The Widowhood │ The Hand of God

     By the time that Violet was born, I was losing my mind at the idea of having to go back to my job in the Capital City. I wanted to be home with my kids or at least able to be more present for them. However, I never seemed to be able to get something closer. When we lived at the shore, I never got an interview and then when we moved, I would get to the final interview and then not be the candidate. It was a difficult time and I was terrified about how I was going to be a mom of three and go back to a job that because I had been identified as a good, strong teacher would often be given the hardest kids without much support.

     Into my lap fell a long term substitute position at a bougie district that would have kept me paid for the rest of the year and would have turned into a tenure track position. I was ecstatic and so was Phil, I would have an under 10 minute commute to work and I would be present for the kids. I would actually be able to teach kids who wanted to learn my subject. My days would not be spent on mitigating behaviors and getting to some of what I wanted to teach. The relief was palpable in our house. I resigned from the Capital City, I was board approved, I was ID’d and I was being given an email. I left to go to ShopRite and pick up overpriced cheese for Phil and I to eat with the kids as a celebration of my new job and for our wedding anniversary.

     I went to Kohl’s and spent too much money on new clothes so that I could look the part of the English teacher who worked in a more well-off district. I was so excited that I would be able to get my eldest from school. I remember how the day felt like change and newness and I was looking forward to getting to see my new room. I was pulling into my driveway when I saw the school’s number come across my car dashboard. I eagerly picked it up.

     “Hi Katherine, this is Sandra Fellows. I am so sorry to have to tell you this so late on a Friday, but they decided to make this tenure track so you won’t need to report on Monday.”

     I was too shocked to speak. “Wait, what?” I manage to choke out.

     “Your interview stands. I am going to have to interview some other people, but you will hear from me soon.”

     She hangs up and suddenly I am just sobbing in my car, wondering what I was going to do because I was now at the end of my maternity leave and was depending on getting a paycheck. I couldn’t fathom the idea of having to go back to the Capital City even though I knew that was what was going to have to happen and since they never responded to my resignation, it was probably going to be easier said than done.

     I cried harder at the idea of not being able to get my eldest from school and then got myself together enough to go inside and tell Phil. I remember walking inside and going straight for a drink and sitting down in my recliner with it, sobbing and telling Phil through broken sobs about what had happened.

     “And you need to be drinking,” he interjects, not at the right time.

     “Seriously? SERIOUSLY,” I am about to lose my mind. He walked away. He never liked when I drank and would judge me for it exponentially.

     Phil never took care of himself unless I made him. He would make promises about working more or getting a better job, but it never came to be and when it came to paying for our house or for caring for the kids like making sure everyone had health insurance, I did not want to put that into his hands even though I was beyond burnt out from having three kids in four years and working 16 hour days and taking care of him on top of it because I knew he would mess it up which he would ultimately do later that year when I let him have the summer.

     If I could pinpoint a time where I would say it was where I began to hate my husband, it was in that moment. How much more could one person take on for everyone else while they drowned and their husband allowed it? The loss of this also hit my ego hard and I began to believe that the best I would ever be is overworked in an inner city school that was happy to leave me in an unsupported position as opposed to giving me something that better supported me. I began to believe that this was just going to be my life.

     I never got a phone call again from that principal, just a form letter a week later that told me I was not selected for the job. I went back to the Capital City, full of rage and hatred for my marriage and for my job. I was very much over it all and after the 16 hour days ended, I would sit up with a baby and apply to anything I was remotely qualified for that allowed me to pick up my kid from school. It ultimately would lead to my job with the state which would give me the one skill I would add to my resume that would make me stand out to the public school I would ultimately leave the state for. That decision would lead me to be sitting next a woman in a training at the new job that would pick up on our connection to the bougie school district. It would turn out that she had left the same school that had hired and fired me within a week and she knew about the events that surrounded that event in my life.

     “I was there when that all went down. You were replacing a guy that grabbed a kid and then all of a sudden they pulled a long term sub from another building to be you but she left already. The entire district is out of money and everyone is leaving, be thankful it fell apart for you. You had someone up there on your side because you would have been cut either the next year or this year because the principal that hired you died suddenly and she was the one that was stopping all of it from happening. Once she was gone, the district came in and gutted everything,” she explained.

     My jaw was on the floor. Had I not lost that job, I would have either been struggling more leading up to Phil losing his job or would have been a fresh widow dealing with Phil’s financial mess he left me with and no job to save us.

You would think that with all that has happened to me in the last two years of my life, that things like this wouldn’t be so shocking to me, but it still surprises me when I learn about the hand of God in my life. The first time I truly saw the hand of God was the morning that my husband died. He died in our back yard, out of the house. He died an hour before I wouldn’t have been home and he would have either been at home with the kids by himself or worse, he would have been driving them in the car to what they had planned to do that day. He would have died and potentially killed the kids with him along with whoever he hit in the van that he would no longer be in control of. However, the hand of God protected us.

