Watching Dad’s Videos
It’s amazing how watching videos of our lives changes so much after loss. My children ask to watch their Dad’s videos often. How I feel watching them now is so different from when I was watching them while he was alive.
Looking at my children’s faces as they watch their Dad laugh, experiment and just being the person and man that he was, is emotional for me. Their Dad is still teaching them as best as a person can who is not physically present.
My own mixed emotions of anger that he is not here, gratitude that he was. I have appreciation for the videos in a way I never imagined and joy watching my kids watch and enjoy their Dad. The purpose, the reality for watching the videos now has changed so much.
In the years before Grant left us, he and I went on vacation together without the kids which at the time was rare. At the airport, with the video running I asked him where he was in the, ’find us in the globe’ or ‘Where’s Waldo’ intention.
How could I have known the meaning of the question “Honey, where are you?” would become so vastly different just a few months after I asked him that question when I knew exactly where he was when I asked then.
I don’t have an answer now to that question anymore. And the truth is, no one KNOWS where he actually is. Sure, it feels good the think Grants in ‘heaven,’ but feeling good about something and knowing the reality are different. I know a lot less since his death.
I’m not suggesting he’s in hell, far from that. I’m suggesting that I really don’t know enough to feel okay with any belief. He exists somehow, I’ve experienced him since he died, but that’s not enough for my needs.
There are many beliefs and philosophies on where he might be, but may I share that an answer based on a belief you hold, doesn’t bring any comfort or make any of the every single days I wake up to the reality that he is gone easier.
Beliefs don’t help me raise the children he left who now live every real day without their dad. Belief doesn’t make any of the thousands of other things I do without him ease the heaviness of being alive without a partner who promised to do this life WITH me.
Yeah, watching the videos of Grant now is bittersweet for me. It fills me and empties me simultaneously. Where are you Grant? I need you next to me. I want to experience more with you. I’m not done yet.