ room and headed down the hall to my room, I had one thought in my head.

How the hell did Nathan do it?  I don’t know how I will ever be able to go back to work.

Groundhog Day

When you experience a significant loss or something traumatic, the only time you truly get away from it is when you are sleeping.  Getting to sleep each night was difficult for me.  Just getting into my PJs and under my covers was difficult.  I did not want to go to bed without my husband.  I did not want to lay there in the dark next to nothing.  I had slept next to Gordie for 16 years.  I would sometimes close my eyes and try to trick myself that he was next to me but it rarely worked. 

By the second week following Gordie's death, I was taking a mild anti-anxiety pill, which relaxed me at night, turned my brain off, and let me go to sleep.  After several sleepless nights following Gordie’s death my Mother, who is an RN, took matters into her own hands and called my doctor.

“She’s not sleeping…at all.  She can’t keep doing this.  She has two little boys.  She needs something and she said she does not want sleeping pills”, my Mom told my doctor.

The pills my Dr prescribed did just the trick.  I was still staying up into the wee hours of the morning either working on closing out Gordie’s life or doing my weird Internet searches looking for proof that Heaven existed.  But I would eventually take my pill and drift off to sleep.

The problem with sleeping is that you wake up.  And when you wake up each morning you have this blissful, sleepy, not yet awake, 10-second period where you think you are living your old life.  You forget the bad thing that happened, you forget that your life was completely hijacked, you forget that you are living a nightmare.  It was the best 10 seconds of my day for years.  But then, the sleepiness goes away, you fully wake up and the reality of recent events and the life you are now living comes crashing down like a rock slide.  And it happens every…fucking…day.  Ten seconds of bliss followed by the crashing reality.  Ten seconds of bliss followed by crashing reality.  Over and over and over.  Day after day after day.  It’s like that movie Groundhog Day.  It just keeps happening...morning after morning. 

Most mornings I would bury my face in my pillow and try to go back to sleep so that I could wake up again to that 10 seconds of blissful forgetfulness.  But I was rarely successful.  Instead the tears would roll out of my eyes and into my pillow, as I thought about getting up and living yet another day in the hell that was now my life. 

So, for the rest of March, April and May, I became a morning runner.  I would drag myself out of bed tired since I was still probably only sleeping five hours a night, even with the help of my precious pill.  I would put my running clothes and shoes on, grab my iPod, and silently slip out my parents’ door.  The running was the only thing that helped mitigate the crashing reality that hit me like a ton of bricks every time I woke up.    

Marriage Ended in Death

One of the real joys of losing your spouse is that for the most part you, and only you, can close out their life.  Even if you have the greatest friends in the world like I do, it’s nearly impossible for them to handle it.  I would later find some resources and lists with instructions on how to close out someone’s life but when I started doing it one week after Gordie’s death, I was making my own lists.  Gordie and I had wills and trusts in place before his passing but in hindsight, we were not entirely prepared for an unexpected death.  There were a lot of loose ends that are probably typical of healthy people in their 40s who are not expecting to die early.  Closing out Gordie’s life would take years.  I ended up doing the most important stuff in those first few months and then I was so sick of everything death related, I just stopped and took a multi year break.  Truthfully, 4.5 years later, I am still not done. 

I ended up taking three weeks off from work after Gordie died but I was working 80 hour weeks taking care of my sons, searching for a Nanny to care for them when I went back to work, and closing Gordie’s life.  I would be on my computer into the wee hours of the morning making lists, filling out forms, and researching information on how to do things.  It was exhausting and mentally torturous. 

The Coroner released a temporary death certificate fairly quickly.  It was temporary because of the investigation into how Gordie actually died.  The cause of death section said "to be determined."  I was able to use this temporary certificate to do almost everything that needed to be done. 

I made an appointment at Social Security as soon as I had the temporary death certificate.  Luckily they were able to fit me in within a few days.  I walked into the office with my “death folder”, as I called it, and sat in the waiting room.  I looked around at the people in the waiting room and wondered why they were here.  Then I started thinking do they wonder what I’m doing here?  Can they tell by my face that my husband died?

My name was called and a woman led me to her desk.  She asked how she could help me.

“My husband died”, I replied.

Her face was expressionless.  “I’m sorry”, she said.  Then, with barely a pause “do you have a death certificate?” 

I handed it to her.

She started typing away on her computer.  Then she started asking questions.

“Do you have kids?" she asked.

“Yes”.

 

“How many?” she asked.

