Life with My Children
June 4th, 2008
“Life with My Children”
My wife died early morning of October last year. Her loss was devastating for me and my kids and the things that we have to contend with from her loss stressed me out so much I almost called it quits. Here’s why:
Making the bed every morning and changing pillowcases are no fun especially when one has to unload the whole closet to look for them. Neither is thinking what dish to prepare for lunch or dinner.
These are some of the things confronting me when all the rituals of sending the soul of my wife to her Maker were all done. My children and I suddenly have to figure out how to fill the vacuum she left.
When she was with us, she took care of the domestic front, through a house help, while my children and I went our separate ways each morning to do our “thing.” With her gone, the seemingly menial tasks became loads too heavy to bear.
Then our helper left us, leaving me so stressed-out that I thought I would be cut in half. Suddenly, dinner was take-out for me and my son, fast food for my daughter. Lunch was taken in the office, yet driving home right after to tend to my dogs. Laundry was done in one evening, ironing them the next. Moving around the house was done with utmost care not to disturb the layer of dust all around. Our lawn took the look of a wilderness and our bathrooms as pigsties, smelt like one too. Breakfast was skipped for lack of time preparing it.
My wife spent much time and fortune on her plants. We decided to take up where she let go – just in the nick of time. Most of them were already dying of thirst.
My son was his stolid self – suffering in silence while my daughter was at my back for the little things out of place; she was on the edge if her hospital gowns were still in the laundry bin and on edge when she did not see them in hangers; she spoke out loudly over the gravelly sound of her slippers over the layer of dust in our living room. Never have I been so helpless but to say, “I just cannot do all these times by myself.”
From where she is, my wife must have been very amused to see me so harassed by the little things, always taken for granted, that make up a household.
We all have roles to play in life. Some of these are thrust upon us by who and what we are, while others are assumed. A little few are forced on us by circumstances. Every now and then, by some twists in fortune, these roles are hay-wired, reversed, or thrown out of sync. For two weeks in my life, the roof fell on me completely and it wasn’t easy.
I got the much-needed respite when another girl came in to replace our previous house helper. A character by herself, but never have I appreciated so much the meaning of “good enough.”