Then by keeping me in my old position, I was afforded time off to get my family together after my husband died before I went to the state. I think God delivered me to the state because it gave me almost two full years after Phil died to recover. The state was less work than what you do as a public school teacher and for awhile, I enjoyed the break before it was clear it would be in my best interest to return to public school. And in came the hand of God, delivering the position to me that I ultimately took. I do not think God does everything for you, but I think if you are working hard at your life, he has a way of directing you to where you need to be.

After meeting a new friend in training, I went back to my new classroom and began to unpack the bags of things I have had sitting in my garage since the spring from the state. I came to the bag of things for my desk and found the pictures of my kids and one of me and John. After setting the ones of my kids on my desk, I sat back in my chair a little teary eyed and ran my hands over the edges of the brown frame that had the picture of me and John on our first date. I began to wonder if his choice to leave was also another moment where the hand of God was involved. Was it all to lead me to whatever it was that was supposed to happen in my love life? I started to think about what I did not like about John. I did not like how he would be so intensely with me, but at the same time so distant with his own life. I also didn’t like how he would sometimes do things carelessly and when I would react, I was ultimately wrong and selfish for doing so, like when he really hurt me when I brought up a future and then had avoided talking to me about what our life would look like for two weeks and then just decided to throw us in the trash overall. It was beyond hurtful.

With a heavy sigh, I wiped my tears on the back of my hand and put the picture in the bottom drawer of my desk. I laugh when I see the name on the drawer. Apparently, this desk used to be Mr. Love’s. How ironic that a Dr. Hart is replacing a Mr. Love. This was a new beginning and wherever God was leading me, I told myself it was time to trust in the hand of God and build a beautiful classroom for my new students.

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The Widowhood │ The Morning After 

“Later that day I got to thinking about relationships. There are those that open you up to something new and exotic, those that are old and familiar, those that bring up lots of questions, those that bring you somewhere unexpected, those that bring you far from where you started, and those that bring you back. But the most exciting, challenging, and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you find someone to love the you you love, well, that’s just fabulous.” – Sex and the City 

When I wake up, it’s to the sound of my buzzing phone. I open my eyes to see the brightness of the Manhattan skyline and John is still next to me. Did I really sleep through the night? I reach for my phone and see my mother had texted me five minutes before and now my brother is calling me because she wasn’t answered immediately. It’s a weird power play of my mother’s that she has done for years, even when I was married. I often wonder why my brother feeds into it, but sometimes I think he likes playing the drama game and so I pick up the phone.

“Good morning,” I say.

“Your mother had me call you because you didn’t answer her,” he says, with little reflection in his voice.

“Yeah, I am just waking up. I’m sorry I missed a text from…six minutes ago. I’ll be there for the kids this afternoon as discussed.”

“Kay, I’ll let her know.”

He hangs up.

“Everything okay, mama,” John asks with sleepy huskiness.

“Yeah, my mom can just make things difficult when they don’t have to be. My kids are fine,” I put my phone back on the nightstand and roll over to face him. “Thank you for last night, that was a really nice first date.”

He smiles at me, his warm sleepy smile. “You’re welcome, it was a really nice first date.”

“You know, I did notice something though,” I say flirtatiously.

“Oh? What have you noticed?”

“You haven’t kissed me yet.”

He smiles at me again, this time his coy smile. “I was trying to last night. I wanted to go back down to the bar, but you were exhausted at that point.”

“That would have been very romantic underneath the little lights,” I say, smiling more than I should have.

“Yes, I thought so too, but maybe this morning I’ll be more like Julia Roberts.”

I laugh, picking up on the Pretty Woman reference. “Well, I guess you are, lured up to a hotel room to sleep without a goodnight kiss,” I say, our faces coming closer together.

And then, he kisses me. It is a kiss that is warm and tender that brings with it an overwhelming sense of peace. It is my favorite first kiss. We separate again and he holds my gaze for a moment before he says, “Happy Mother’s Day, Daisy. Are you hungry?”

“Yes, I am,” I say, trying to break up the feelings of hunger and the feelings of excitement and butterflies.

He hands me the room service menu. “We also have the wine that we didn’t have last night.”

I laugh. “Well, it is Mother’s Day!”

He chuckles and pours a glass of wine for me and orders room service. For a little bit, I sit in bed sipping wine on my first Mother’s Day as a widow and watch the busyness of Manhattan outside the window. John is moving around the room getting ready to start packing up. I would later realize that he tends to focus on tasks when he gets nervous about things. I think it centers him.

“Are you busy next weekend? Would you like to come over and meet my children maybe,” I throw out, not as eloquently as I had hoped.

He stops what he is doing and looks at me. “Yes, I would like that.”

I smile. “I don’t really see a way of continuing this without involving them,” I admit.

“So, what then? A lot of Netflix and chill,” he half jokes.

I laugh. “Well big dates like this are really nice every once in awhile, but I do not expect them to be a regular thing so yes, a lot of that Netflix and chill kind of dating.”

“I can’t argue with that, I may save a small fortune.” He laughs. “I’m kidding and yes big dates are nice every once in awhile.”

