Tag Archives: Single Mom

It’s Been a While

WOW! It has been such a long time since my last post, which was on February 28, 2021. That was 23 months ago. I knew it had been a while, but didn’t realize it had been that long. So much has happened, but yet not a lot has changed. Here is a quick rundown of the highlights from the past 23 months.

March 2021 started off with a family beach trip. It was technically too cold for the beach. I had a sweatshirt on the whole time, and never put on a swimsuit. However, it is always a good time to put your toes in the sand. I also registered for college to finish my Associate’s degree I had started twenty-two years prior.

April 2021 wasn’t very eventful. We just lived our normal lives and did our normal things.

May 2021 was the first month of going back to school for me. I tackled two classes even though I knew it was a shorter semester, and I was out of practice.

June 2021 was filled with more school for me and summer camp for my oldest.

July 2021 ended my first semester back as a college student. Two classes down and seven classes left.

August 2021 started with a summer camp trip for my youngest son that both my oldest son and myself attended as well. Then my fall semester of three classes started. Planning started for the scouting year. Homeschooling started back up as well.

September 2021 brought COVID. First to my mom, then my sons, and then me. Thankfully, it was a mild case for everyone.

October 2021 got us back to normal … well the “new normal.”

November 2021 and December 2021 were almost normal holiday months. We were all able to gather as a family to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas. December also brought on two new diagnoses for my older son… Pectus Excavatum AND Pectus Carinatum.

January 2022 started a new year and my final semester for my Associate’s Degree. It also brought on a Hashimoto’s diagnosis for me.

February 2022 didn’t bring anything exciting, but rather it was filled with should I’s. Should I start a Bachelor’s Degree when I finish my Associate’s Degree? Should my older son have surgery to fix his Pectus Excavatum? How should I manage my Hashimoto’s? Should my sons go back to physical school or continue to homeschool?

March 2022 answered my questions for February. I applied for a college for my Bachelor’s Degree. After a scan, we decided to monitor my son’s progression and wait on surgery for now. Also, I made changes to my diet and supplement intake to help with my thyroid. My older son decided to go back to p

April 2022 brought a treadmill stress test for my older son. This test was to see what kind of stress, if any, was being put on his heart and/or lungs by the Pectus Excavatum. This test showed that he had exercise-induced asthma.

May 2022 finished up my last semester at the community college, and it brought my diplomas for my Associate’s Degrees… two actually … one in Business Administration and the other in Accounting and Finance.

June 2022 started with us turning in paperwork for high school for my older son. Then we joined the rest of the family at the beach for a family vacation before my mom had back surgery. June ended with my mom’s back surgery and the family coming together to help her heal. At least healing was the plan…

July 2022 brought an infection to my mom’s surgical site. This was the most scared I have been, and the sickest I’ve ever seen my mom. We had to call the ambulance because of how bad she was. She ended up getting diagnosed with bacteria infection of the surgical site that went through her bloodstream, sepsis, and delirium. We had no idea the journey we were all about to take.

August 2022 had trips to the hospital several days a week to sit with mama for several hours at a time. She never remembered us being there even though she would talk to us for hours. The infection was gone, but the delirium was still very much prevalent. When I wasn’t at the hospital, I would spend countless hours reading her charts and doctor’s notes, and then going to Google to try to find out what could still be causing the delirium. Doing whatever I could to advocate for my mom and her. On a positive note, my older son started public high school. This was a big change going from homeschooling to attending a “real” public high school. He loved it, and fit right in with the flow of things.

September 2022 brought my mom home… finally. After a grand total of eighty days in a hospital, of which about fourteen days were spent in an inpatient rehab facility located inside the hospital, my mom’s delirium was slowly but surely subsiding and she was able to come home. She still was going to have a gigantic mountain of recovery to climb, but at least she was home.

October 2022 brought more challenges with my mom’s health. For every two steps she made towards getting better, she made at least one step back. Something kept happening, something kept coming up, but again, we were so glad she was home.

November 2022 brought even more doctor’s appointments for my mom, as well as, physical therapy appointments. It has been great seeing this strong woman prove to us that she can, and will, get better. We all got together at her and my stepdad’s house for Thanksgiving. My mom absolutely hated not being able to cook for us, but my sister and I were more than happy to cook for the family. The best thing was that we were able to spend another Thanksgiving with my mom when there was a time or two in the hospital we all questioned it.

December 2022 had to bring sickness to my older son. Thank you public school. He had to take a couple days off due to strep throat and pink eye, and then after going back to school for a few days, maybe a week, he brought COVID home. Thankfully, he kept all that to himself and didn’t share with his brother and me, and also glad he had very mild cases of everything and recovered quickly. I also learned that my older son can act. I’m not sure why it surprised me. Well, it didn’t surprise me that he could do it, just that he was so good and very natural at it. He had never taken drama until this year. He didn’t practice at home so I didn’t get to see glimpses until his performance night. I was blown away and so very proud. Then December ended with Christmas family gatherings that I always love.

That takes us to 2023. I can’t believe how fast time flies and how much can happen in such a quick amount of time. I’m sure I’ll elaborate on a few of these highlights in upcoming posts. I have a few things in the works for 2023 and can’t wait to see where it takes me.

The Day I Became a Single Mom

Have you ever had a feeling that something wasn’t quite right one day, but you just couldn’t put your finger on why? It’s not that anything is out of the ordinary that day, but you just know it’s a day that will be like no others.

My day was just like any other. Got up, got ready, took my younger son to my mom’s, took my older son to school, and off to work I went. At the end of my workday, I went to pick my older son up from school. I was no more than three minutes from the school when I got a phone call from my husband’s neighbor. I still remember the words, the feelings, my legs shaking, and my disbelief like it just happened yesterday. However, it was six and a half (almost to the day) years ago.

