Fall is a rough time for me. It holds many things including the anniversary of my father’s passing. While it may be a rough season, it’s usually something I can prepare myself for. I am sure those who have lost someone close can agree, it’s the moments that you know will suck, like anniversaries, birthdays and special holidays and events are easy to prepare for. What’s tough about these types of losses, are the moments that hit you like a freight train out of the blue, the ones you weren’t prepared for that hit the deepest.
As a parent, we want to be strong for our children. We do our best to hide our stress and anxiety around situations to not arouse them, work them up, or burden them with adult emotions. We hide ourselves in closets and cry it out. We put on a brave face and tell them everything will be fine, lying to them, hiding from them the truth about the emotions that we are facing … all the while attempting to teach them how to work through their own emotions. It’s a cluster, and we are all just doing our best one day at a time.
Back to my dad. In addition to myself and my mom, my dad left behind a brother and sister. They both currently reside many miles away and because life has kept us all moving, I haven’t seen them in a few years, AKA FAR TOO LONG. That was about to change, my cousin is getting married, which meant a family reunion! My aunts, uncles and cousins would get to meet two of my three childen that they have yet to meet and I would get to spend some time down memory lane.
Enter stage left, mother nature. In a matter of days my husband and I had become amateur meteorologists. We watched and tracked and even offered our own predictions for the impending #heavyflo. When do we leave? Do we leave Thursday? Friday? Not at all?!
Then it happened. I lost it. The fear of not being able to see these people, my only other connection to my dad. I didn’t want to put my family in danger, but I also really needed to be near these people. I started sobbing right there in the kitchen, children in the other room distracted by the TV, blind to anything else happening. I quickly hid myself in our dark bedroom, curled up in a ball on the bed and continued to cry.
My husband followed me in to comfort me. Seeing my pain, he did something I would have never asked him to do. He turned the lights on, asked the kids to turn the TV off and come in the room. (To back up quickly, our kids are very aware of both the losses my husband and I have been through.) The kids came in. I felt so vulnerable. My husband explained that I was missing my dad. I was tackled with hugs, kisses, more hugs and comforting words. It was everything I never knew I needed.
As I processed this, I realized we need to show our kids that we are not robots. We need to practice what we preach and teach them to work through their emotions by showing them how we work through our own. Children learn best by seeing what to do (i.e. when my 2-year-old dropped some explicits the other day after I demonstrated in traffic). If we let down our guard and show our children some vulnerability, we can teach them a lot more than by hiding and crying alone in the dark.
