Holding my breath

I am wound up so tight this year that I can't enjoy my children.

I can't melt into those moments of cuddles and kisses and laughter and love.

Because it hurts.

David is imaginative, intelligent, caring, compliant, enthusiastic, cuddly, and sweet. But it hurts to enjoy it...

Mary is bright, determined, beautiful, perceptive, sassy, sensitive, and funny. But it hurts to enjoy it...

Because Greg isn't here to enjoy it too.

Every night we would lie in bed together and discuss what we love about our children and what exasperates us and then again what we love about them.

We raised them together. The good and the bad.

It is difficult, of course, to deal with the bad alone.

But in some ways it is worse to experience the good alone.

The joys of parenthood also bring sadness. The happy moments break my heart just a little each time. How can their dad really miss all of this?

Each time I feel a wave of joy begin to wash over me, I can't help but run away from it. This year there is too much sadness intertwined with the happiness David and Mary bring me.

This isn't a lost year only for Greg. It's a lost year for me too. That makes me sad, but I can't help it: I feel like I am holding my breath for a whole year.

I want to exhale.