Happy Birthday

Frankie's birthday is in three days - something we've been preparing ourselves for for a couple of months. Grandpa Casey gave us a potted pine tree a year ago as a way to remember her, and it has grown into three separate plants. I can't imagine how much it will grow once we plant it in the ground! We have decided to put up a string of white lights on the tree on December 2, and we'll take them down December 21, the day she passed away.

My niece, Aulora, had a fantastic idea to buy her an ornament every year for her tree. We're also going to pick a child from the Salvation Army angel tree that is the same age as Francesca would be and buy her Christmas gifts. This year we chose a little girl named Saveen who is one.

We've been cleaning a house we're moving into soon (a rental right now but made an offer on it - short sale - so hopefully it will soon turn into a mortgage!). Frankie hasn't said hi to me for a few months but she did today. While I was sweeping the living room floor I swept across a rainbow about a foot in diameter. I couldn't figure out where it was coming from! I rushed outside to get Adam, and he smiled when he saw it. She stayed there for about 15 minutes. Then she went merrily on her way again. I hope she was giving us a thumbs up about the house.

I cannot believe an entire year has passed. Having her and then losing her was a grief so much different than any other we've experienced. When you and your partner experience something together and at the same level of intensity, it is impossible to support the other person. You are hurting so badly that you have nothing left to give. You know there's nothing you can do or say to make them feel better, so there you both sit, trapped in your own box. You know your partner is right beside you in their own box, but there's nothing you can do to help them. You both just experience watching the other person go through their pain. You experience the grief by yourself. I read several books on grief right after she passed, trying to prepare myself for the suffering to come. Men and women grieve differently, they said. One book even said 9 out of 10 married couples get divorced. I intellectually knew about these challenges and thought we would be better than that, that I would be understanding of how he would grieve, and that he would be understanding of how I would grieve. We were nearly a statistic though, even with having the best intentions.

I went through everything immediately. I had the ability to, I guess, with still being on maternity leave. I would say I "processed" the most intense part of the grief in the first three months. Adam did not. He blocked it out immediately and tried to go on with our life. I was so angry at him because he did not want to talk about her at all. How could he move on so quickly? I found out later that he did this because he felt he had to support me while I was going through my pain. How could he let go when he was afraid of losing me (to insanity and possibly suicide)? He couldn't. In June, after I was back on my feet and had incorporated this tragedy into my life, he finally let go. He was so angry all the time. He still didn't want to talk about her. I wasn't there for him. After going through it for months, I couldn't let the grief back in. It would destroy me and the shaky foundation I had built. I left him out in the cold, alone with his pain.

We hit rock bottom a couple of months ago. Again, I felt like I was in a box right beside him, trapped but wanting to find a way out. We both started seeing therapists, together as well as individually. Very, very slowly we are rebuilding us and our selves. Therapy helped us with the grief, of course, but it also helped us see opportunities for self-improvement. I feel like someone took the two of us and our life together, threw us against a wall, and then left us there in a million pieces. We are becoming better people after all of this. Any other issues you have in a marriage take a backseat when something like this happens. You deal with the immediate issue at hand; if you survive that, then you can work on everything else. We had a good marriage. I can't imagine surviving this in a troubled marriage.

So here we are. I will post pictures of her tree later this week.