“Two”

“What are their ages?”

“Six and two”

“What are their full names?”

I gave them to her.

“Was Gordon their biological or adopted Father?”

“Yes, biological”, I said while thinking. are you shitting me?

“Do you work?”

“Yes”

“What is your salary?”

I told her. 

“You will not qualify for surviving spouse benefits other than a one time payment of $250”, she said.

“OK.  Why?”  I asked

“Because of your income.  It’s too high”.

What I would learn later is that if a surviving spouse makes about $20 a year in our fabulous country, you don’t qualify for surviving spouse benefits.  I felt like telling her that I would be paying nearly $50K/year for a Nanny so that I could continue to do my job and on top of that would be paying for housing, food, clothing, benefits, and other needs ON MY FUCKING OWN.  But I kept my mouth shut.

“But you will get surviving children’s benefits” she said. 

“OK.  How much is that?”  I asked.

“I have to figure it out”, she said.  The amount she later gave me was nothing to get excited about.  Let’s just say that in the area where I live, social security benefits are a mere fraction of what most women of divorce are getting in child support…even if they have joint custody. 

She kept on typing and eventually started printing out documents.  She placed them in front of me. 

At the top of the first page, in fairly big font, the words “Marriage Ended in Death” screamed out at me.

I have never been sucker punched but I have taken a ball to the gut several times through my years of playing soccer.  At that moment, I felt like I had taken a ball to the gut.  The breath was knocked out of me.

Marriage Ended in Death?  My marriage ended?  I’m not married? 

I was stunned.  Not once in the 12 days since Gordie passed had anyone told me that I was not legally married anymore.  Not once had the notion even crossed my mind. 

The Social Security Lady is the one who breaks the news to me that I am not actually married anymore?  Are you fucking kidding me?

The little fire pit of anger that was now permanently in my belly ignited. I looked down at my wedding ring on my left hand as my fists were clenching.  I then literally sat on my clenched fists to prevent myself from thrusting my left hand in the Social Security lady’s face and screaming “you see that Bitch?  That’s a wedding ring.  I am married!  I will always be married to Gordie.  Fuck you!”

I don’t remember anything more she told me during that meeting.  At the end, I just added the forms she gave me to the Death Folder and walked to my car.  I drove home dazed, sad, and pissed.  When I got home, my Mom had things with Wyatt under control.  She looked at my face.  I just rolled my eyes and said, “I need to run”.  She nodded. 

I ripped off my sweats, put my running clothes on and laced up my shoes.  I grabbed my iPod and took off out the door.  As I ran, I did not see the road in front of me.  All I could see were those words “Marriage Ended in Death”. 

Welcome to Hotel California...but worse

Prior to Gordie’s passing, I knew only two widows close to my age.  But that was about to change…significantly.

The Sunday morning following Gordie’s death, I took the boys to church…in my sweats.  Hopefully God gives a hall pass to recent widows regarding church appropriate attire.  At the end of Mass, our friend Tammy, who went to high school with Gordie and me, walked toward me with a tall, dark haired, striking, woman.

“Staci”, Tammy said, “this is Monica.  She went to high school with us.  She lost her husband many years ago”. 

Monica reached out her hand to shake mine.  I grabbed it.

“I’m so sorry about your loss.  I was in the same class as Gordie’s brother.  I have two daughters who were very young when my husband died.  I will make sure someone gets you my contact information.  Please let me know if I can ever help you”, Monica said.

That meeting in the back of church turned out to be life changing for me.  Monica would become what I refer to as my “Widow Mentor”…for years.  She has given me the good, the bad, and the ugly.  She was the first person to tell me “this was not what you planned but there is nothing you can do about it.”   She has given me advice that I did not want to hear but needed to, more than once.  She also was the first and only person to tell me that the relationship I would have with my sons, as a solo Mom, would be incredible.  She was right.

A week later Monica sent me an email with information about a meeting for a group called Widows and Kiddos.  She wrote that it was a group she had been part of for several years and it had been helpful to her and her girls.  Their next meeting was in a week.  Did I want to go?

I sat on my bed reading the email.

Widows group????  I am now eligible for Widows groups?  This is a fucking nightmare.  Who wants to be in a Widows group?

I went back and forth on whether to attend but I finally decided to go for it.  My decision to go was mostly based on Nathan:  I thought it would be helpful for him to meet other children, hopefully some boys, who had lost their Dads. 

