I haven't written much about my kids, on this blog, in the After.
I used to write about them all the tim, just about every day.
But After, now.. it just hurts too much.
We are in pain, my Chop and I. We are grieving. My Bump, she is not old enough.. but she knows that there is Something. And she knows, of course, that her Daddy is gone.
But sometimes, I forget that before they were grieving children, they were just children. And they still are children, children like any other.
My little man, he's three, and the spitting, cheeky image of his dad. He is a fussy eater- sandwiches and fruit- but he loves lollies and ice cream. He's a daydreamer, a dawdler, always ten steps behind me when I'm walking... taking everything in. He listens, and watches- he's smart for his age. He loves to sing, and dance, he loves the Wiggles. The Chop is very much a boy's boy- he plays with car and tools and fixes things with his drill. His curiousity nearly kills me, he loves anything electoric and can tell you exactly how both the TV and antenna work, and his favorite word is 'Mum'. He's gorgeous, funny, passive, deep and sweet.. and my heart aches for him, every second of every day. Because I know how it hurts to lose your best mate.
And my little girl, my Bump? She was born in the sunshine, and it's showed ever since. She's happy, bouncy, funny. Always laughing and smiling. As she gets older, she just gets cheekier. She was the apple of her father's eye, his princess, his little girl, and he adored her. I remember, he used to walk her round and round the block when she was tiny, and screaming with reflex. "Look," commented our neighbours, "there's Toz with his princess." "You've heard her at this time of night, she's no princess..."
But we were talking about the After, the now.
The Bump is a stirrer, with fiesty temper- she lashes out, smacks her brother in anger the way he never would have. She loves pretty things- dollies and hairclips and beads and her Dorothy the Dinosaur tail. She's permantaley attached to a small pink doll's stroller that she pushes around, and she eats anything and everything, especially pasta or strawberries, with gusto and relish.
I remember, in the depths of my own depression after the Bump was born, Tony saying to me "they're such happy kids, darl, and I don't want to do anything to ruin that."
I'm doing my best. They are happy kids, still, but, in the same way I walk a very fine line between finding the happiness in one moment at a time, in the simplest things, and the falling down the rabbit hole into the very depths of blackness... so, I think, do they.
I'm doing my best, babe. The cards are stacked just slightly against me here- but our biggest goal, as parents, was to raise happy, resliant children. And that hasn't changed.