Mourning Still

A few months after my mom and brother died, my boyfriend at the time asked when I was going to get over it. I'm sure he just didn't understand, but it was harsh. We broke up a few months later. (Yep. I was a doormat for even before I met my ex husband.) I think I finally have an answer to that boy's question, though. Never. At least, not in this lifetime. 

I am sitting here 28 1/2 years after Anthony and Mom were taken suddenly crying over what we did have and wishing they were here. The last few weeks have been hard, and the last 3 days have been absolutely heartbreaking. 

I didn't get to experience an adult relationship with my mom. She died about a month after I turned 18. I was still in high school. I was at a baby shower a few weeks ago, and a question for a game was ask about what new parents ask experienced parents. The answers shocked some people, and someone made the comment that everyone just gets that kind of help or advice from their mom when the baby is born. I got help and advice from my mother-in-law at the time. I will forever be grateful that she took the time to help me with things in the beginning, but it is hard to ignore my mom wasn't able to be there. The other day a well meaning person said they understood how hard it was to lose a mother, and for them the hardest part was not being able to call her whenever they wanted. I never had that. Even after my mom moved out, we didn't have that. I was able to drive to visit her when I wanted, but I don't think it ever occurred to me to just call her. 

I'm glad most women have the kind of relationship that there are certain things they can just expect from their moms. I'm not mad about that. I hope my kids and I have that as they grow older and progress in life. However, I am also sad I never got to experience an adult relationship with my mother. I miss her terribly, and I understand that a big part of that is mourning for the things we never got to experience together because she was gone so young.

Love

My brother’s girlfriend (is that what I should still be calling her almost 30 years after his death) posted this on Facebook:

We fall in love with 3 people over the course of our lifetime. Each one has a specific reason. Let me explain...

Our First Love usually happens at a young age and we eventually grow distant or call it quits over the dumbest things.

When you get older and more mature you look back and think it was not love. But it actually was.... It was love for what you knew love to be at that point in time.

 You have to always remember there are different depths of love. 

 Now our 2nd Love and this is the hard one....

You get hurt when you fall in love with this person. This one teaches us lessons that we learn from and makes us stronger as a individual. 

This love includes a substantial amount of pain, betrayal, abuse, lies, and emotional damage.

 But believe it or not, this is the one where we grow the most. We realize what we truly know about love and what we don’t know about love.

 So now we put our walls up because we are extremely protective of what the future might hold for us when it comes to relationships. 

And naturally we become closed off, suspicious, very careful and slightly scared. But now we know exactly what we want out of a partner and what we definitely do not want. 

 Our 3rd and final love.

This one comes out of nowhere. No warning. No sign whatsoever. You don’t go looking for this love. It actually finds you. You can put up all the walls in the world, and they will come crashing down just as fast as you built them up in the first place. 

You’ll find yourself caring about that person without even trying. 

They look nothing like your usual type, but you get lost when you look in their eyes. You don't see any flaws. You see flawless imperfections. You find yourself telling them everything about you and what has molded you into the person you are today. 

You want a life with them. You want slow dances in the kitchen, you want walks on the beach under a starry night sky, you want to marry them and have beautiful children that resemble the both of you perfectly.

And every night when you close your eyes before you go to sleep, you catch yourself praying to God and thanking him for the reasons why it has never worked out with anyone else before.

-  Cody Bret

This rings so true to me. My first love was the boy I started dating around Christmas my freshman year of high school. I loved him so much! My mom knew it and encouraged this love. She even said she would sign the papers for me to marry him if I wanted. That scared me, and I started pushing him away. My second love was my ex husband. It was the love that hurt me. The one that made me feel broken. Now, I have my Chad. He is the one I wasn’t looking for, the one I want to spend the rest of eternity with, the one I tell everything to. He is all of my dreams come true. He helped heal a heart he didn’t break and has given me more mentally and spiritually than anyone has ever cared to give me. I could not say enough good things about this man. He is my everything! 

Dating My Husband

When Chad and I started dating, we went out in Tuesdays while the kids were with their dad because that was the only day we had off and I didn’t have to pay a sitter. Within a few months, Chad was laid off from his job and my regular sitter had health problems, so he started wanting the kids while I worked a late training shift at a new job. Then, we got married and jumped into life as a married couple with three kids. At some point, we stopped dating as we struggled to survive paying for daycare and other household bills on $11 an hour each as the child support payments stopped for a few years. We simply stopped making our marriage a priority. 

Within the last few years, we have started to realize that we need to rediscover who we are as a couple. This time we need to figure out who we are separate from the kids. In the meantime, I have become more social and realized that other couples are able to take trips and do other things without their kids. 

In 2020, we started taking trips without the kids. It started as a few trips to the mountains while Sean and Noel were with their dad and Eric got to stay home with the dogs. Since then, we have gone to Mesa Verde, Mount Rushmore, and the Great Sand Dunes. Each trip has been good in a different way. 

Recently, we have established date night again. Once again, we go out on Tuesdays. With Chad’s work schedule, it is the best time for us to go. Most of the time, we play tennis or pickle ball at nearby courts. We have also gone car shopping and out for ice cream. We have a deal that the person who loses the most weight over the past week gets to choose what we do, and it works out for the most part. He is much better at planning dates than I am. (I seriously chose to go fan shopping at Walmart last week.) 

I’m not sure how this will evolve when it starts to get cold, but I am glad that we have set aside time to be with each other on a regular basis.