John goes back to packing and then my food arrives. He excuses himself to shower and I can hear him signing to himself. It is a habit of his that I will come to love because when I hear him singing, I know he’s feeling peaceful which puts me at ease and makes me feel at home. I begin to gather my things and get myself ready before it’s my turn to change.

It seems very fast but then suddenly we are checked out and back out on the street. John steps away to have a cigarette and I suddenly ask him for one. It is an old habit from art school that Phil made me quit when we were first dating because he refused to date a smoker, but suddenly in that moment, I wanted one and I wanted to stand there with John smoking. And so we did.

As we leaned against the cool brick wall of the hotel, the bustling energy of Manhattan instantly surrounded us—the honking taxis, the rush of pedestrians on the sidewalks, and that ever-present hum of life in the city. In this moment, it felt like we were in our own little bubble, a tiny retreat from the chaos outside. I took a slow drag from the cigarette, letting the smoke curl into the air, and watched as John took his first puff, a knowing smile crossing his lips.

“You know, it’s silly, but I kind of missed this,” I admitted, glancing over at him. “Not the smoking part necessarily, but the… sharing a moment like this.”

He nodded, his gaze thoughtful. “I get that. Sometimes it’s the simplest things that make us feel connected.”

“And here we are,” I joked lightly, “sharing a smoke while the city wakes up.”

He laughed softly and then took another drag, exhaling slowly. “Exactly. Just two people trying to navigate their way through.”

As we continued to smoke, I felt the connection between us growing, solidifying in the shared silence and glances. I couldn’t help but think about how quickly we had gone from strangers to something more; a hint of excitement coursed through me. “This weekend has been an unexpected journey,” I mused aloud.

“Every good story has its surprises,” he replied, brushing his hand over his head while he watched the crowd. “What do you think this is shaping up to be?”

“I’m not sure yet,” I said, taking a final drag before letting the smoke drift away. “But I’m definitely curious to see where it goes.”

“Me too,” he smiled, the sincerity in his eyes making my heart flutter. We flicked our cigarettes away, and as we stepped back onto the bustling street, I felt a sense of liberation. It felt as if we had both shed a layer of our pasts, ready to embrace whatever was coming next. “Let’s go grab you that coffee,” he suggested, and I nodded eagerly, ready for the next chapter of this unexpected story.

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The Widowhood │I Wanted to Ask You Something 

August has been a very slow month for me overall, but I have been enjoying precious time with my kids and going on adventures together, creating memories that I will cherish forever. We’ve explored nearby parks, visited the beach, and even tried our hand at baking some fun treats in the kitchen. I am looking forward to the start of school again, as I believe it will bring a renewed sense of structure to our lives. At night, after my kids are asleep, my mind will often wander to what my life was going to become, filled with dreams and aspirations, and if I would ever stop crying all the time, wishing for brighter days ahead. I find myself reflecting on my personal journey, realizing that it’s okay to have these feelings, but I still struggle with them. I am gearing up for another night of telling myself that crying myself to sleep is not the way to go when my phone rings, interrupting my thoughts and pulling me back to the present moment. It’s Sasha, whose voice I know will offer a comforting distraction and perhaps even a bit of laughter amidst my swirling emotions.

“Hey, sorry I know it’s late, but I wanted to ask you something,” she says in a tired voice.

“Sure, shoot,” I say as I sit down at the foot of my bed.

“If you and John had worked out, but for whatever reason, you weren’t getting pregnant would you have left him?”

“No,” I sigh. “I could have made my peace with not having another baby if that happened. I wouldn’t leave a marriage to a man that I loved just because of that. I just don’t want to wake up one day and be 50 and not being able to, and regretting that I hadn’t even tried.” I lay back on my bed. “Why would you ask me that?”

“Something I was sitting here thinking about. You know, how much you would have held onto the dream of another baby over your love and relationship for a man.” She yawns.

“I want the husband too. I want a relationship too, this is not just about another baby, but the person I wind up with will want to at least try for our own, and if it’s not in God’s plan and it doesn’t happen, then so be it. I will make my peace with it. Just like if I never meet anyone again, I will find a way to at least try for that baby on my own.”

“Good. That makes me feel better hearing that because I didn’t want you to go full baby crazy lady.” She chuckles and I do too.

“I am realistic. I just want a chance with a new husband who loves me, loves my kids, and wants to create a family, and if that means we just have my three kids, then that’s okay too.”

“And I think you’ll get that. That is not a crazy wish.”

“I just don’t know why I have to go through John first. Some days it feels like grief all over again, and I am so tired of feeling it and so tired of crying. I really thought when I had that kind of connection with someone again that it would have gone very differently.”

“God has a plan for us all and you are grieving him. He meant something to you, and you wanted a life together. I think it would be weirder if you weren’t grieving it,” she says half-asleep.

The tears that I had been fighting off for much of the night start to flow. “Well, it looks like I am about to have another cry fest, so here is where I say good night.”

“Let yourself cry as much as you need to. It will cleanse you. Good night—one day it will feel better again.”

