Author: Kellie

Kellie is a 43 year old widow/wanna be child but really just stays home with her own two children. She loves to read and get a suntan. Preferably at the same time. She's now delving into the big bad world of blogging! Be kind, Strangers!

The Straw That Broke All the Camels Backs

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Disclaimer: These are my thoughts and opinions. You are not obligated to read them. They are not all sunshine and roses. But this is how I deal. This is my therapy. This is how I get it out and this is how I roll on. Read at your own risk. Also, I use the fuck word. A lot.

I knew that everybody getting all psyched up about 2020 coming to an end was going to be a mistake. Just because time continues to march on does not mean that anything has changed. I saw a meme just today that said “New year, new me….ntal breakdown” and nothing in my life has ever been more fucking accurate.

Today our school board met to determine if our children should remain in remote learning or return to school on some kind of from home/in school hybrid basis. I did not get my hopes up. For the most part anyway. I understand the county I live in, I understand the people that make the decisions and I understand that my opinion really doesn’t count for shit. Hence why I’m here writing about it because it’s the only way I really know how to express myself. Not that I really need to say, but they chose to stay in 100% remote. What. The. Fuck.

My children are my life. They kind of have to be seeing as how I’m basically all they have. That’s not true. There are a good amount of people that love and care for them. However, on the regular, all they get is me. And I’m a pretty good mom. I do ok. They could definitely do worse. As a matter of fact, I have a coffee mug that states “Not the worst mom”, so I have that going for me (and them), which is nice. But they need more than me. And that has never been more evident than it is now.

Warning: Here’s where I get super whiney – but I’m going to whine, I’m going to get it out of my system, I’m going to play the woe is me card – and then I’m going to be ok. And then I’m going to wine. (See what I did there?!)

My children have not known normal for about 3 years now. They watched their father die. For 13 months. They watched him wither away. They watched him throw up. They watch him sleep. They watched us constantly leave them for nonstop doctor appointments. They watched him get admitted to the hospital countless times. THEY WATCHED THEIR FATHER DIE. They were shuffled back and forth between grandparents and uncles and friends. And they handled it like the little champions that they are. Because they are fucking champions.

But my little fucking champions are fucking breaking. Their abnormal lives are just now taking their/its/a (I’m not sure what’s grammatically proper here) fucking toll. My 11 year old cries. All. The. Time. He had a routine doctor appointment just last week. The tears started when returning to therapy was mentioned. They continued when he was informed he was due for 3 vaccines. And they really started fucking rolling when his twig and two berries were checked out (twig and berries accounted for and progressing as they should FYI). He cried the whole way home. He sat on the porch and cried and wouldn’t come in the fucking house. Because he is fucking breaking. Last night, we decided to watch a family movie (which, as a side note, has been kind of difficult for us – watching family movies that is – because our “family” is abnormal. For us.). We watched “The One and Only Ivan”. We read the book last year so we knew exactly what to expect. *Spoiler Alert* We knew it got sad, we knew Stella died. We knew Ivan saved Ruby. We knew everything that was going to happen. However, knowing it and actually watching it happen are two very different things. Do you know how many times Jack had “to go to the bathroom” last night during this 1 hour and 37 minute movie? It was seven. Do you know why he went to the bathroom 7 times? It’s because he was so upset about everything that he couldn’t even handle being in the room with the 2 people he trusts most in this world – his brother and his mother.

I will admit that my eyes were not dry either. We are all quicker to cry these days. Nothing is normal for anyone. I get that. However, my 11 year old son was inconsolable last night. I will be honest and say that he never grieved when his father actually passed away. He maybe cried about 4 tears and returned to business as usual. So I’m not saying that his behavior is abnormal at this moment. I am grateful that he is feeling. That is necessary. He had a lot of questions last night that he never asked at the time of death. How did I know daddy was dead? What happened? What was I doing? Why did daddy never hug me before I left? Why is all he did was sleep? Daddy never said goodbye. All things that I didn’t realize were happening at the time. I didn’t realize my children didn’t officially say goodbye to their father. I didn’t realize that Ash didn’t officially say goodbye to Jack and Colt. I should have noticed, but I was so busy being wrapped up in easing Ash’s pain, that I guess I forgot. How awful is that? But clearly they (and especially Jack) haven’t forgotten. Jack is pulling away from all of his friends. He never wants to see them. He never wants to play. He only wants to be around his brother and me. We are his safety net, I get that. However, it begs the question, if he were in school, if there were some sense of normalcy to his life, would he feel the same way? I tend to lean towards no.

