Dream New Dreams (20 page)

Christmas Day presented similar, though more complex logistical adjustments. I had already learned some tricks of handling the opening of gifts once the children woke up. After Christmas 2006, I took the toys out of their boxes, removed the plastic packaging and wire ties, put batteries in if necessary, tested the toys to make sure they worked, and then wrapped them up. That way, when the children unwrapped their gifts, I didn’t have three little ones begging me to hurry up and get their toys out the packages so they could play with them. Because Santa makes his own toys, they are always ready to be played with—no assembly required, right?

My extended family offered to change holiday commitments and schedules in order to come to our house for Christmas lunch. My
mother, father, uncle, aunt, and brother and his family were to bring several dishes, to make the meal preparation easier for me. I had to bake the turkey and biscuits. Of course, there was still cleaning up the house, setting the adult table with our best tablecloth, plates, utensils, and glasses, and getting the card table out of the attic for the children. I still distracted myself by trying to re-create a Currier and Ives scene, but I in fact created a more stressful situation. Dylan, Logan, and Chloe wouldn’t remember how the table looked or if there was wrapping paper left on the floor from the morning’s chaos. They had a very special time spending the afternoon with their family and playing with their cousins, and that, to me, made the effort worth it.

The next morning, the children and I visited Randy’s family in Columbia, Maryland, to spend time with Randy’s mother, Virginia, his sister Tammy, and her children, Laura, Christopher, and Micajah. Tammy’s husband, Al, wasn’t able to make the trip because of work commitments. The children and I were supposed to take a short flight there, but the flight was delayed for several hours, so I canceled our reservations and decided to drive the four hours instead. I had thought flying might be easier than navigating I-95 and Washington, D.C., traffic on a holiday, but with a three-hour minimum delay, I wasn’t going to risk getting stuck at the airport with the children. This was my first time driving to Grandma Pausch’s house by myself from Virginia, and it was the first time we had visited her in over a year. Before Randy got sick, we would go to Columbia from Pittsburgh once every couple of months! Randy always drove. My brother was worried and cautioned me not to undertake the trip by myself. It had started to rain in the late afternoon, and the winter sun was waning behind the clouds. I weighed the option of waiting a day and starting out fresh the next morning. If we didn’t
leave that day, we would lose out on spending time with Tammy and her family, who had to leave the following day. I asked myself if I could drive four hours while minding the kids. How would I handle bathroom breaks with three children? Was I putting my children at risk by driving them to their grandmother’s house? I decided that I could make it by myself. I talked to the children, telling them I needed their cooperation, that I needed them to listen to me when we went into the bathrooms at the rest stops. I promised to call my brother when we arrived. Then, with a full tank of gas, we headed down the highway for Grandma’s. I was in the driver’s seat, both literally and figuratively. I had to determine what was best for my children and for me. The responsibility never felt heavier, and Randy’s level-headedness was never missed more. But there was something exciting about setting my own course. I could feel a spark of my own magic beginning to flicker.

Happily, we arrived safe and sound in Columbia with no mishaps to report. There was only one jarring occurrence. I got confused as to which highway to take after bypassing Washington. The GPS was telling me to take Highway 29, but I remembered Randy taking a different route off 95 to get to Columbia. Without thinking about it, I turned to the passenger seat to ask Randy what to do. Of course, the seat was empty and my copilot was no longer there. My brain was so used to his being beside me, it had reacted automatically.
He’s not here to help guide me
, I thought.
I’m on my own
. And I began to cry.

Unfortunately, there would be more trying moments at Randy’s childhood home. I felt as if he was present, like a specter. Pictures of him could be found throughout the house. Randy’s face, as a child, teenager, or adult, smiled at me from every room. At one point, Chloe asked me to follow her from the kitchen to come see her
daddy. She took me to the living room and pointed to a picture of Randy with his family at an amusement park. “That’s my daddy,” she said. “Yes, it is, darling,” I responded. “Wasn’t he handsome?” But she didn’t answer. She had already wandered away to play with her brothers, leaving me to stare into the eyes of the man I had married and with whom I had created this beautiful family.