We hang up, and for another night of the second longest summer of my life, I sit alone in my room crying. I wonder why I had to go through this after all that I went through with Phil. It just didn’t seem fair. If I were a bad person or if I cheated people—I would understand the difficulty level of my life. But I am not those things. All I have ever done in my life is help people, work hard, and want to love and be loved. I cannot comprehend why God has me on this path when I look at the people around me living happy lives. I think, why hasn’t it ever been my turn?

I can usually pull myself out of the pity party thoughts, but tonight, I allow myself to wallow in them and cry as hard as I possibly can. I let the grief erupt from me in choking sobs until I am too tired to continue. As I lay down, the release feels both cathartic and exhausting. To my surprise, I eventually drift off to sleep, hoping that tomorrow might bring a little more clarity and peace to my heart. It’s a cycle of grief and longing that I am beginning to recognize but fear the weight of it still wears heavily on me. What does it mean to love so deeply, only to feel such an emptiness? I can only hope that with time, the answers will find me.

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The Widowhood │ John

I become restless waiting for John to get to my house. I begin to nervously reclean the house that I had just spent the last couple of days going over. When I run out of the things to wipe down, I decide to sit outside on my front steps. I am thinking that the fresh air will give me a doze of reality and I won’t be so nervous. It is a beautiful, warm May day outside. My front yard is alive and as I sit on the steps of my house, I think about how good, but crazy this all feels. I wonder if I will like him as much in person as I have liked him over the phone. Would he still like me? Is this whole New York thing absolutely crazy? What if we hate each other and it all blows up once we get there? 

Suddenly, he is pulling into my driveway, and I realize that this was it. I had to dial back the anxiety and the crazy thoughts deep into the center of Katherine-ville and allow myself to be open to John and to whatever was going to come from this weekend in New York. I stand up, rubbing my hands together trying to get them to stop sweating. He’s already out of his car and rummaging in his passenger seat as I walk over to him. I feel my breath catch in my chest as he turns, and we look at each other for the first time. He is more handsome in person than he is in his pictures, but it is the look that he is giving me that makes my steps feel suddenly a little off. 

There is a look that a man will give you when he sees a woman that he is inexplicably drawn to and one that he views as his. It is not a look that a woman will see often and when it is given, it is usually a significant moment where a woman knows that her life is about to change again. It is a piercing look that you feel to your core and if you are as drawn to him as he is to you, your stomach will flip in all kinds of ways sending waves of little butterflies through you. It is possessive and animalistic. I have only ever gotten such a look twice in my life, once from Phil when our dating was turning into something serious and now again from John on my front lawn. I had not been expecting that, and he knocked me off center at that moment. What surprised me even more was how when I met that piercing animalistic look was how quiet my head became and how in that moment all I saw was John and felt all kinds of butterflies fluttering through me.

I knew at that moment that he feels it too because as soon as it started, he was already apologizing for staring at me. I don’t remember what I said as it took several more moments for my brain to reconnect to the rest of me, but I probably smiled and made a joke. He hands me flowers and a loaf of sourdough bread that he made. I think it’s one of the sweetest things that anyone has ever given me. There is a subtle giddiness that seems to settle over the both of us and I invite him inside. We make small talk about things as I put the bread away and my new flowers into water. We stand in my kitchen at the island and have one of our first kitchen chats, the first of many that will follow. There is a gentle tension that falls in between us that adds a little nervousness to the giddiness, I suddenly feel a little stupid…a little love-struck.

And then just as suddenly as my life had changed, we are on our way to the train station and into Manhattan.

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THE WIDOWHOOD │ A MIXED MARRIAGE

The things I loved about Phil were the opposite of the things that I hated about Phil. I loved that he was creative and smart. I loved that he was a romantic and would do things like buying me a gold rose for special things and anniversaries so that in the end I would always have a dozen roses in the house. In the end, he didn’t make it to a full 12 before he died, but he got close.

When we were dating, he would call me instead of texting me. He would write me cards and letters when he felt moved to share feelings. He told me he loved me often and never made me second guess him, which in many ways played into the total breakdown of my romantic love for him when I found out about the cheating after he died. I had never felt romantic love for someone die so quickly and I was shocked at how fast it happened considering that he had been my husband and that we had children together. It began after the call from Scott, but I don’t think it was fully truly dead until I called his mistress several months later and asked what had gone on.

“I knew he was married,” she said. “But, it was what it was and eventually I did cut things off. It began around late 2017.”

We had been married in November of that year and I was already pregnant with our eldest by that point. He was his father in the end. I was floored.

She went on about other things, about the last time they saw each other a couple of nights before he died and swore that all that had happened was actual moving and she may have touched his arm. Was that supposed to make me feel better? She had the audacity to ask about my boys and if they were talking. I would come to find out later that this is something that Phil would openly put down our children about which I found amusing considering that their speech stuff was inherited from his side of the family. His mother’s sister told me in one moment of clarity that her children all had speech issues.

After our eldest got a diagnosis, I began to read and research all that I could about what he had going on and what I could do to help him. Would he ever talk? Would we all need to learn sign language? I was relieved when it was clear that he would talk, that he would most likely overcome this with regular support and therapy. My research also led me to the reality of how my life choices in choosing Phil as their father played a role in the speech issues.