After I hung up with his neighbor, all the questions started flowing in my head…

Was it possible that it wasn’t true?
How do I tell the kids?
What does all this mean?
How did this happen?
Can I even drive?
What do I do now?

I remember calling my mom to see if she could watch the kids for me to go to see what was going on. I had to tell her the awful news in code since my older son was in the back seat. I dropped off my older son, spoke to my younger son, hugged them, and then left to go see what I could find out. As I was pulling out of her driveway, the police officer that was at my husband’s house called me to tell me the news that I already knew. I informed him the neighbors had already called to let me know and that I was en route to my husband’s house. They had asked me to meet them at the police station first to sign some papers since we weren’t currently living together. I barely remember this part and don’t remember what exactly I had to sign. I just remember going and signing some papers. From there, I drove to his house with the officer following me. When I arrived, the coroner was still examining the situation. When the coroner was finished, I had asked the police officers that were there if I could see my husband. I just felt like I had to see it to believe it. At first, they didn’t like the idea but agreed to let me.

After I walked out of his house, and I watched them take his body away, I had to go back to my mom’s house to get my kids. When I pulled into my mom’s driveway, I saw that my sister and brother-in-law came over to help me tell the boys. I don’t remember in which order all the next steps happened, but I know there were a lot of steps I didn’t want to have to make.

I was the one who had to tell my boys that they would no longer see their father.
I was the one who had to call my father-in-law to let him know his only son had passed away.
I was the one that had to call his closest friends to let them know the horrific news.
I was the one that had to post the information on Facebook so that all his other friends would know.

I have lost people in this world, people who were very close to me. With some, I knew it was going to happen, others were a huge surprise. Nothing has been as hard as losing my husband. The grief didn’t happen all at once. I was able to hold it together (for the most part) during the planning of the funeral, the actual ceremony, and around my kids, but when I was alone I was able to feel it all, and feel it all I did. Several months had passed by before I could talk about him without getting emotional.

I’m sure you’ve been wondering if he was my husband, and I’m calling him my husband, and he was the father of my kids, why were we not living together? We had been separated for a year. Not because we didn’t love each other, just because strangely enough that’s what was best for the kids. They were only five and one when we separated (six and two when he passed away), but I knew our relationship was too toxic to have the kids live in that every day. I didn’t want them to grow up to think that’s how a marriage should be. I was very much torn between not wanting to break my vows, not wanting to leave the man I had loved since I was a teenager (although we hadn’t consecutively been together that long), and wanting to not raise my children in an environment that was full of arguments. What we argued about isn’t important, but nevertheless, that was our life.

While there isn’t a day that goes by that I wonder if we had been living together, would I have been there to call the hospital and would he still be here. Then there’s that thought that if we were living together, the boys would have had to live in the house where their father passed away. It was bad enough to have to go in that house to organize and move his belongings out, I could not imagine how it would have been to go to that house every day to live.

Although I try my hardest, I know I’m not able to take the place of their father, no one can. However, one reason I’m so passionate about Scouts is the boys are surrounded by positive male role models. I try to put as many positive male role models (grandfathers, uncle, cousins, friends) in their paths.

I Want to Travel

When I chose our homeschool curriculum, I had 4 Social Studies topics from which to choose. I chose Geography & Cultures. Over the past month we’ve been homeschooling, we have reviewed the continents and oceans, and then went to Europe. We discussed the continent as a whole, located all the countries on a map, and have studied deeper about the bigger countries. We have about one more week to spend in Europe, and then we will move on to Africa. My traveling dream has really sparked seeing all the breathtaking pictures and videos about these beautiful countries. The kids are definitely not as fascinated as I am though.

As a kid, I didn’t care that much about traveling. We took our vacations to the beach every year and occasionally went to the mountains. We weren’t that family that just flew or drove anywhere and everywhere. 95% of our traveling was no more than 4 hours from our house, and that was fine by me. Even though I loved our vacations, and the traveling to and from the destination didn’t bother me since I slept the entire trip, I was (and still am) a big homebody.

The older I got, the more I wanted to travel, but still wanted to stay “close to home.” I still had no desire to “cross the pond,” I just wanted to see the contiguous United States. I’ve often thought about purchasing an RV so I would be able to accomplish this dream. That way I would be able to be at home without being at home.

There are basically three types of dreams: realistic dreams, dreams that aren’t outrageous but still probably unobtainable, and knowingly unobtainable dreams. These types of dreams are different for everyone. For me, an example is a realistic traveling dream would be the kids and I vacationing at the beach this summer. An example of the second kind of dream would be me purchasing an RV and visiting 48 of the 50 states. The third type would be me traveling the world. Sure there is a chance they could all come true, and there is a chance none of them could come true.

I am too much of a realist to put too much thought into unobtainable dreams. However, it doesn’t hurt to fantasize. I will continue to look at pictures, and will probably add more countries to my fantasy list as we learn more about other countries. Currently, my top two places are England and Finland. I may even search how much it would cost. I just don’t see this dream becoming a reality.

I have already looked at the prices of RVs, and also learned how difficult it is to maintain them, which is why this is a dream that isn’t necessarily outrageous, but it probably is unobtainable for me. However, this would be a dream for which I would start saving money. It would be more like an “after the kids go to college” type of dream.

The plans for the beach vacation are already in the works, thanks to a nice little nudge from my sister. It will be nice to put my toes in the sand and stay in my happy place for a few days.

What are some of your dreams, realistic or other? I would love to hear about them!