Helplessness

What a horrible couple of days. Two days ago was my daughter's birthday, the first family event without Dad. It was difficult because I had very little money to get her anything of significance, but bless her heart, she just thought everything was wonderful. I had to plan everything by myself: attend my son's ballgame, pick up a small cake and wrap the 2 gifts I had gotten for her. In her eyes the cake was the best and it was the best day ever. The real fun began the next morning.

In trying to juggle everything the night before I did not remind my little one to get his homework done, so when he got up in the morning suddenly he did not want to go to school. It did not take me long to understand why, since this is a daily problem for him. From there it only got worse. He could not find a shoe and the clock is ticking. Now I will be late for work, but I sit by patiently waiting for him to settle down and be ready to go. No such luck. He gets in the car crying and complaining and then the truth comes out, "without daddy here, why should I bother?"

I explain as best I can that I am trying to juggle everything and everyone as best I can but he comes back with "Daddy used to help with my homework". By this time he is crying uncontrollably and I am trying to get him to school knowing that I will now be late for work. He continues his rant on the 2 minute ride to school about "I miss daddy, I miss daddy coming to my games, he used to help with my homework, yesterday was the first birthday without him and I miss him" By now I am crying as well. What words can you say that will make it all better for a 10 year old when I can't make it better for myself? We get to school and I pull into the parking lot but not up to the door and I just hug him. What else can I do? He begins to calm down but is in no condition to walk into the school, so I did what I thought was the best thing at that moment, we both left. I held his hand all the way to work (it was asleep by the time I got there but I was not going to move it). He spent the day with me at work, and it wasn't until lunch time that his mood started to improve and the happy, smiling face started to come out. I thought about getting an appointment with his counselor but he has one scheduled next week anyway so I just made sure he finished his homework while we were there, treated him to a slice of pizza for lunch and spent my time with him.

Almost 6 months down the road and you would think that things would be better but yet everyday something comes up that reminds us of the position we are in. Family will be coming this weekend (glad some are, not so glad others are) and I have a small list of things that I need my brother to help with, I need to take advantage of the help while it is there. Yesterday was hard, but we made it through, only 4 more years to go.