The Lost Art of Writing – 9/28/16
Originally posted on 9/28/16
I found something else when I was searching in the garage. I found a box of things from high school and college. I am a sentimental person so I save a lot of things like that. The box mostly had certificates and sports award programs. A lot of stuff from my years of Cross Country and Track at Clovis High. There were also writing assignments from high school and college, poems I had written and some free form journaling. What surprised me is that I had forgotten how much I used to write!
In high school I spent a lot of time journaling or writing poems if something was bothering me. I think I continued this at the beginning of college. I met Patrick in the summer of 1986. He was home from UOP for the summer and I was on summer break from Fresno State. We began what would be a 6 year, long-distance relationship. Back then we did not have cell phones or email. Long distance calls could be very expensive and we were broke college students. So we sent each other a LOT of cards and letters!
I am eternally grateful that I have this written history of our early relationship. Right after Patrick died, when I was still in a semi-state of shock, I began reading through these. I would read a few at a time and I was sorting them into two ziplock bags in case the girls ever choose to read them. One bag is labeled PG and the other has a warning as they might not like the content of those.đ As the shock began to wear off, I had to put them away. Some day I will read the rest but right now itâs just too hard.
As I read through them, it occurred to me that I would have enjoyed reading through them with Patrick. I think it would have been a great way to reconnect and reminisce. I have said this before but I repeat it often. I think one reason relationships fail is because the early days are so exhilarating but it is not like that forever. Your love matures and you become more comfortable with each other. When the âhoneymoonâ period is over, a relationship becomes something that you have to nurture. You canât take it for granted. Thereâs going to be give and take and itâs not going to be as picture perfect as your courtship and honeymoon. We always seemed to find ways to rekindle that but I wish I had thought of the letters.
And the letters were not all hearts and roses either. One letter from Patrick was a heart breaker! He had been dating another girl at UOP and when he initially returned that first year he was torn between the two of us. In the letter, he told me that he loved both of us but was choosing her over me because he didnât think he was capable of a long-distance relationship. I, of course, knew better and we all know how that ended! I truly had forgotten about this letter but it did not upset me to read it. That was part of our story and after that I was always confident in our relationship.
I know that people have been saying this for decades but I feel that writing is a lost art. We are all bombarded with constant communication. My children interact with their friends way more than I did but much of it consists of short text conversations, Snapchat stories and other social media posts. That doesnât mean they are not close but when they eventually start having serious relationships (after age 30, lol) I hope that they also take time to record their thoughts and feelings in something more permanent than a text.
I challenge each of you to take the time to send a card or letter to someone you care about. It doesnât need to be long, just let them know how much they mean to you. As I thought of this last night I wrote each of the girls a letter. And by wrote I mean I typed it in a document on my phone and emailed it to them. Iâm a modern mom, right? I told Camille what I was doing and my thoughts behind it all. She said she would refuse to accept it if it wasnât handwritten. I sent it anyway. I hope she forgives me. If I had waited until I found a card or stationary and then had to actually write it might have taken forever! đ
The pictures below are pictures of a card Patrick sent me when I moved into our first apartment, shortly before we were married. This pretty much sums up how excited we were to be done with the long-distance relationship! I have so many good memories and I am thankful that I was blessed to be his wife!
Remnants of our life – 9/25/16
Today I was looking up something on google maps and I decided to look at Google Street View. I pulled up my house and it seemed to be a recent picture. I knew Patrick was alive when it was taken because the lawn was freshly mown in his signature diagonal style. I happened to find a sort of date stamp and it said April 2016. I became obsessed with trying to find out exactly when it was taken! I could tell it was morning but I was puzzled that my car was not in front. I knew it wasnât after he died because of the fact that there were no cars in front of my house.
From April 20th until at least the end of the month my street always looked like a party was going on. When I talked to a neighbor across the street she said she thought we were having a graduation party. In April? For a week and a half? 24/7? If only that could be the case.
I am constantly looking for remnants of Patrickâs life. I always hope that I will find some small part of him. Today I found his juggling set, it included some sort of knives! đ˛ Iâm glad he never tried to teach the girls! I also found a box that appeared to contain the contents of his desk at the VA. There was a Rolodex, a new pair of insoles đ, a yellow rain poncho, a custom made mouse pad of the âteNyenhuis girlsâ that I had forgotten about and a photo album of baby pictures of the girls. I was happy that he had a whole photo album and I remembered how proud he always was of his girls.
As usual I felt incomplete when I finished looking through the box. I am never going to find something that replaces him. Iâm also not going to stop wishing that I could step into one of those pictures and go back and enjoy my life even more than I did the first time. I try not to have regrets but I also think that I did not fully appreciate what a wonderful gift our love and marriage was. At the same time my heart is warmed every time I find a new artifact from our relationship. We DID have a great life together. That life is over but my life continues. I just need to keep heading toward my new normal.