Phil came from a family where alcoholism, addiction and womanizing where things that you talked badly about, but for the most part was largely accepted because everyone either was one or all three. They would run their mouths about it when the person was being an addict, an alcoholic or a womanizer, but it was always accepted in some regard because it was what it was. However, if someone in the family showed something like a learning disability, it was immediately shunned, swept into a dark corner and blame assigned wherever they could but never something that came from them, because their bloodline was so perfect. It was a very weird juxtaposition and one that I never understood. It led Joanne and Kaitlyn to calling our son retarded among many other hurtful things to the point where I told my husband before he died that I was absolutely done with all of them. In many ways, I was thankful when they chose to stay away over us protecting our children instead of enabling a chaotic addict.

However, it was this inability within his family to love and support someone who was developmentally different that I believe led to the kind of life that my husband led. Our eldest carries a diagnosis of childhood apraxia of speech which means that he can think of the words he wants to say but there is a disconnect between his brain and his mouth that deals with motor planning so he can’t always say what he wants to. Apraxia can present often with autism, but our son was tested, and we were told he was one of the super small segments of the population that is not autistic, but is apraxic and that with the proper love, support, and speech therapies that he would most likely over come it and be a fully articulate adult. The good news is, that after years of supporting him, he is now intelligible and people outside of my family can understand him. He will navigate school on his own next year for the first time and at the end of last year even earned student of the month for his grade level because of how far he has come and how much he has recovered academically. I am very excited as his mom to see how he blossoms in the new school year, because I truly feel that this is the year where he levels out and he hits his grade level all around.

It was in my research of childhood apraxia of speech that I discovered some studies that were hinting at a link between having a parent with ADHD and the child developing with apraxia. In the 10 years that I spent with my husband and in the 15 years of experience I have in special education, I could tell you without even taking that man to be screened, that he was the epitome of an undiagnosed adult with ADHD that never had the therapies or supports needed to become a fully functioning adult. A conversation with Joanne in earlier years, confirmed my thoughts when she had mentioned that they had had my husband tested but they found that he only had a touch of ADHD. I knew when she said it how full of it, she truly was, because even in the 1970’s to 1980’s no doctor or child study member was going to tell you that your child had a touch of anything—your child either has a diagnosis or they don’t. And I am sure that my husband did have one and it was ignored for much of his life because that is just something that could not possibly exist in their family.

As creative as he was, he was also a mess. He was scattered in his thoughts, he always had little piles and little things scattered around the house, often stepping over his things instead of acknowledging them. He always had to be moving or entertained by something, or he couldn’t control himself. His lack of focus on pretty much everything in life was sometimes all together mind blowing. In hindsight, I wish I could have seen his struggles earlier, but the adult problems I faced when we were married and having to be someone’s full on support took over being able to have clarity in all situations.

However, it was this chaotic mess that I think also made Phil very funny. His mind would race faster than the words that he could get out of his mouth most times. When he became impassioned by something, he would go on what we would call a Phil Rant. They would be epically long rants, full of strung together thoughts about whatever made him angry in the moment. They would be about anything from friend gossip to political opinions to one of his timeless rants about Rory in the Gilmore Girls. Sometimes he would become so enthralled in them that you would be laughing so hard that it would hurt to breath. That was Phil though, a larger-than-life persona who knew how to make people laugh, make people feel comfortable like you knew him your entire life and command a room. Those were the good parts of him and the parts that I hold on to when his children ask me about their dad. Sure, they will ask me about the other stuff too especially now that I have chosen to publicly write about it, but the one lesson I got from my marriage and loving Phil, was something that my dad said to me in the kitchen after my husband died and I told him about the cheating and how I just couldn’t understand why he just didn’t take care of himself while I did everything else.

“Katherine,” he said, “Sometimes, love is just not enough.”

  A simple, very truthful statement coming from my very German, often overly stoic father that I have held onto since. In the weeks and months since I found out about the actual state of my marriage, I have found myself in the selfish thoughts about how could he have done this to me and our family, but then I stop myself because I realize that he had done all of this not because of a lack of love for me or even for our kids, but a lack of love for himself that supersedes my appearance in his life. He was born out of another’s man’s chaotic life of jumping from woman to woman, family to family and in turn never got what he needed to become a fully functional adult capable of making a real commitment to me or let alone to himself. He lacked stability in his most formative years and that played out well into his adult life. However, his charisma and his charm always seemed to get himself out of hot water and on a snowy January evening, caught the eye of a young teacher who thought that his nerdy hobbies were cute and at least that meant he wasn’t a bar scene kind of a guy.

One of the last heart to heart conversations that Phil and I had with one another before he died happened in our living room. He had come in from somewhere, walked over to me and gave me a kiss.

I probably said something like, “What was that for?”

He smiled at me, the tender smile that he would give me when he felt total love for me in a moment. “Thank you. I was never about the house, and the dogs and the kid stuff, but having done this with you, it just feels…really nice. I never knew how nice it could all be.”

I gave him a heartfelt smile, because even when it was hard between us, there was still those moments where it was…really nice.

