Grief is such a bitch. I understand it now in a way I just never could in the Before.
Tony's nan, who he loved dearly and was very close to, passed away while Tony and I were together. He mourned for her deeply and furiously. I look back now and I'm angry with myself, sad for him... I didn't understand what he was going through at all. I pushed him to get over it, get on with it...
But hindsight is twenty–twenty, as they say. Shoulda, woulda, coulda. Didn't.
My daughter, my Bump, is two and a half now and she is, for the first time, starting to realize that there is something missing here, that her family is not the ’typical’ one they describe in books, TV shows, and life in general. I'm amazed how often character families are nuclear– I had really never noticed that Before, had you asked me if there was a need for more single parent families on TV I would have said of course, there is plenty of diversity there already.
The Bump having her 'pretty hair' cut.
Things look different from the inside, always, always.
Bump has a dolls house, and is so curious as she plays– the daddy doll is the focus of everything, the game starts only when he enters the pink plastic front door, and the mother and baby freeze in tableaux again when he leaves.
She points to the sky, questioning, her face a small frown, “My daddy up there?”. And what is there to say except yes, baby, he is, but much higher than the clouds, much higher than the sky, and of course, he can't come back– always remembering to add that on, to not create false hope and fantasy expectations?
My daughter will never know her father, except for what I tell her of him. She’ll never know exactly what his voice sounded like, or how warm and safe it was to lie in his chest, or how the world looked from atop his shoulders.
Grief, it’s a bitch.
And there are all kinds of things to grieve for.