Poor Daddy. Easter 2007

I still wonder if we should’ve done something differently. If I should’ve done something differently. I still wonder if it would’ve made a difference.

If I had made him go to the ER the first time he complained about the pain in his side, would it have made a difference?
If I had forced him to go to the expert in NY, would it have made a difference?
If I had made a phonecall sooner, asked about a treatment option earlier, would it have made a difference?

If I held his hand more;
If I stayed up with him every night and talked him through the pain;
If we didn’t rush the 2nd embolization;
If I held him longer;
If I researched harder;
If I made myself not be afraid of what the outcome may or may not be;

Would it have made a difference?

I didn’t do everything I could’ve done. I didn’t make him do everything he could’ve done. If I pushed harder; if I tried harder; would it have made a difference?

What if there’s something I could’ve done differently; something that could’ve kept him here longer? What if Chris is gone because of something I did. Or worse, something I didn’t do? Would my husband still be here? Could Shane still have his dad? Would the future we dreamed of still lie ahead of us?

I feel so guilty about so many things. He trusted me. He relied on me to take care of him. And this week, this week I’m just feeling like I let him down. Like I let us all down.

Sometimes I’m sorry doesn’t even begin to cut it. Sometimes guilt is just a part of the grief. And the grief sucks.

Another article from the USA Today; this time on a weekend getaway for widow’s.  This was the 2nd year for Camp Widow and I actually seriously considering going, except that our much loved week on Cape Cod was the same time.

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Camp Widow bonds people in their journey of loss

Should you laugh or cry?

For the almost 200 women (and 10 widowed men) at various stages of grief over a lost spouse, the weekend getaway dubbed Camp Widow was never intended to be maudlin. But yes, there was laughter and some teary eyes, as well.

“You didn’t choose to be in this room. You were initiated whether you liked it or not,” Michele Neff Hernandez, 40, told the audience gathered Saturday for a day of workshops designed to help the widowed pick up the pieces after the death of a spouse.

“It just helps to share our journeys and know that you’re not alone,” says Penny McAdams, 57, of Roseville, Calif. Her husband died of sudden cardiac arrest two years ago.

They shared their personal tales in meeting rooms, hallways, in the lobby and even at the bathroom sink. They told of the illnesses and accidents, the heart attacks; suicides and deaths from the 9/11 attack and from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Despite their age differences, (from early 20s to late 60s) their bond was clear. They came to this “camp” (a large downtown hotel) from 37 states across the USA as well as from Canada and England. Many wore Camp Widow T-shirts. Some have remarried; others are engaged. A few brought significant others. But on each of their name tags was a ribbon noting how long it has been since their widowhood began.

Some who participated had been widowed almost a decade, but for many attendees, the wounds were still new, with badges saying 0-6 months, or 1 year, etc.

Neff Hernandez, of Simi Valley, Calif., says she got the idea for Camp Widow as a part of her work in founding the non-profit Soaring Spirits Loss Foundation, (sslf.org), a national support network for the bereaved that she started after she became a widow in 2005. Her 39-year-old husband was hit by a Chevy Suburban, a large SUV, while riding his bicycle.

“When he died, I was 35 years old and the only people I knew who were widowed were my great-aunt and my grandfather,” she says. “I didn’t have any framework for what did a widow of 35 looked like, for lack of a better phrase.”

Dana Jackson, 33, of Everett, Wash., lost her husband in a motorcycle accident in 2008. He was 28. She was a widow at 31.

“I needed to find a group and I was searching, searching, searching. I found a group that had a lot of really old people. I could not relate to anybody,” she says.

The day of workshops — as many as five or six different programs at a time — took on such touchy subjects as when to date again, how to start a new financial life, how to get relief from grief and how to deal with relatives who won’t let you move on. There were also sessions on parenting, including dealing with grief among kids and teens. And those who are widowed learned how differently widows are treated in developing countries.

Carole Brody Fleet, author of the 2009 book Widows Wear Stilettos offered tips to re-enter dating and navigate the online dating world.

“I need to remind you of some very important words — ’till death do us part,’ or words to that effect,” she says. “While guilt is a perfectly normal emotion to encounter in the human process, it can also hold you back from moving forward into a life that you deserve. I don’t want you to feel guilty about sitting here. I don’t want you to feel guilty about thinking about dating. I don’t want you to feel guilty about any area of your healing journey.”

Her what-not-to-talk-about on a first date includes: marriage or having children; personal finances, anything overtly sexual, graphic details about the spouse’s loss, ailments or family issues; job or career difficulties, politics and religion.