Five Months Later – 9/20/16
Originally posted on 9/21/16
Yesterday marked five months without Patrick. In many ways it feels like yesterday. I find it odd to think about all of the things that have changed. Iâve made little changes such as rearranging things in the kitchen cabinets, moving the wine rack and putting up pictures. I donât want to erase him from memory but somehow these little changes seem to help.
Grief is a much longer and harder process than I ever imagined. Iâm not sure why that is so surprising to me. I have had experience with tragic situations in the past but nothing that I was this close to. And no one talks about it. We just all assume that it is easy to move on, that people adjust to their new reality and the unpleasant grief goes away. So far, that has not been my experience.
Right after Patrick died a friend shared a Facebook group called Widows Hope with me. The first few times I saw posts I almost deleted it because it was SO sad and did NOT make me feel hopeful. âItâs been two years and I still cry every day,â or âItâs been five years but it seems like it was yesterdayâ. As time went on I did start to see more hopeful posts but I also came to realize that this is a place where people can bare their souls without worrying about upsetting others and sometimes when you are grieving you really need that!
I appreciate everyoneâs kind thoughts and comments each time I post something but I donât want you to always be sad for me. I am not writing this as a cry for help or attention. This is really just my way of healing and hopefully in the process sharing that it is okay to grieve.
I donât want this to be the end of my story. I have a lot of life ahead of me and I hope that there comes a time when my loss is not the first thing people think of when they see me. I donât want anyone to forget Patrick or assume that I have but I look forward to a time when the emotions are not so raw and painful.
I love you all! Thank you for helping me on this journey!
A Day at the Boardwalk – 9/19/16
This was originally posted on 9/19/16.
Yesterday Camille and I were invited to join Linda Crews and kids on a day trip to Santa Cruz. Camille and Julia have been close friends since elementary school and Linda and I are close friends also. We had a great day. We smiled, we laughed and yes, we hunted PokĂŠmon together. I knew there would be hard parts too, Patrick loved Santa Cruz.
When I got home I was very sad and I wanted to write but I felt a little guilty. This blog is so helpful to me but I donât want it to hurt others. I didnât want Linda to feel bad that I was sad. She is a good friend though so I knew she would probably understand but I just couldnât do it.
This morning I woke up and Linda had added some pictures to Facebook and a little comment about missing Craig, who is on a business trip, and it brought it all into perspective for me. Of course it was okay for me to miss Patrick! Linda had a great day too but she still wished Craig could have been there to share it. I donât want to go through life moping that he is not there every time I do something fun but I need to acknowledge that I do have those feelings. No matter how much fun I have he is still not here when I get back home.
There were memories all day. As we drove over the Pacheco pass I remembered the trip where the darn Ford Pinto broke down at the very top. We had to be towed back to Los Banos and we spent the night at the Cinderella motel. The tow truck driver dropped us off on the other side of 152 but that hotel had no rooms so we had to haul all of our stuff across the street. Iâm sure Patrick did most of the hauling. We had planned to go camping with friends and I think we had two ice chests packed with âprovisionsâ, mainly the kind to keep us hydrated. đThe next day dad came and rescued us.
As we drove into Santa Cruz we passed the hill where Zio Carloâs beach house was. We stayed there several times and it was always a fun trip. As we walked onto the boardwalk the train was leaving and I remembered the time we took that up into the foothills for the day. Camille rode the carousel and was able to throw a ring in the clownâs mouth. This would have made her dad proud and also brought back memories of the many summers he spent time there with his family.
There were also a few trips with the girls and I have pictures to help remember those. Our more recent vacations were spent in the Pismo and Cayucos areas so those will be harder trips for me. Especially since many of them were anniversary trips. Santa Cruz was a good first trip back to the beach and it will help prepare me for Thanksgiving in Pismo.
There are going to be good days and bad days and I just have to find a way to get through all of them. I hope that it will get easier. I know life will keep moving forward and thatâs what I have to do also. But Iâm not going to lie, it would be great to wake up and find that this was just a really intense nightmare. And I know most of you would agree. đ
Happily married mother of two 9-17-16
Originally posted on 9/17/16. I’m still working to get everything transferred from my old blog. It’s nice to read the old entries and see that I feel at least a little better now!
Iâve been looking at my social profile descriptions recently. They basically all say the same thing. âI am a happily married mother of twoâ. I just canât bring myself to change them. Who would I be then?
