One of the grief processes – anger. I have it in spades. I never know what’s going to set it off. Could be one of my children scraped his nerf gun against my wall for the 3,257,851st time in a 5 minute period. Could be the new puppy my children just had to have pissed on the floor yet again because she doesn’t understand going outside and I’m not sure she ever will. Could be that my underwear is on inside out. Which it is. Right now. Because that’s my life now.

It’s funny. But it’s also making me cry. Today is one of those days where I’m teetering between punching everyone I see in the throat and just crying my eyes out for no good reason. (I have not yet tried the aforementioned throat punching, but I have tried the latter and it’s scaring my children). I guess there’s a good reason for it. I’m 37. I have 2 children. It’s almost Christmas. And I’m a widow.

I took my children to a Christmas parade this morning. It was freezing. It was windy. I didn’t want to be there but the boys did, so I made it happen. 2 of their friends met them there. They are 4 boys 10 and under. To say they have a lot of energy is the understatement of a lifetime. Candy is being thrown at them. They are of course aggressively attacking like Darth Maul with his double light saber at every Dum Dum and Tootsie Roll being tossed their way. Have I mentioned it’s a parade? And parades are crowded if you didn’t know. In my mind, parades are for children. I mean, they’re throwing candy. If I want candy 1. It sure as hell ain’t Dum Dum’s and peppermints and b. I can damn well buy my own candy whenever I want. It’s one of the perks of being an adult.

Well, I’m standing back behind the boys out of the line of fire, and a family comes and stands directly in front of me with very young children. They squeeze in right by the line of boys with their metaphorical double light sabers and one of my boys accidentally bumps into this new family’s little girl. Mama Bear said words to my son. Then my other boy stepped on the precious little girl’s foot. Mama Bear says words to my other son. And it is at this precise moment that I realize I am exactly where I don’t need to be. Anger was becoming my new best friend. We were ready to hold hands and skip our throat punch fists right into Mama Bear’s thick and pasty neck. Does she know what my boys are going through? Does she know that it’s Christmas and that those 2 rambunctious, candy chasing boys are actually showing some joy on their faces because of this cheap ass Dollar Tree candy? Does she know they lost their father less than a month ago? Does she know that her family cut right in on my boys’ space and then proceeded to get angry when my boys used said space?

No, she doesn’t know any of this, so me and my new best friend put our fist away.

Then we move on to Winter Wonderland at one of the local school’s. Santa is going to be there. Bounce houses. Food trucks. Crafts. All sorts of the shit that makes me drag my feet and prepare my fist. But again, my boys come first, and they wanted to go. So go we did. And I think they had fun. However, I only let their fun last for just the tiniest little bit. My poor 5 year old, passive, sweet, wonderfully weird boy that he is, got cut in front of, he got booted out of his games in the middle of them, he got pushed out the way, he got balls taken from him while it was still his turn. Again, not the place for me to be today. I can feel my best friend’s heat rising up my face to the tips of my ears. We left immediately. We didn’t see Santa. We didn’t eat lunch. We didn’t craft. We just got the hell out of there.

When we got home, I checked the mail, as one does when they get home for the day. It’s been a while since I’ve gotten a sympathy card in the mail. Today I got 3. One of them was from Ash’s oncology team at Duke. All the anger dissipated and it’s place came sadness, loneliness, pain, loss, grief. And I let myself feel it. And I let myself cry. And my children think I am crazy.

But now, I don’t feel so angry and I don’t feel so sad. I had my moment and now I can move on. And I think that’s exactly what I’m supposed to be doing.

Next weekend is the Celebration of Life. Tomorrow I am supposed to go through all our pictures and decide what to use for a slide show. All of Ash’s life condensed to one slide show. I’m not sure there’s enough wine in the world. Wish me luck, friends. My fist and I are going to need it.