“Sometimes I have wondered if you love because you’re not big on expressing your feelings, but then I think about times like when I came home from the hospital this last time and you had the entire house set up for me to recover in, including a refrigerator filled with kale and it’s the stuff like that, that when I think about it, I know how much you really do love me.”

I gently reached over and touched his hand. “I love you, Phil.”

“I love you too, Pigeon. Thank you for being my wife.”

And we hugged for a bit, both teary eyed before Phil sat back and made a joke about how crying wasn’t manly and that someone must have turned the heat up because he is sweating and needs to go wash his face. I returned to whatever it was I had been doing before he came in. It was these moments that made me hold onto the idea that Phil and I would always find a way back to each other even in the chaos of kids and the house and the dogs and whatever else life was going to throw at us because I always did believe that love was enough.

It took me falling out of love with Phil to realize that my dad was right. Love is not enough, it also takes a shared vision, loyalty, and unwavering commitment to one another for love to last a lifetime. Things that Phil was just not capable of offering me though I have no doubt he loved me and our kids in the best and only ways he knew how to. I think that the reason God brought Phil and I together was so that I could have three kids and learn what it meant to be a wife in the hard times. I think the reason God gave me to Phil was so that Phil could know what it was like to be loved loyally and honestly until his last breath because that is not something that he had not had in his lifetime before me. My dad is right in that love is not enough sometimes, but I think sometimes love is meant to teach us and to lead us home. For Phil, that was to the end of his life and back to God. For me, I think that story is still being written.  

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The Widowhood │The First Christmas

By the time the first Christmas is coming, my entire life has become upheaved from the summertime. I went back to work at a new job, I was a single mother and not much of my life made sense anymore. I knew though that if I just kept going that my kids would be okay and that in time life would feel okay again.  

My mother has started her prodding of me. “Well, you know, Melanie, my hairdresser told me that when you’re ready you should go onto eharmony because people on that site tend to be looking for real relationships and not just hookups.” 

“Mom, it’s only been three months. I can’t even think about that right now. Maybe I am just meant to be alone for the rest of my life now?” 

“Oh Kath, please. You’re meant to find someone who is going to be a good husband to you and a father to those kids. I get it though, you’re not ready, but when you are…Melanie tells me it’s eharmony.” 

I roll my eyes. “Don’t you remember Todd?” 

She laughs. “Cloth napkin Todd!” 

“Yes, big Valentines Day dinner cloth napkin Todd who came off of eharmony and then dumped me because I wasn’t sleeping with him fast enough.” 

“Well, he was named…Todd. But maybe you’ll meet another widower with kids and you will be like a modern-day Brady Bunch.” 

“I have no desire.” I start to pace around my living room, stepping over kid’s toys.  

“For what meeting someone or brady bunching?” 

“Both, but if I met someone, I don’t want someone who was married, I don’t want someone with kids and I surely do not want another widower so we can both sit there and cry over our dead spouses. I want someone who likes what I like and wants to do things and likes my kids.” 

“So, I am hearing that you have thought about this.” 

I put my fist to my forehead and squint my eyes. “I guess somewhat, yes, I have thought about what kind of man I want to be with if there ever is another man.” 

“Well, how far did you get? What kind of man is he then?” 

I sigh, I should have just stopped talking, but I didn’t. “He’s a man like grandpa. He’s moral and believes is Jesus. He’s conservative and he works with his hands, likes the outdoors and taking hikes. He’s creative in his own way, it doesn’t have to be painting and writing like me, but something that he’s into maybe photography. He likes old houses and thrifting and gardening. He’s manly, but nerdy and likes watching old movies with me. He comes from a big family, loves his mother, but isn’t obsessed with her.” I clear my throat to stop from crying. “And he wants to be a husband. He just doesn’t want me to be a wife.” 

“This is very detailed for something you haven’t thought about. And very you, you always did want a big family.” 

“My thoughts are all I have once the kids go to bed.” I start to pick up the toy field that is my living room floor. I really should have stopped talking.  

“I get it though, you’re note ready. When you are though, there’s eharmony!” 

“Yes, I know, Melanie approved eharmony. Got it. Mom, I must go one of Phil’s friends is calling me.” 

“Okay, bye. I love you, Kath. You’re doing good.” 

I am not ready for a mom call and a Phil’s friend call all in the same hour, but it is what it is. I see Scott’s name coming across the screen and switch calls.  

“Hey Scott, what’s up?” I continue picking up the toy field. 

“Oh hey Katherine, not much just figured I would give you a call and check in and see how Christmas and stuff went with the kids.” 

“That’s nice of you. It went well, just kind of trying to get the house in order. I started to go through Phil’s things. I was able to get into his phone.” I paused as I remembered what I wanted to ask Scott. “I got into his Discord. I saw some messages between him, and I think it’s your ex-girlfriend.” 

There’s a weighted silence. “Oh well uh yeah, I guess if you’re ready to talk about that. We can.” 

This was not a response I was expecting. Talk about what? “Yeah, there was some stuff that I thought was weird, like not fully inappropriate, but not things you should be saying to someone if you’re in a relationship let alone if you’re married.” 