On the day of the meeting, I went for a run before the meeting started at 6pm.  I was nervous.  What if I could not handle it?  What if I cried the entire time and made a fool of myself?  What if Nathan could not handle it?  What if nobody played with him?  What if I could not relate to anyone?  I pounded the pavement of the streets trying to shake the worry off of me like droplets of sweat.  I barely even noticed the music from my iPod because the voice in my head asking all of those questions seemed to be screaming. 

We walked into the Church that hosts Widows and Kiddos.  A pretty blonde woman walked right up to me. 

“Are you Staci”, she asked?

“Yes”, I replied. 

“I’m Laura.  I started the group.  I was widowed a couple of years ago too and I have a daughter”, she said.

I studied Laura’s face.  She looked happy.  She did not look dazed.  She did not look pathetic.  She looked like a normal woman. 

She went on to say “I’m so glad you came.  I know it’s a club that nobody wants to be in”.  She smiled gently as she said that. 

Her words were exactly what I had been thinking since I received Monica’s email about the meeting.  I did not want to be here.  I did not want to have this commonality with these women.  But what I would soon learn is that I was part of the Widows club regardless of what I wanted.  It’s like the song Hotel California, but worse.  In the Eagles’ song, you can check out but you can never leave.  However at least, seemingly, you checked in willingly.  In the Widows Club, you did not check in voluntarily and you can never leave.  It’s fucking fantastic.

Laura led me down the hall to where we drop off our kids who are watched, fed, and entertained by Youth Members and Adults from the church.  They even had a separate room for little ones like Wyatt.  I dropped Wyatt in the little playroom.  Then I took Nathan into the bigger room with the kids his age and older.  Nathan looked really tentative.  Laura helped introduce him to some of the other kids.  A man named Steve, who founded the group with Laura, walked up to us.  He was so friendly. 

“Do you like sports Nathan”, he asked?

Nathan nodded.

“Well, let’s get some kind of ball game going on”, Steve said, “C’mon”.  Nathan followed him.

Laura let me back down the hall and up the stairs to a room filled with women.  A dinner buffet was set on the side but I could not eat.

Women kept coming up, introducing themselves to me.  Again, I studied each of their faces.  What I found is that there were two categories of faces in the room.  The first were the women who looked dazed, sad, and haggard.  The second group was the women who looked like Laura and Monica.  They did not look sad.  They did not look dazed.  They did not look haggard.  Their faces looked like the faces of my friends.  They looked happy.  And as I looked closer I saw another trait in their face:  determination.

I want to look like them, I thought, thinking of the second group, I AM going to look like them. 

It was the first part of a bigger choice that I would eventually make.

We sat at a table with our dinners and started to chat.  We did introductions around the room.  It was each person’s choice if they wanted to share the story of how their husband died.  I think everyone did.  There was a mix of women whose husbands died suddenly and whose husbands were sick.  All had kids of various ages.

As we circled around the table taking turn with introductions, it came to a woman with long dark hair.  I thought I had seen her somewhere before.  I was right.  Her name was Eden and she also went to my High School.  There were three of us there from my High School.  What are the friggin’ chances?

At this meeting I met some women who were also runners:  Laura, Carolyn, Barb.  They too used running to help them through their grief.  Additionally, Carolyn had been raising two boys alone for years.  I gravitated to her immediately.  Carolyn would become my Boy Mom Widow Mentor.

I came to find out that some of the "Running Widows" had done their first significant races:  half marathons, marathons, after their husbands died.  I told them I had never done a race of that magnitude.

“You should do the Rock and Roll San Francisco Half Marathon with us next year”, Carolyn said.  “It’s a great race and a great choice for your first half marathon.” 

I had never run more than 8 miles…if that.  Could I run 13.2 miles in a year, I thought? 

The seed of an idea was planted.

That first Widow and Kiddos meeting turned out to be not only a turning point in my running career but also the start of a lifeline for my boys and for me.  I have found it critical to my survival to have a network of women, who I now call friends, who live my life everyday.  Similarly, my sons have a place where we can go and they are just like everyone else. 

After I put the boys to bed that night, I went to my room and sat on my bed.  I looked at my running shoes sitting in the corner.  Gordie had been training for his first half marathon when he died.  I did sprint triathlons before Nathan was born and I had run many, many 10k races and even the 7.5 Bay to Breakers a few times.  But I had never thought I had it in me to run more than that. 

Gordie did not get to do his half marathon, I thought.  I’m going to do it for him.  I’m going to run that Rock and Roll half marathon in a year.

I was in.