The boys were curious about the pictures Randy painted on his bedroom walls when he was a teenager. Logan lay quietly on the bed looking around the room at the silver elevator, the submarine periscope, the footprints on the ceiling, the heart over one of the twin headboards, the message in a bottle, the quadratic equation, and the chess pieces. Dylan wondered out loud about what his father had been thinking when he painted the submarine, which then led to a discussion about their father and his high school interests. There weren’t any tears during our talk, and neither boy seemed sad, just interested in the boy their father had been. What remarkable, unforeseeable consequences painting his room created! More than thirty years later, Randy’s children were learning about him from those pictures.

After the children were in bed in Randy’s old room, Virginia, Tammy, Laura, and I shared stories about our Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. We talked about all the normal things families do: how the children were doing in school, their sports activities, our work and activities. It grew late, and as we were about to say good night to each other, I asked Tammy, “Did you ever think there would be a day when I would be sitting here in your parents’ house talking with you, and Randy not here?” “Absolutely not,” she replied. Divorce would have been more logical than death. However, with Randy’s death, we walked into unfamiliar terrain. His mother and sister continued to treat me as part of the family, for which I was
and continue to be so grateful. I couldn’t imagine losing Randy and his family at the same time. It would be too great a loss to handle. We’re still trying to figure out holiday schedules and visiting dates, but at least I know they want to be in our lives and maintain close ties with our children.

Being with Randy’s family made the world seem more stable, more familiar to me. It was one of the few aspects of my life that hadn’t changed. Randy’s room was the same. Grandma Pausch was the same. Tammy and her family were the same. And we were all still family—something I could depend on and hold like a candle in the dark. For these reasons, I felt comforted spending part of the Christmas holidays and ringing in the New Year with the Pausches. The love and safety I felt with the Pausch clan far outweighed the discomfort I experienced in facing those memories in Randy’s childhood home.

After Randy’s sister Tammy and her family returned home to Virginia, his sister Ruby and my friend Tina joined us. The four of us sat around Grandma Pausch’s kitchen table watching Dick Clark’s New Year’s Eve television special after the children were tucked in bed. Here among family and friends, I felt supported and loved. We had a shared connection through Randy whom I wasn’t ready to let go of even as the old year was counting down. I was a widow; Virginia had lost her son, Ruby her brother. In their presence, I wasn’t pitied, nor was I different from them, because we were all marked by the same loss.

Once the Times Square New Year’s Eve ball dropped and we wished each other a happy New Year, I went to bed. Lying there in the dark in a twin bed, I thought about my last New Year’s with Randy, about how we held hands. He’d been down in the dumps that evening, upset because of Dylan’s reaction during the film
Mr.
Magorium’s Wonder Emporium
, which they had seen earlier. In the movie, the toy-store owner dies, and Dylan became upset, and Randy had to console him. The episode gave him a glimpse of the grief his son would soon experience, and it made him very sad. Lying there in the dark by myself, I thought about being here in his home without him and about the new year starting without him, dragging me along with it. I felt I had done a good job of taking care of the children and myself during this particularly emotion-laden holiday. My children had benefited from spending time with their relatives and being in their father’s childhood home. The visual reminders of him had not upset them, but rather had given us permission to talk openly and lovingly about him. It was also an occasion for me to experience the love and support of my extended family.