For a global perspective, psychologist Laura Slap-Shelton, 53, of Kennebunkport, Maine, compared the lives of widows in the USA with their peers in developing countries. In particular, she focused on India, where she said widows are outcasts living in poverty and are abused just by virtue of their widowhood. She says widows are often viewed suspiciously in the deaths of their husbands.

Slap-Shelton was widowed at age 35 when her husband died of a heart attack at 41. Their daughter was 13 months old.

“Right now, it’s estimated there are about 245 million widows in the world; 115 million are believed to be living in extreme poverty,” she said. “This is defined as living on a dollar or less a day. Five hundred million children are affected by the widowhood of their mother. One-sixth of families in the world are affected by widowhood. Over 50% of women in conflict countries — Iraq, Afghanistan — are estimated to be widowed.”

Social worker Irene McGoldrick, 42, of Wauwatosa, Wis., and her husband, Mike Hogan, 47, who also works in social services, talked candidly about how they handled dating and marriage. McGoldrick was married seven years and was pregnant with their second child when her husband, Bob, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. He died a year later when the kids were 3½ and five months. She started dating Hogan about 18 months later. He had been married 14 years and had three children when he was divorced in 2002. The couple married four years ago. She writes a blog called My Sainted Dead Husband.

Yet Bob isn’t out of the picture. Family photographs with him remain around the house. And, he’s a part of the lives of both sets of kids, as the parents often refer to him in their daily lives.

“Bob is my kids’ father,” she says. “I do feel like I have a relationship with Bob. And I want his kids to feel like they have a relationship. You just can’t negate that relationship.” They don’t call Mike dad; he’s Mike.

During the presentation, Hogan wore one of Bob’s ties.

“She enjoys seeing it on me,” Hogan says.

Around her neck, on a chain, McGoldrick wore the wedding bands from her first marriage.

The CancerCare Walk for Hope is coming up in less than two weeks and we need more walkers for Team Remembering OC!

The only registered walkers thus far are myself and my sister, and of course Shane (but “stroller walkers” don’t count as registered!)  We need at least a team of 4 to even be considered an official team, so we could really use you!

The details again:
5K Walk
Sunday, September 12
Check-in at 8am
Walk starts at 9am
Jennings Beach, Fairfield, CT

Kids walk for free; for all other walkers there is a $25 registration fee which you can either raise or donate.

If you’re interested in walking, let me know so I can sign you up for Team Remembering OC!  Either leave a comment here, or email me at rememberingoc@hotmail.com.

If you can’t walk, but would like to help out a great organization that helped us out when we needed it the most, you can donate to Team Remembering OC at http://community.cancercare.org/Page.aspx?pid=717&frtid=230 - just click on one of the team member’s names and then click on “Sponsor Me” on the right hand side of the screen.

Thanks again for helping me, help Chris, Pay it Forward!

***And speaking of Paying it Forward, I still haven’t placed that last t-shirt order.  I’ll be doing that on Friday, so if you want to get one of the Pay it Forward t-shirts, there’s still time.  Proceeds from the t-shirts are going to the Caring for Carcinoid Foundation to help fund research to find a cure for carcinoid cancer and related neuroendocrine tumors.***

The article below is about widowed people, mostly younger women, finding help online, mostly by being able to connect with other people who are in the same boat.

I copied and pasted the body of the article below, but you’ll have to click on the link (the title of the article) to be able to view the statistics chart on the side.  It’s a chart that shows the percentage of widowed people within a certain age group.  My age group doesn’t even make the chart.  That’s because in the 30-34 age group, only 0.6% of us are widowed.  0.6% How in the world did I ever get so lucky? (enter dripping sarcasm here)  The truth just sucks.  Looking at the odds, I had a better chance of winning the lottery than I did of losing my husband.  I hate to say it, and I know we’re not supposed to ask, but I have to know - WHY ME?!?!  WHY CHRIS?!?!  WHY SHANE?!?!  What in the world did we ever do to deserve such crappy luck.  0.6%

The young and widowed find solace, one another, online

One, of magnolias, is on her left foot and wraps around her ankle. Another, of a lily, is on her rightarm. Surrounding the flower, the tattoo says “It’s a beautiful ride,” taken from a country song. The third is on her back. In Japanese symbols, it says Dana and Joe, husband and wife.

“I could have done worse things than get tattoos,” says Jackson, 33, of Everett, Wash. “I feel the tattoos were a way of expressing myself through this and in honor of him also.”

Jackson, a research lab manager at a cancer center, also started distance running since her husband’s death. She says it clears her mind and helped her “get out of the house.” On Sunday, she ran in the Widow Dash 5K in San Diego, as part of a national weekend gathering of widows and widowers called Camp Widow.