Scott clears his throat, clearly uncomfortable with what he was about to say, but knowing all to well there was no backing away now. “Katherine…it was before we dated. I mean she is whacked out of her mind, we all know that, but you know how Phil always had a way with people.” 

I feel the air catching in my lungs. The room is becoming unbearable. I drop all of the toys that I was holding.  

“Look, she told me about it before we made it official. I knew about it before, I told Phil he needed to stop and if he didn’t that, I was going to go straight to you just like he did when I cheated on my ex-wife.” 

There is no air in the room. It is like a vacuum chamber.  

“I know she was the last one of us from the friend group to see him, I don’t know if they did anything that night he was at her apartment.” 

“At her apartment,” I choke out. The last thing Phil did two nights before he died was help his friend Mike move, what would he have been doing at her apartment.  

“Yeah, when he helped her move in. I just know it was a lot of online stuff for years.” 

A heavy silence falls in between us. My mind racing back to when we were first married and I was pregnant with our eldest. His last girlfriend that he had had before we met had come back around and to me, he had said that she wanted closure. I later found out she had been trying to rekindle things and now I had wondered if they had? Then I thought back to Kaitlyn’s wedding and how he had disappeared with one of her friends and Kaitlyn took great pleasure in telling me that he cheated on me with her, though Phil and the family that he had been with swore up and down that Kaitlyn was exaggerating a drunk walk Phil took with her back to her hotel room to make sure she got into it okay.  

“Katherine? Are you there?” 

I’m suddenly sucked back into the airless room. “Yeah, Scott, I have to go the kids are getting into something. We’ll have to talk about this later.” 

I hang up and walk upstairs to where my kids were playing in the boys’ room. I help them clean up their toys, give them their lavender baths and lay down with them until they are asleep. I get up after they are asleep and take one of the anxiety pills that my doctor told me to start taking to help with the panic attacks, I keep waking up into thinking that someone is dying again. It is just a high dose of Benadryl but it usually allows me to sleep, only it is not doing a thing to me that night. 

I find myself on my computer googling eharmony. I start doing the much too long personality test that they make you do. I get about halfway through it when I see the $600 price tag. I close my computer and sit in the darkness of my bedroom.  

“You truly are unbelievable, Phil, wherever you are.”  

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The Widowhood │When the After Isn’t Forever Either

I follow a lot of young widows on social media. In the early days, it was how I got through the hard stuff. I would watch them and think that God has a plan for me and the kids and that in the end, we were going to be happy again.

I did not have an easy marriage. In order to make my relationship and eventual marriage work, I had to move to Phil. I had to take on over an hour-long commute despite constantly applying for more local jobs that never happened. I had to live 6 minutes away from his abusive family. And then when our eldest was only a year old his health stuff began, and I went from wife and new mother to his constant care giver. I did everything. I was the provider, I was the caretaker of the house and when I was not working, I was with our kids. He appreciated none of it and as I look back now, I realize how much of a narcissist he truly was. Everything was ALWAYS about him unless it came to his friends that he would bend over backward for because he liked how it made him look and if I didn’t do the one thing he wanted at that moment, it was always flipped into “I wonder if you love me?” Really? And even after he died, I stayed the very true widow and made sure he was buried the way he would have wanted. I did the duty that I felt I owed from my wedding vows. Imagine the gut punch feeling I got when I later discovered his mistress and six months after he died sat on the phone with her finding out how this had all begun in what I would have described as the happy years of our marriage. In the end, he was just like his womanizing father– something he said he always never wanted to be like.

That is another story all together, but it made me begin to pray a lot. I prayed that God would send me a life partner, someone who loved me and my kids. Who wanted to be a husband, someone who was just not looking for a wife. Someone who would want to have a baby with me and give me the chance to really be a mom, not the exhausted one my kids have been used to. Someone who wanted me to be their wife, because I really want to get to be a wife since that too is something I feel like I was cheated out of the first time.

And I believed what other widows told me, that I would meet someone and it would happen quickly because God has a way of watching out for widows. So, I began online dating and after talking to several people, I thought I had met someone that seemed to want what I wanted: honesty and connection. I have never in my life been as vulnerable or as honest as I was from the moment I entered that relationship. If asked, I shared it no matter how hard it was. Only as time had gone on I felt as though I had opened up my entire life to him, but he never did the same to me. Sure, he did very loving things, spent most of his time with me and my kids, but never seemed to want to take it further, never wanted me in his life. After a year and some months, I finally ask about living together and it was just met with a total stone wall. At first it was avoiding me altogether and letting me sit in very hurt feelings for weeks and then it was coming over to talk, but I knew if he came with a truck he had already made his decision. He was already packing up what he had here, and we hadn’t even talked about us yet. And then suddenly I am told how he doesn’t want to be a stepdad and it’s not like my kids can even talk (they can, but one is overcoming CAS and their siblings are overcoming growing up with an older sibling with CAS as well as the trauma of having their dad die in front of them). And then suddenly I am standing in my driveway, alone and crying at 2 o’clock in the morning with my heart doubly broken as first, a woman and then as a mother.