One of the hardest parts of losing your spouse is losing part of your identity. Iâm not really ready to embrace the term widow but I get annoyed when it is not an option on paperwork because Iâm definitely not single. And I may never change my relationship status on Facebook. Widow is just such a sad term and I donât like doing the sad thing!
Iâve been shredding old paperwork and I got rid of all of âourâ address labels. Today I was wondering if I should save some of the paperwork from our early life together. Canceled checks, bank statements, doctors bills, etc. I really have no need for any of these things but it was a really odd feeling to shred them. I did save a few checks so I would have a copy of his signature.
There are a still a lot of things in both of our names. Iâve only changed what I had to. Iâm in no rush to change them all. I feel like itâs a step forward each time I do something like that but there is no timeline in getting it all done.
I realize that Iâm still the same person I was on April 19th. I will always be Patrickâs wife. And Iâm still a mother of two. Unhappily widowed? Tragically widowed? Iâll just leave the happily married part for now.
I’m off work again. My counselor and I have been having weekly discussions about my struggles and I just needed a break. Maybe I went back too soon. The thing is I just can’t handle being stressed or feeling like I can’t hold it together all day. Doing a good job is really important to me and if I feel like I’m not it affects my whole outlook.
Here’s the deal, I suffer from depression and anxiety. I’m putting this out there since I know I have an audience. I refuse to sweep it under a rug. For many years I felt that I was less of a person. I questioned why I had trouble in instances that other people could handle. I’ve been on medication at different times and I used to feel that I should try to stop taking it. I had a great life, why did I need anti-depressants?
My sister Dawan finally explained it in a way that made sense. She asked if I would take heart medication if I had a heart condition. I told her of course I would! And she asked why this would be different. What an eye opener! This is a REAL condition that is helped by medication. I no longer try to wean myself off of the medication because I know it DOES help me.
There is still a real stigma attached to mental health issues. And I admit that I was concerned about that when I went out of work again. But right now I just need to find joy in my life and that was hard when I was working. Hopefully I will be able to do a bit of that and get some exercise AND some sleep! I do want to make long term plans and they probably won’t include my current job. I wish that I could just cut the strings now and decide not to go back at all. That is a big decision that I am in no position to make right now. So I am taking some time, weighing my options, hoping I don’t make bad decisions. Nothing about this is easy. I am just grateful that I am surrounded by people who love me and want to help.
Off work again – 9/15/16
Originally posted on 9/15/16
Iâm off work again. My counselor and I have been having weekly discussions about my struggles and I just needed a break. Maybe I went back too soon. The thing is I just canât handle being stressed or feeling like I canât hold it together all day. Doing a good job is really important to me and if I feel like Iâm not it affects my whole outlook.
Hereâs the deal, I suffer from depression and anxiety. Iâm putting this out there since I know I have an audience. I refuse to sweep it under a rug. For many years I felt that I was less of a person. I questioned why I had trouble in instances that other people could handle. Iâve been on medication at different times and I used to feel that I should try to stop taking it. I had a great life, why did I need anti-depressants?
My sister Dawan finally explained it in a way that made sense. She asked if I would take heart medication if I had a heart condition. I told her of course I would! And she asked why this would be different. What an eye opener! This is a REAL condition that is helped by medication. I no longer try to wean myself off of the medication because I know it DOES help me.
There is still a real stigma attached to mental health issues. And I admit that I was concerned about that when I went out of work again. But right now I just need to find joy in my life and that was hard when I was working. Hopefully I will be able to do a bit of that and get some exercise AND some sleep! I do want to make long term plans and they probably wonât include my current job. I wish that I could just cut the strings now and decide not to go back at all. That is a big decision that I am in no position to make right now. So I am taking some time, weighing my options, hoping I donât make bad decisions. Nothing about this is easy. I am just grateful that I am surrounded by people who love me and want to help.
#dontdriveimpaired by Jennifer teNyenhuis
This needs to be a thing, just like don’t drink and drive, don’t drive impaired. If you drank heavily tonight, do not drive in the morning, you are most likely impaired. If you did meth a night or two or three ago, do not drive, you are likely impaired. If you just worked a 13 hour shift do not drive, you are likely impaired. What can likely happen if you drive whilst impaired? Your reactions will be delayed, you can fall asleep at the wheel, you can run over a child innocently playing outside or run over someone innocently crossing the street…. You can violently take the life of someone innocently out for their routine morning bike ride. If you drive while impaired, you will likely kill another person and bring enormous grief to that persons wife, children, mother, father, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, friends, co workers…. The person that you just killed, because you chose to drive while impaired, you not only took their life, you destroyed the lives of so many. It is a choice you make, choose to not drive impaired.
#donotdriveimpaired
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