“People still are shocked when I say I am a widow because they envision a widow as being an 80-year-old grandma,” she says.

Census data show that almost three-quarters of women ages 85 and older are widows; 53% of women ages 75 to 84 are.

“Widowhood isn’t a very major issue below age 50,” says Samuel Preston, a sociology professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. “It just doesn’t move the percentages.”

Social networking brings them together

The most recent Census data from 2009 show just 1.1% of women ages 35 to 39 are widows. Among those 30-34, it’s 0.6%.

Deborah Carr, a social demographer at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., has studied widowhood since 1998. She says about 1 million people are widowed each year in the USA; nearly 75% are 65 or older. Life expectancy for women is longer than for men, so women are much more likely to outlive their spouses.

Our image of widows has changed in some ways, but not in others, she says. “It used to be an older woman dressed in black who would never get on with her life. Today, older women … are getting back into dating, going online and joining activities. They’re finding their life isn’t ending after the death of their spouse, but might take a new direction.”

Although most widows and widowers are older, everyone knows stories about circumstances that have transformed those under 65 from husbands and wives one day to widowers and widows the next. They were changed by illnesses and accidents, heart attacks, suicides and deaths from 9/11 terrorism and from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Even if these younger widowed are a small population, they are not living the stereotype of a widow. Though saddened by their losses, they are offering each other support — both in person and online — that they haven’t been able to find in groups aimed at the older widowed.

“Grief spawns a huge amount of activism,” says social-media consultant Robin Moore of Silver Spring, Md.

Moore, 43, was widowed in 2006 when her husband died of kidney cancer. She blogs as Fresh Widow and says there are at least 120 other blogs by the widowed. “Before social media, the population of young widows was so widely dispersed. They couldn’t find each other at all,” she says.

“We would not be here today without the Internet,” says Michele Neff Hernandez, 40, who spoke to those attending Camp Widow about Facebook groups and other online communities for those who have lost a spouse or partner.

‘It gave me so much comfort’

She created Camp Widow, sponsored by a national support network she started after she became a widow in 2005. Her 39-year-old husband was hit by a large SUV while riding his bicycle.

“When he died, I was 35 and the only people I knew who were widowed were my great-aunt and my grandfather,” she says. “I didn’t have any framework for what did a widow of 35 looked like.”

Taryn Davis of Buda, Texas, founded a non-profit after her husband, Michael, was killed in Baghdad in 2007 at age 22. Her group, the American Widow Project, offers support for military widows.

“Before Mike was killed, my perception of a widow was an 80-year-old woman in a rocking chair wearing black and with knitting needles,” says Davis, 24. “Then I sat up in my bed and saw me.”

Although Davis was the youngest at Camp Widow, the widows and widowers there gained strength from each other.

“It gave me so much comfort to see that this is the face of a modern widow,” Jackson says. “We’re all so young.”

**On a side note, I’ll be sharing an article about Camp Widow later this week.  Michelle Neff Hernandez has done AMAZING things for the young widowed population.  The Camp Widow weekend in San Diego was the same weekend we were on the Cape.  I honestly think I would’ve considered going otherwise.  I think it would’ve been great to have been surrounded by 200 other people who were are JUST LIKE ME.  Obviously, at 0.6%, that’s not something that’s easy for me to find.  More on all that to come**

Happy 30th Birthday, Uncle Jay!  Thank you SO much for all you do for us.  We are forever grateful.

Hope you had a fantastic weekend!  Looking forward to celebrating with you tonight.

Love you!!!

Shane’s Christening - July 2006

Coming home from vacation is always hard.  But it’s harder still when the reality you’re going back to includes a deceased husband.  Vacation is an escape.  It’s that way for everyone.  But it provided me with a bit of a reprieve from my sad and all to real life.  It was easy to pretend that it was just another day because I wasn’t surrounded by places, things or rooms that Chris should be living in or using.  It was easy to pretend that he was just gone, and not g.o.n.e. , because all of vacation is pretend.  Knowing my fairy tale was going to end was difficult and we sucked every moment we could out of that week.  That beach house is kind of like my safe haven.  It’s my place where my husband doesn’t have to be dead, where I don’t have to be a single parent and a widow.  I was surrounded by new places.  I was surrounded by family.  I was free from schedules or responsiblities.  We simply just did what we wanted to.  It was bliss.  I miss our beach house, and I’m glad we captured it for posterity.

Taken the morning we left:

One of the first things we did on the Cape was go on a Whale Watch; and honestly, I think it turned out to be one of the highlights of the week!