Colt is also having his own difficulties. Virtual school for a 6 year old is not ideal. He does ok. I do ok with him. But he breaks down all the time also. He can’t sit still for google meets, because what 6 year old can? I have to be right next to him at all times to keep him on task and even then, he’s rarely ever on task. He’s wildly brilliant, though, in an outside the box kind of way (just like his father). And educationally, I know he will be fine. Socially? That’s another story. He’s different. He’s not naturally social. And that’s ok. We all march to the beat of our own drum. But he’s been out of the “normal” social scene for so long, I’m afraid of what it looks like for him when it does eventually return. He also breaks down far more often. He’s good about talking about his dad, unlike his older brother, but he is not good at handling adversity. He doesn’t like it when things change. It makes sense, given that the biggest change of maybe his entire life happened when he was 5 years old. He wants everything. And I do mean everything. Like acquiring more shit will fill the gaping hole that has been left in his beautiful heart.

I get it. The world is in turmoil. The world is fucking crazy. My kids deserve better than that, though. Your kids deserve better than that. We all deserve better than that. I don’t know what the answer is. Faith. Love. God. And maybe, just maybe, a little more fucking normalcy. For everyone.

PS – It’s also the fucking 12th of the month. Fucking figures. (If you’ve forgotten, Jonesie passed away November 12, 2019 – that’s exactly 14 months ago. But who’s counting? It’s me. I’m fucking counting.)

Burnin’ it Down

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There are many things in life at which I do not excel. Cutting grass, for instance. I suck at it. I tried it a couple of times over the summer because I absolutely had to and it just didn’t go well. I tried push mowing. I tried the riding mower. It didn’t matter which one I used. They both shut down on me, I cursed a lot and the yard ultimately looked like I let an ADHD goat gnaw it down for us. So, mowing, not my thing.

Something else I have learned that is not my thing is anything pertaining to bikes (other than riding one, I’m pretty mediocre at riding one). Low tires? Can’t figure out the pump. Popped tire? Ummmm?????? Gears twisted more than an Auntie Anne’s pretzel? Yeah right!!! Can’t do it. Don’t want to do it. That’s why I have a brother. And a brother-in-law. And nearly any other human on the planet that is not me. Mechanical fixes are not my jam. And I’m ok with that.

Also not my thing – assembly of any and every thing. I’ve been searching for Christmas gifts for my children, trying to fulfill *most* of what they are asking for (that’s not even a little bit true – Jack’s list is so over the top ridiculous and expensive, I’m not even pretending that I’m getting him anything remotely close to what’s on it – other than the scooter (only needed because his brother may or may not have left it in the middle of the driveway and Uncle Randy may or may not have run it over) which is really the only affordable thing on his list). Seriously, his list consists of a Playstation 5 (impossible), an iPhone, a Chromebook, an iPad, a gaming chair (umm, isn’t that just like an office chair and won’t that require assembly on my part?!) and a million dollars. Get in freaking line kid. That’s one hell of a Christmas list. I’m not saying you’ve been bad this year, but you sure as shit ain’t getting any of that. Anyway, I got a little off topic there. Assembly. I suck at that as well. Shocking, I know based on the above where I’m proving some pretty impressive skills. I’ve been searching for only things that do not require assembly. And when did everything stop coming assembled? Has that always been the case? I bought a new vacuum probably over 2 months ago and just opened the box YESTERDAY and it was all because I knew it had to be assembled and to me, that seemed very daunting. (It wasn’t, by the way. I did it just fine. It even mostly works as long as I don’t take it on the carpet. It’s fine. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.)

