Dear Ken:
Even though I am eternally grateful for your being such a truly excellent husband and father during our 2 year courtship, or 13 year marriage and our 10 years of being parents together, there is one thing we forgot to do during the 4 years you were sick. Gosh, we had so much time sitting around in doctor's offices and hospital rooms...I can't believe we didn't put this together.
(Eternal hope for recovery down to the last minute can really screw up one's efforts to plan for the dying part!)
We forgot about putting together the handbook on how a mother can also be a father. This handbook would have had the following chapters:
Chapter One:
Fun activities and Games to Play with Your Son at ages 7 thru the rest of his childhood and adolescence
Chapter Two:
How to talk to your daughter so that she grows up feeling that she can do anything, be anything and feels as though she is the most cherished girl/young woman/woman in the whole world
Chapter Three:
How to Teach Your Son the Secret Essentials of Manhood
Chapter Four:
How to teach your son, left fatherless at age 6, that life can be trusted, people won't leave you, you're not weird because you don't have a dad, and you will somehow fill the gaping hole that is the absence left by your father's death and find fulfillment and satisfaction in your own life.
Chapter Five:
How to ensure that your daughter will be able to trust a good man's love.
Chapter Six:
This chapter catalogues every single parenting situation that I will ever encounter in my whole life and what your response would have been had you still been alive and actively fathering our kids
Chapter Seven:
How to teach the kids that mommy isn't trying to hurt them, annoy them, or trying to replace you by having a new man in her life. Within this chapter you would have written a paragraph on how to show the kids that they might even be able to get something positive themselves out of mommy's new boyfriend because he's really a good, loving guy. This chapter will remind them that you can never have too many people in your life to care about and love you.
Chapter Eight:
This chapter veers off into the supernatural/spiritual dimension. This is where you promise the kids that you will meet them in their dreams on a regular basis and just when they need you for advice or angelic guidance. (Feel free to stop by and visit me too if you get a chance.)
Chapter Nine:
In this chapter you leave the recipes for potions that all of us left here on earth can ingest to take away the acute pain that comes at select times because of your absence: holidays, graduations, birthdays, weddings, visits with old friends, trips, all that good stuff.
Chapter Ten:
Here you remind the children how much you love them even though you left too soon. Uh...you know what? Redundant. Let's scrap this chapter. You did a great job loving all of us. I think that's been done already.
5 comments:
I sure wish we all had a copy of this book. I sure could use my husband's advice and opinion on so many subjects, but I can only make my best guess as to what he would say. I'm almost tempted to start to write down stuff for my sons in case I'm not around for as long as I'd like to be. As we know, life is what happens when you're making other plans. What a gift it would be to have something like that written by loved ones who have left us. I think I'll add that to my long to do list!
Hi Jill
I just spotted this one. I love it! Had to laugh because with 2 kids I could really really relate.
These are exactly what keep me up at night-- grieving & crying my eyes out. Seeing it all laid out in front of me, in your words, has literally brought me to tears & brought on that terrible ache in the pit of my stomache. That nauseating, hollow feeling that comes with this intense mourning-- I think few people understand it... When will it end?
I came upon ur blog while searchn for some fathers day poems for my husband who passed Feb. 2012 of colon cancer, he was only 35. I'd just like to say after reading your story, I and so many people out there could benifit from ur book
If I could have expressed how I felt when I read this...ur words are exactly how I felt. My husband and I were together 7 yrs and married 4, well almost 4. He passed on Feb.6,2012 of colon cancer, he was only 35. From the time we were told he had the cancer and he passed was only 10 mnths. I watched as he took his very last breath and I can tell u that the feeling u felt in the pit of ur stomach is truly understood by me. As I held my loves hand,I held on to every ounce of love we had together. When he passed in front of my eyes, I lost it. I felt every single piece of me fall to the floor and shatter to a million pieces. The love we had was strong and today I have to believe its the only memory that keeps me going. Like u I search for answers, for comfort, for just one last moment with him. Time doesn't make anything easier, I don't think anything makes it easier except memories. Memories are what keep my husbands love and life alive for me. You don't have to "move on", just "KEEP MOVING".. Remember (as I have to) there are others who "do understand"
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