We woke up early on Monday morning to drive down to Provincetown; I wanted to leave from there because I knew it would be the only chance I would have that week for a little P-town sight seeing.  Shane does NOT like boats.  Like, at all.  And I didn’t even know if he would get on the boat that morning.  I knew there was a very real possibility that I’d be doing a lot of sight seeing on my own with Shane that morning, but luckily, with a little help from Uncle Jay, Shane marched right up onto that boat!  He was a little hesitant at first, and wanted to remain inside the cabin, but he warmed up to it after a while (and after a bag of Smartfood from the snack bar!) and he ended up loving the excursion as much as the rest of us!  He really got a kick out of seeing all the whales.  We were all surprised to see SO many and to be able to get that close to them.  It was truly remarkable.  Not only did we see tons of whales, but we also conquered our fear of boats!

Next test will be try to get Shane to go on the ferry from CT to Long Island!  My first attempt didn’t go so well!

My little boy.  My reason for living.

Yeah, so I haven’t exactly been sharing our vacation photos in order.  My bad.

All of these pictures were taken on our first day at the beach.  This is Colonial Acres Beach; the little beach that was a 3 minute walk down the street from our beach house.  I miss this place.

More of Jay & Shane patrolling the coastline:

My remarkable, and handsome, brother.  Jay, when in the world were you in Montana??

He looks so much like Chris to me in this one:

Looking for lost treasure:

Hard at work:

Man, do I love this boy.  My heart is so full when he’s around.

Always busy thinking and planning; just like his dad.

One night, just before dinner, Jay and Kate and I took Shane down to the quiet little beach on the bay down the street from our house.  We went with the intentions of showing Shane what low tide was all about; but as tends to happen when I’m around, low tide hadn’t actually taken place yet!  In fact, the tide was still going out and low tide was still several hours away.  So we switched gears.  And Jay started skipping stones across the still bay.  And shortly thereafter, Shane started skipping stones (his own version anyway), too.  Kate and I stood with our feet in the sand, looking out at the water.  Hyannis Harbor, to our right, was quiet.  Lights were starting to shine through the windows of all the homes lining the coast.  It was a wonderful, windy, cool night.  The kind of beach night you imagine when hear stories about Cape Cod.  Or Nantucket.  Or Martha’s Vineyard.  We may never have gotten our chance to show Shane low tide; but other memories were made instead.  Low tide can wait until next year.

Jay & Shane.  In one way or another, Chris is always with us.

My beautiful sister.

I usually don’t post twice in one day.  And I never do it on my cherished “flashback friday”; and I’ve been trying to throw myself completely into editing all of the vacation pictures and sharing them here with all of you; and in doing so I’m trying to remain upbeat and positive.  But it’s just not working.  And in trying to do so, I’m being dishonest with myself.

I started this blog 3+ years ago to be a chronicle of our life together as a family.  And of course I never expected our journey to take the road it did, and for us to end up where we are now; but that’s the path that was chosen for us.  I vowed from the very beginning to share both the good and the bad.  The pretty and the ugly.  And I’ve always done just that; sometimes even brutally so.  So today, I’m going back to my roots.

I’m missing my husband something fierce this week.  Maybe it’s the “back from vacation blues”.  Maybe it’s all my beloved vacation photos - not one of which includes Chris.  Maybe it’s the wedding I have to attend tonight.  Maybe it’s seeing the pain on my in-laws faces - the same pain that I know is on mine.  Maybe it’s not being able to spend quality time talking with quality friends.  Maybe it’s from being tired.  Maybe it’s from Shane asking and talking about his dad so much.  Maybe it’s just part of where I am in the journey.  But I’m missing my husband.

I’ve cried more this week than I’ve cried in a long time.  It seems every few minutes my eyes are stinging with tears again.  My heart aches.  My stomach hurts.  I haven’t slept well all week.  I feel like I need to make changes in my life.  I want to be able to spend more time with Shane.  I hate that his early years are almost over; that next year he’ll be off to kindergarten.  I hate that as a single parent, I can’t afford the luxury of taking some time away from my current career to find a new one that will work with the lifestyle that I’m so badly seeking.  And I hate that I have no one to share these thoughts with.

This is not the life I wanted.  The life I wanted was the life I had.  The one that was stolen from me.  From us.  I want that life back.  I want my husband back.  I want Shane’s early years back.  I want the one thing I can’t have.  More time.

Cape Cod.  August 2008.