You see, Ash was in charge of lawn mowing, bike mechanics (or any other mechanical things that may come about), assembly of all things including Legos (seriously, I cannot follow Lego instructions to save my life. I put at least some portion of any Lego project together backward, upside, inside out or all of the above. Every. Fucking. Time.) and grilling. Ash was in charge of grilling.

Which leads me to where I’m at right now in my current state of widowhood. I have been grilling for a while now. And I haven’t been terrible at it (unlike everything else listed above). I’ve been succeeding. I’ve been doing it regularly. My kids have even been impressed with me. They’ve been begging me to try grilling steak again for the last few weeks. So, I finally bought some ribeyes and tonight was going to be the night. I poured a large glass of red wine, started the grill, went about cutting up potatoes and seasoning the steaks. I had fed my dogs and let them out. The Lumineers radio was playing softly from that stupid Alexa bitch that can never seem to get anything quite right (it seems we have that in common). Everything was right with the world. Until I hear my old Bogey girl barking like crazy (which isn’t weird for her, the older she gets, the mouthier she gets, kinda like me). But it’s starting to annoy me so I can only imagine how the neighbors feel about it. I go outside to see what all the fuss is about, look to my right at the screaming banshee/crazy old dog and then look to my left to see my grill up in fucking flames. I mean, the bitch was on fire. Big fire. Scary fire. I look at it for a few seconds, open the lid (flames everywhere), open the doors underneath where the gas is and and (proudly) smart enough to know to turn the gas off. I notice the little tray that I guess catches all the yuck that falls off all the shit you grill (including the fat and grease and stuff) and pinpoint the source of said fire. I turn the burners of the grill off and shut the lid thinking certainly that will solve all my problems (it doesn’t) and then I just stand there for a minute, staring, entranced by the heat and the flames, wondering should I pour some water on the grill. But then remembering that water is sometimes bad for fire but I can’t quite remember why or when or how. So then I go grab my cell phone and call my parents house. They don’t answer (umm, parents, why do you have a house phone if you never ever intend on answering it?) so then I call my mom’s cell phone. I very calmly (and I’m serious here, my mom even commented later on how calm I was) explained that my grill was on fire and I wasn’t quite sure what to do. She suggested flour or baking soda/powder (I can’t remember) and I very calmly marched inside, got the flour and threw that shit all over the grill, the grill pan, the porch, the dogs, myself. Wherever I could throw flour, I fucking threw it.

And it worked. The fire went out before my house burnt to the ground. It’s safe to say I need a new grill. But all in all, it could have been a lot worse. But that brings me back to my whole point. Grilling was not my job. Grilling clearly should not be my job. I had no idea about the grease trap pan thing (probably definitely the technical name for it) – didn’t know it was there, didn’t know it was full, sure as shit didn’t know it needed to be changed (probably frequently).

I’ve never lived on my own for such a long time (I mean, my kids clearly live with me but they’re not so helpful in the way of chores and getting shit done and knowing how not to burn the house down). I lived with my parents (obviously) until I went off to college. In college, I had a roommate every year except for one (and even though I paid rent on a one bedroom apartment for that one year, I actually lived in my college boyfriend’s apartment and literally never stayed in my own apartment. Sorry mom.) There was a brief time after college where I lived by myself but that was only for a month, maybe less. I’ve always had a family member or a roommate or a boyfriend or a husband to pick up where I leave off, to fix what I may break, to balance out all the shit that I can get so incredibly wrong, to know that the grease trap pan thing in the grill needs to be changed or your whole grill will go up in flames. And now, at age 38, I have lived essentially on my own for almost 13 months. I guess I was bound to almost burn the house down. I’m sure I’ll make hundreds and hundreds and thousands and thousands of other nearly detrimental mistakes. That’s both the pain and the hilarity of becoming a young(ish) widow.

But, I guess the whole point is that I didn’t burn the house down. We ate steak from a cast iron skillet. We’re all still here. We’re all still healthy. We’re all still sane(ish). We’re doing it. It’s not always (ever) perfect. It’s not always pretty. It’s not always (ever) normal. But we’re still ok. And if we’re still ok (especially in 2020), then I absolutely know, that no matter what, we will always be ok (I’d better knock on some wood STAT). Even when we (I) almost burn down the fucking house.

