“I feel like a child” I told my Therapist as I walked into her office a week before Thanksgiving.
“Why?” my Therapist asked.
“Because I know that I have so much to be thankful for but I don’t want to be thankful. I feel like a brat”.
“You are not a child or a brat. You do have a lot to be thankful for but you also have a lot not to be thankful for. It’s OK not to be thankful this year. You can be thankful next year” she said.
I needed to hear that. I had been dreading Thanksgiving and had been thinking about it on some of my runs in the last few weeks. I still felt like I had been screwed by God and the Universe. I felt that my sons were robbed of a Father who loved them more than any Father I’ve known. On some days I felt that my life was one big struggle.
How the hell could I be thankful for anything?
But on these runs where I started out questioning how I could be thankful for anything I would slowly release some of that anger and then I could usually force myself to think about what I was thankful for.
My children. Gordie’s children.
My family.
My friends.
My job.
My ability to support the boys…although that scared voice inside my head would say “for now…what if that changes?”
On my early morning run the day of this particular Therapy appointment I found myself listing two more things I was thankful for:
My running shoes.
My strength.
But as I finished that run and walked up the court for my cool down, I looked up at the sky and whispered “But I still don’t want to be thankful”.
Later that day, after talking to my Therapist, I found peace with not being thankful this year if that’s what I decided on Thanksgiving Day.
Or maybe I was at peace because I knew deep down that I was thankful. But I did not have to tell anyone if I did not want to.
The week of Thanksgiving was a very difficult week. I would listen to people as they talked with excitement about their plans for Thanksgiving with family and friends. I was so jealous of their excitement when all I wanted to do was fast forward to January.
On top of that Nathan had been really difficult all week. He was off from school and had been giving his Nanny and me a hard time. I was so irritable because of the approaching holidays and also because I was beyond physically exhausted that I had no patience for Nathan’s antics. I was doing a lot of yelling at him.
The day before Thanksgiving, I was off from work. I had booked a facial and massage in order to start the long holiday weekend with some relaxation. The Esthetician was a chatty one and I just wanted to zone out. She kept on talking. It took every ounce of restraint not to tell her to shut the hell up.
We had not yet moved into our new house but I had closed on it and all of our stuff had been delivered. I went to the house after my facial and massage to unpack some more boxes. While I was there, I attempted to wash some sheets that had been packed in a box for months and the washer leaked water all over the floor.
Fucking great, I thought.
I shut the water valves off in the laundry room and moved on to unpacking another box. About midway through the box, I found Gordie’s hiking backpack with his windbreaker rolled up and attached to it. It was all ready to go. I sat on the floor and held the backpack. Hiking was such a big part of our relationship. I had hiked so many trails and mountains with him. I knew every stitch of his hiking backpack after following him down trails for 16 years. A tear rolled down my face as I realized that I would never hike with him again.
I moved on to another box and found our honeymoon pictures.
This is torture, I thought.
I started opening boxes with fear and dread of what I would find. Finally, I just sat down in the hall of my new house and cried out of sadness and anger.
I am so pissed this is my life, I thought.
Later that day, I took Wyatt to Trader Joe’s to get some stuff for dinner that night including some ice cream for dessert. The cashier scanned the ice cream, smiled and asked Wyatt “is that ice cream for your Dad?” My two year old son wrinkled up his little brow but said nothing as he continued to suck on his pacifier. I tried to sound casual as I said “no, it’s for Mommy”. But I wanted to throw up. I walked out thinking well, at least Nathan was not here to hear that.
I went to bed that night and did not want to wake up for 36 hours. I just wanted to skip Thanksgiving this year. Actually, I really wanted to sleep for 40 days and skip the holidays all together. But as I turned out my light, I had one repeating thought.
Gotta do it for the kids. Gotta do it for the kids. Gotta do it for the kids.
I still felt like throwing up.
On Thanksgiving Day, I woke up at 5:30am. I looked at the clock, buried my head back into the pillow and went back to sleep. My alarm went off at 6am and I turned it off. At 6:30am, Ralphie was at the side of my bed letting me know he needed to go outside and do his business.
I walked out to the family room and Nathan was sitting by himself on the couch. It was barely light outside.
“What are you doing up so early Bud?” I asked.
“I wasn’t tired anymore” he said quietly.
I turned on some cartoons for him and asked “Mommy is so tired. Do you mind if I go back to bed for a while?”
“I’m fine” he said.
I went back to bed. I was so emotionally and physically exhausted. I slept until a little after 8am. It was the first time I had slept that late in months. Luckily my parents had everything under control with the boys.
I needed to run. I could feel the tears starting to come to the surface.
I started my run with just one thought how many people who know me are thankful today that they are not me?
Probably a lot.