So I knew I wanted Shane to try mini golf while we were on vacation; I knew it was something we wouldn’t just “go and do” at home and I felt like if he could be patient enough to give it a chance; that he’d REALLY like it.  However, I had very little faith in Shane having much patience.  He’s never been good at taking turns or waiting - both things which, I’m sure, come from being an only child.  I honestly thought by the 2nd hole, Shane and I would be heading into the arcade next door to kill some time while we waited for everyone else to finish the remaining 16 holes.  And the night started out exactly as I thought it would.

It’s mini golf, on Cape Cod, in August.  So needless to say, it was crowded.  As we were waiting for our turn at the first hole, Shane is twirling around his golf club, wacking his little blue ball all over the place and was running around in circles.  I started thinking we wouldn’t even make it to the 2nd hole.  But by the time it was our turn on the first hole something magical happened (there’s that Cape Cod magic again) - Shane completely changed.  He calmly bent down to place his ball on the green, he stood up, placed his club in his hands and hit his little blue ball as if he’d done this 100x before!  He LOVED it!  And, he was WONDERFUL!  He patiently waited, not only for the rest of us to take our turns as well, but for the people ahead of us to finish up so we could move on to the next hole.  He was a pro at mini golf!  Sure, it sometimes took him 10 tries to get the ball in the hole, but he never gave up and he never lost his patience with it!  There were even a few times he actually got the ball in the hole with only 2 or 3 hits!  Bottom line - Shane LOVED it!  And we ended up playing 4 more times during our week on the Cape!  I think we may have created a mini golf monster!

The last time Chris and I played mini golf was on vacation in Wildwood.  June 2007.  Shane was only 13 months old at the time so he stayed behind at the house with both of his nana’s.  Playing with Shane was a lot like playing with Chris!  Except Shane didn’t cheat (probably because he doesn’t know any better yet)!  I know this for sure, Chris would’ve been SO proud of his little boy; swinging that club like a pro!  It kills me that he’s missing out on these moments.  It’s not supposed to be this way.  It still amazes me how incredibly unfair life can be.  And how sucky, too.  The night, like the vacation, would’ve been absolutely perfect.  If only my husband had been able to be there.

**All photos taken with my point and shoot.  There was no regard for the technical aspects of photography while taking these shots.  These were taken simply to capture the moment**

Getting a quick lesson from Uncle Jay:

Taking a practice swing and hamming it up with Aunt Kate:

The Cape seriously had some of the nicest mini golf courses I’ve ever played at.  Some of the scenery was just beautiful.

Typical group picture!  Half o them looking at the camera; the other half looking at Shane!  Thanks Aly and Kate!

So proud!

Jay & Aly

Seriously!  How cute is he?!

One of the things I had wanted to do on this vacation was take Shane to play mini golf for the first time.  I honestly didn’t think it was going to go well, but I felt like it was time to try.  Shane played the game just like his dad used to!  More on that tomorrow, but for now, here’s what Shane thought of mini golf -

*Most of the non-beach/non-house pictures were taken with my point and shoot.  As good as it felt to be behind the camera again, I wasn’t up to lugging around my real camera on all of our excursions . . .

We’re back from a week long vacation on Cape Cod.  Of course the trip was bitter sweet for us, but I’m beyond grateful for the wonderful time and memories we made this past week.  It’s moments like these that make the journey of moving forward worth doing.

We rented a house in Yarmouth, along with my mom, my sister, my brother and his girlfriend.  I’ve said before how lucky we are to have such incredible family and friends, but this week on the Cape reinforced those beliefs even more.  We are blessed, indeed.  It was wonderful to be able to spend so much quality time with all of you.  We miss every single one of you already.

The house we rented on the Cape was literally a 3 minute walk from a quiet beach on the bay.  We did spend most of our days on that beach, but the sand was rather rocky and the beach was rather small.  We decided to treat ourselves one day, and paid the $15 parking fee to spend a few hours at Seagull Beach, a “real” Cape Cod beach, located just 5 minutes from “our beach house”, as Shane had come to call it.

We were only there a few hours, but the beach found it’s way into my soul.  There was something special about that place, life just felt different there.  I look forward to spending many more summer days at Seagull Beach, with my feet in the smooth sand staring out at Nantucket Sound.

On these rare moments, life can still be good.

I think this photo pretty much sums up the week we had at Cape Cod.  LOTS more to come . . .

Wildwood.  June 2007.

There are 1001 things technically wrong with this photo, but it is SO Shane.  For that reason alone, it deserves to be shared.

It feels SO good to be back on our beach.

3 days in, 4 more to go. 

It’s been alot of this:

And a little of this:

We’re off to make some more memories  . . .