Grateful?

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Thanksgiving was Ash’s favorite holiday. Which is no surprise. If you knew Ash, I’m certain you knew the top 5 loves of his life and I’m certain food may have come in first place followed closely by golf, his 2 sons and then maybe me. So again, with his love of food, of course Thanksgiving was his favorite holiday.

Last year was our first one without him, and while I’m sure we felt his loss, it was all so new (him being dead and all) and we had so many people trying to keep us distracted, it wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it was going to be. We went to my parents (we actually spent the night there, which may sound normal to those that travel for Thanksgiving, but my parents literally live 7 minutes away, so spending the night wasn’t exactly necessary). We had a fried turkey and a smoked turkey and all the normal trimmings. I may have teared up a time or two throughout the day but it was mostly uneventful, emotionally wise. We did have the moment where my mom’s curtains fell off the wall of their own accord (which was actually quite hilarious – you may or may not know this (because I may or may not have already written about it) but Ash and I had a history of breaking curtains in hotel rooms every time we traveled. It started on our honeymoon in Antigua – we consumed entirely too many Jack and Coke’s, returned to our room in a drunken, laugh-filled stupor, attempted to close the curtains, couldn’t close the curtains so clearly used more force, more strength because that was most definitely how to fix the problem and ripped the curtains right from the wall. It didn’t stop there. We had a streak for quite a while of ripping curtains right off the wall in our ignorant attempts to draw them closed nearly everywhere we went.) So I felt like that was Ash’s little sign last year, to say hi, to let us know he was ok and to make us laugh.

Anyway, that was a really long winded paragraph to basically say we made it through our first major holiday without Ash pretty unscathed. This year, I don’t quite feel the same. I am lacking in the holiday spirit, if you will. We decorated for Christmas on November 11 (don’t judge us, we needed some cheering up and nothing cheers my children up more than Christmas and decorating and colorful lights). And it helped for that day. But I feel like (and bear with me here, this is going to sound really overly dramatic. Because it is overly dramatic.) my holiday spirit is currently on life support. I am no longer excited about any of it. I used to be great at Christmas and not to toot my own horn here, but I was great at giving gifts. It’s one of my talents, and I don’t have many, so I’ll boast about the few I do have. I love the music, the movies, the spirt and decor, the shopping, the baking (ok, I love watching my mom do the baking), the eating, the planning and gift giving and holiday lights and all the things that are everything Christmas. And now, I’m not necessarily dreading it but I can’t say that I’m too hyped up about it either. I have no idea what to give anyone. I could careless about listening to the music or watching the movies. It’s like there’s this big dark cloud (kind of like the ones outside right now raining down on Ash’s favorite holiday – thanks, babe. Again.) parked over my soul, sucking all the joy out of all the things I used to love. (I told you I was going to be overly dramatic.)

And it’s probably not as drab and dreary as I’m letting on. But I’m having a hard time finding my holiday joy. I’m having a hard time finding the motivation to even care that it’s the holidays. Don’t worry. I will put on my happy face and make it as good as I possibly can for my children. But once they go to bed, and I’m alone, I feel this overwhelming exhaustion from pretending all day that this doesn’t suck, that I’m fine without my husband, that I’m a great single mother, that I don’t spend most of my day barking orders and cleaning up messes that I didn’t make or yelling at little people to clean up the messes that I didn’t make. It’s all exhausting. And overwhelming. And just a general pain in the fucking ass. I’m tired. I’m the opposite of jolly. And my family deserves better than that. But I haven’t quite figured out how to snap out of it.

Yesterday I decided to not yell at my children all day. And I was mostly successful. So maybe that’s a step in the right direction. And I realize that I have so much to be grateful for and that my life is good and we’re very fortunate for everything we have. Just right around this time, it’s easy to feel very unfortunate for what we don’t have.

Ok, pity party over. I will put my smile on. I will enjoy this day with my family. I will focus on what I do have. Happy fucking Thanksgiving.