The tears started falling before I left my parents’ court. I was just so miserably sad. I had not been this sad since summer. I could feel myself slipping into darkness as I ran through the neighborhood toward my new house (which was in the same neighborhood as my parents’ house). Gordie’s gun that my friends found when they were helping me unpack boxes last week popped into my head. It was still on the top shelf in the closet at my new house, which I was just coming up on.
I could just end it.
My feet kept pounding the pavement.
What the fuck? Am I back to this place of desperation again? I thought I moved past this last summer.
I felt a rage shoot through my body that I was thinking about suicide again. I heard a voice inside me say are you really going to kill yourself on Thanksgiving? What kind of fucking Mother are you?
I kept running. Harder.
Pull it together Staci. You are not at rock bottom anymore.
I reached the open space of my route. It was my favorite part of the run. It was so peaceful. The endorphins finally kicked in.
I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. I kept thinking this over and over again as I heard the beat of my shoes hitting the pavement. And I was not talking about the run.
As I made my way down the road, my thoughts drifted to past Thanksgivings with Gordie. He once set our lawn on fire as he turned his Weber grill into a smoker to smoke a turkey. Last year he created a smoker out of a metal garbage can and told me “if I get it too hot, the turkey can poison all of us” with a mischievous smile. Thanksgiving with Gordie was often an adventure.
As I turned the corner back into my parents’ neighborhood…which was officially now my neighborhood too, I started to panic that my run was coming to an end. I was afraid the yucky suicide feelings would come back when the endorphins slipped away. I thought about doing another loop but the boys were waiting for me. I headed home.
I had a final nice cry in the shower as I tried to pull myself together before the boys saw me.
Suzi called me and asked what I was doing. I replied “just finished a run”.
“Did it help?” she asked.
“Unfortunately my sleep deprived 43 year old tired body can only run so long”.
Suzi said “Run Forest Run”. I laughed.
She asked if we wanted to meet them at the park to play football. I eagerly said yes. Thank god for Suzi and Chris and their kids. They always magically appear at the times we need them the most.
On the way to the park, we stopped by the cemetery to put a pointsettia on top of Gordie’s “wall”. A hawk flew right over us as we drove. Driving into the gates I again thought how is this our life? Why are my boys doomed to a lifetime of holidays dropping flowers at a gravesite for their Dad?
A burst of anger shot through my body.
At the park I watched Chris with his boys. I was distinctly aware of them calling him Dad. My kids will never have that again, I thought. Wyatt will never remember it.
Nathan had a great time playing football with Chris and his sons. He was so happy to have a Dad, even if it was not his, to throw the ball with. I had learned to throw a spiral but according to Nathan I still wasn’t that good and I could not throw them long enough or hard enough. Wyatt played at the playground with Chris and Suzi’s daughter.
We had been invited to join a family who I grew up with for Thanksgiving dinner. The parents were some of my parents’ closet friends and their four boys were like brothers to me while I was growing up. One of them and his wife were Wyatt’s Godparents. They lived in Colorado and were not there that day but two of his brothers were. There were other families there who I had also grown up with. It felt very, very safe. But I still turned on my numbing mechanism as I walked into their house. I had learned to numb myself pretty well over the last several months.
It turned out to be the perfect place to spend our first Thanksgiving without Gordie. It was as good as it could possibly be. Nobody asked me “how are you doing?” or “how is today going?” They just gave me extra tight hugs and said “it’s great to see you”. More importantly, they treated me no different than they did all the years that I had known them. They made me feel normal.
But something was missing. Gordie.
We returned home to my parents’ house that night and I got the boys ready for bed. I put Wyatt in the pack and play that had been his bed for almost nine months. He was asleep as soon as I put him in there. I sat on the edge of Nathan’s bed and asked “how would you rate today Bud?”
Nathan thought for a minute and then said “I’d give it a 9.5.”
I was shocked. And thrilled.
I changed into my jammies, brushed my teeth, and went to my bedroom. I sat on the edge of the bed and opened up my bed stand drawer. My Dr had suggested I wean myself off my little white pills that helped me sleep. But I took one that night. I deserved it.
Author’s note:
The Thanksgiving in this chapter was in 2012. My sons and I just celebrated our 6th Thanksgiving without Gordie. We have reached a place in our lives where we look forward to Thanksgiving and we are very thankful for many things. I will talk more about suicidal thoughts in future chapters on this blog. Unfortunately it was a part of my grief. But, nearly six years later, I am so happy that I never acted on those thoughts. While I still miss Gordie desperately and I continue to grieve, I now embrace life and can’t imagine ever giving it up without a fight. If you are grieving and having these dark thoughts, I beg you to get help. Reach out to friends. Reach out to family. Talk to a therapist. Call the suicide hotline at 1-800-273-8255. I am nearly six years out from the death of my husband and I promise you it does get better. Just hang in there and get the help you need.
Much love,
Staci