I don’t know why God directed me to him in this life. I spent too much time grieving an unfaithful husband and then I opened up my whole self, my whole heart to someone that despite the ridiculous marriage I had…that I trusted and in turn, looked at me like what I had said I wanted was the craziest thing, even though we had talked about all of this on probably or second or third time together. So, I have spent a lot of this summer crying and also cleaning out my life and facing the things I couldn’t before like the dogs I had to handle. And also, the toxic things that lingered in my life that I should have addressed when I was married but always let it go. I can see that is where I was not a good wife nor girlfriend and I should have handled that differently than I had.

I am starting a new job in the fall and that has kept me anchored in that I will once again be lecturing college and teaching high school seniors. Between that and the kids, it has kept me going even on the days where I wish I could just crawl into bed and cry myself to sleep for days. And at night I still say a prayer to God that out there somewhere is a man who is going to love me and my kids and want to be a stepdad to my kids and want to be my husband. And who wants to complete my family…our family with me. Sometimes your faith and hope are all you have because sometimes a widow doesn’t get her happy ending, but rather another heart break that she has to recover from.

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The Hart Home│And We’re Back…

I think it was Stephen King who either wrote about or talked about the importance of having your desk where the life of your house is. During virtual teaching last year, I shoved my desk in our spare room because all I could think about was having the ability to close a door and keep my loud kids out when I was working.

Only now, we are back in school and my desk has sat unused since I went on leave in May. Funny, how that works. I took a break from everything this summer and I am glad I did. I focused on my kids and my husband, having time together as a family enjoying those fluid summer days, staying up late, watching movies, getting ice cream and going on adventures. We even took the kids to Pennsylvania this summer to go camping. We made memories and that is exactly what I wanted to do.

Now, I am back at work in my physical classroom and I find myself struggling when it comes to using that office space for what I need it to be for. I am writing a new book that I am so excited about. I think this one will be one of the best ones I have written to date and I just want to edit it and publish it. However, I struggle to find the time to get up to that desk after working all day and then immediately coming home and wanting that time with my boys.

I told my husband I think it’s time I moved my stuff to the “adult living room.” We have two living spaces. Our “adult living room” is our main floor living space and we did not put a TV in there. It is a place where we play board games, sit around our fireplace with cocktails (sometimes) and read. Our kids are always in there which is funny because in our family room, we put all of their toys and the TV, but they too favor our adult room.

In my mind, I know moving down there will allow my kids to get into everything of mine I don’t want them to, but I am also hoping by doing so I will be able to finally finish writing this and get my work out there again. It has been five years since I published a novel and most of that time I was spending on growing our family and finishing my doctorate so I don’t really view it as “lost time,” but I do view the time as now if I want to get back into my own dreams for my life.

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Back to School

This summer was an absolutely crazy period of my life, so I apologize for going MIA for a little bit. I worked full time to save money for our wedding, wrote a lot of big checks to people FOR the wedding, interned at my district’s high school where I logged over 160 hours, took a stats class (my LAST PhD course) and took another class towards my certification in arts integration.

It was absolutely crazy and I actually found myself longing for school to start so that the craziness would kind of end. I finished the stats class and the art class. However, I am still working 3 jobs but the wedding is…58 days away so it shouldn’t be for that much longer even though the extra money has been nice.

I also re-did my entire classroom for the year with special thanks to Princeton University for the couch and chairs donations and to Target for heir amazing dollar bins this summer:

I hope everyone else has had a wonderful start to a fantastic school year!

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Late Night Books

I can’t remember the last time that I was so into a book that I stayed up all night reading it. I had a lot of work to do last night, I had a syllabus to write and a course to finish putting together, but the temptation for a fun read was just too great last night.

In high school and college, I was just like a plethora of other teens and kept, religiously, a LiveJournal. I loved it. It opened up to me an entire world where I was able to “meet” people from all over the world and read about their lives. In fact, I met many writers, artists and other creative through LJ. I loved that community.

Of one of the people that I “met,” was New Orleans based author, Poppy Z. Brite. I fell in love. I loved her books and her wit. I was very sad when she stopped updating her blog.

Some years later, she began to update again and I once again was reminded of why I loved her writing as much as I did. She had since begun to identify as a he, officially, even though so much of his writing had been about his gender dysphoria. He was also creating really cool art and had retired from publishing. Recently, he started posting dibs books, which are books from his personal collection that he signs and ships out. I was lucky and grabbed two, one of which is the extremely dark Exquisite Corpse.

I had read the first 100 pages in an hour, I had forgotten how dark and immersive the book was. I stayed up until nearly 2am laying on my couch reading a book that I wanted to read. It was amazing! I haven’t been able to read a book for fun since Phil and I went to Wildwood for a long weekend last year. I’ve just been so busy with my teaching courses and with my PhD that hobbies have sort of fallen to the side. I plan to finish it tonight and move onto the stack of books that I have sitting in the shelf of my headboard.

I really need to start making some more time for myself.

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