Life As We Know It (Month 11)

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Dear Jonesie:

Can you believe it? 11 freaking months we’ve had to learn to live without you. It’s quite hard to believe, yet not that hard to believe. We are walking oxymorons around here. Don’t worry about it.

Jack continues to struggle, I’m not going to lie. He resumes face to face school in 2 weeks and I’m hoping that helps return some normalcy to his life. His attitude sucks. The things that used to make him happy no longer do. I’ve taken away his x box for an undisclosed amount of time, and I have to say, I think it’s actually helping him become a happier person. He’s playing again, using his imagination and actually having to entertain himself. He has his brother ask about 5.2 times a day when he’s getting it back and my answer every time is “I’m not sure you will.” You can imagine how well that goes over. He lost another tooth, a molar this time, yet the canine he lost approximately 2 years ago still hasn’t shown its face. I’m certain some kind of dental intervention is going to be required but I don’t like thinking about that.

We went up to Virginia this weekend for a baseball tournament that ultimately got rained out. Not all was lost though, we had quite a good time at Top Golf (I kicked everybody’s ass, Colt whined because it wasn’t always his turn, Jack also didn’t love that it wasn’t always his turn or that he didn’t hit the ball perfectly every time and Mimi just genuinely enjoyed herself). All in all, it was one of our favorite canceled tournaments!

Colt is still as amusing as ever. He’s quite temperamental these days, choosing to wear his heart quite loudly on his sleeve. You know when he’s happy. And you definitely know when he’s not. He’s doing great in virtual kindergarten so far but I look forward to him heading into the classroom and having actual interaction with his teachers and making new friends. If that’s allowed during Covid. I’m not sure. There’s so many rules to follow. Today in class we read a book about “My Dad” and I was quite nervous when the teacher showed the title. I thought for sure Colt was going to mention that he no longer had a dad but he didn’t. He participated and didn’t bat an eyelash at any of it. Meanwhile, I may have been sniffling in my sleeve just a bit.

Losing you has taught us so many things. Well, I can’t speak for the boys, and they are probably too young at this point to know what it has taught them, but I can speak for me and not everything has been negative. My writings have become fewer and further between. Apparently my sadness is my muse and the more time that goes by, the less sad I feel, as is the nature of time passing and time healing all wounds and all that bullshit people tell you to make you feel better. I guess they tell you because it is true. If we had to live with unbearable pain for the rest of our lives, I’d venture to guess that we wouldn’t live a great deal longer. The biggest thing I’ve learned is to let go. I no longer sweat the things I cannot control. I worry so much less. I accept so much more. And it’s made me a much happier person. I’m quicker to laugh. I offer help more often. I say yes more often. So many insecurities have held me back in my life. You always tried to teach me to lighten up. And it only took your death for me to finally listen. Is it too late to say that you were right?

I’ve also learned to accept myself, to love myself, just as I am. Is there room for improvement? Always. But you know what, I’m not so bad. I’m mostly kind, damn funny, pretty easy going and kind of helpful. I’m still not the worlds best cleaner, I still get awkward in crowds or with people I don’t know, I’m still short on patience and yell too often, I will never let go of the excessive sarcasm and I will probably always eat more than I should because I freaking love food. And wine. I also love wine. But these are my traits. And in the words of T.O., I love me some me. Kidding. I mean, I do love me but I’m not quite as in love with myself as T.O. seemingly is with himself. The point is, I’m ok with who I am and where I am and I’m always ready to learn and grow. And losing you, well, right or wrong, it helped me learn how to love me some me.

Life is not bad. We will still have our struggles. But we are strong and we know how to get through them. We are surrounded by so many amazing people, some we’ve always had and some new and unexpected ones. Our hearts are open and as cliche as it is, the future is looking pretty bright. We wish you were here to see it but hopefully you have the bird’s eye view wherever you are.

I don’t know how much longer I will keep writing. The more time passes, the better I feel, the less I feel I have to say. Cheers to you my love. You are forever in our hearts. You are forever a part of me. I love you.

Love,

Poopsie