I had to keep adjusting and coping as the days passed and the holidays and special occasions kept coming. Sometimes my planning to take care of myself in advance of a special occasion wasn’t successful. Valentine’s Day 2009 was a good example. It had been six months since Randy’s death. How could I prepare for it? I couldn’t give myself a box of chocolates or a bouquet of roses. Anyway, flowers always reminded me of Randy. When we dated, he filled my office with beautiful arrangements just to remind me of him and his love for me. Every Valentine’s Day, he would give me a dozen long-stemmed roses, sometimes white, usually red. He even talked about arranging to send me flowers once a year after his death, but I asked him not to because I thought it would be too painful. So on this first Valentine’s Day without Randy, my friends and family wanted to be supportive of me. My sister-in-law invited me to go out with some girlfriends the night before Valentine’s Day as a nice diversion. I arranged to have a babysitter watch the children for me. As we were leaving the neighborhood, I thought I saw my brother’s car
and asked my sister-in-law if my brother was coming to our house for some reason. She said I must be mistaken, and we went on to have a nice evening without my giving the incident another thought. When I returned home later that evening, my children were waiting to surprise me with homemade Valentine’s cards that Uncle Bob had secretly helped them make and a beautiful bouquet of flowers he had bought to have them give to me. It was really lovely, but in the moment, still filled to the brim with grief, all I saw was sympathy for the poor widow. My attitude persisted into Valentine’s Day with the addition of several more bouquets of flowers from friends and family. Each vase represented to me an attempt to fill the void of Randy’s roses. All I could think of was that I would never again receive flowers from him. He was gone, and so was our love. Sadly, in this mind-set, I couldn’t see the love and support filling up my house with the arrival of every flower and card. Grief blinded me and blocked out the beauty and love being offered to me.

Later on, I thought about how I had viewed the Valentine’s gifts as symbols of loss. I decided I didn’t want to live my life feeling that way, shunning the love of family and friends who were trying to help buoy me up in difficult times. I had a choice of how to live my life: I could choose not to miss out on the wonders and joys that life had in store in spite of Randy’s death, or I could wallow in self-pity and grief. In that moment, I chose to push back against the gray and see that not all my life was sadness. There were rays of sunshine and beauty. I just had to be willing to see them.

That was a challenge I faced with each holiday and special occasion. I learned to listen to myself about what I needed in order to get through the difficult times and the overwhelming feelings of sadness. I had to consider what worked best for our family so as to meet our needs during the Year of Firsts. I was slowly rebuilding my
life, giving myself permission to dream new dreams. Even as I took these small steps, Randy wasn’t forgotten. Choosing to live and finding ways to nurture and support myself didn’t erase the pain or the loneliness, but the effort helped. Sometimes I had to work hard to push past the self-pity, which could engulf me, and to reframe an event to see the sweetness that is still there in my life. Slowly, without my being aware of it, I was learning how to move forward.

As the clouds of grief and fear began to dissipate, I started to think about how I wanted to live my life. I didn’t feel guilty about leaving Randy behind. I didn’t love him any less because I created new holiday traditions. He was a part of me, a part of the family we had made together. I learned how to manage the past without compromising the present. Most important, I was learning not to look at today through the lens of yesterday, which made the promise of tomorrow all the more magical.

S
OON AFTER WE WERE MARRIED
, Randy and I went shopping together—a very rare event because Randy hated shopping, especially for himself. When he needed new clothes, he’d set out like a soldier on a reconnaissance mission into enemy territory—his objective was to get in and get out as quickly as possible. His closet held only one style of pants: Dockers, khaki, pleated, no cuff. His shirts were typically polo shirts embroidered with the logo or name of some conference he had attended. I, on the other hand, could find pleasure browsing in a store, though it wasn’t a major pastime for me. One beautiful summer day, we set off to try out mattresses and compare prices. Randy always believed in getting three quotes on a product or service to make sure he had chosen the best deal, so we had to go to at least three different stores. By the end of the day, we had successfully agreed on a firm,
pillow-top king-size mattress. Randy had really wanted the king-size because, as he said, he wanted the bed to be large enough for our future children to snuggle with us on weekend mornings or in the evening. He had fond memories of piling into bed with his parents, and he wanted to continue this tradition with our children. A few days later, our mattress arrived. And later on, as Randy predicted, our children did get into bed with us, sometimes too early for our taste, but it was a wonderful time for cuddling and talking with our little ones.