We are now a family of four. I am a single mom of three young children who lost their father to depression and an inability to cope with certain realities. I am a widow, grieving the loss of her husband but also acknowledging that I never really knew him fully. He didn’t let me. I spent Ten Years Wondering why I wasn’t making my husband happy, and ten years wondering what was wrong with me, and how I could make things better for him and for us. Then I stopped trying, because trying was too much. And then he killed himself.

So now it is me and the kids, and our story is very different but also very much the same. Our daily routine is hardly changed. I do what I used to do. Get up. Get the kids fed and dressed and lunches packed while pouring 24 ounces of coffee down my throat as quickly as possible. In the afternoons I pick them up and feed them like a short order cook and bathe them and make sure their homework is done and get them in pajamas and talk to them about their days and sit with them while they fall asleep in their beds. It’s a steady stream of busy-ness, but it’s ok. I am now EVERYTHING for the kids. I am the bread winner, and the cook, and the cuddler, and the handyman, and the rule-maker, and the joke teller, and the bill payer, and the listener, and the mediator... I’m EVERYTHING. And that’s ok too, it is just different, and it has taken me six months to embrace this new normal.  It’s only sometimes overwhelming.

What is more overwhelming is knowing that by no fault of their own, my children lost someone who they depended on being there for them for a long long time. What is more overwhelming is that the children’s memories of their father are already fading. When I asked Ember about what she remembers about Chris just the other night, she said she only remembered a few things, and that it seems to her like daddy was maybe all a dream. When Oren had to talk about family in his class the other day, he said family is that his dad died. 

What is astonishing in all this is that the kids are doing incredibly well. They are thriving at school, they are not developing nervous habits or acting out in any unusual ways, and they are really just happy kids, laughing and playing and adjusting so beautifully to our new life. I learn from them every day. I observe them, and their ability to accept change, and their ability to continue to be themselves, and I aim for that same thing. I care for them, and they teach me.

This is our new life. It is me and my three children: my sun, my moon, and my stars.