I expected grief to hurt.

I expected sadness. Loneliness. The firsts. The empty side of the bed.

I did not expect to lose my mind.

Not in the dramatic way people sometimes say it. Not because I was losing touch with reality.

I mean I lost access to the part of myself I trusted most.

My ability to think clearly. To make decisions. To solve problems. To be competent.

I had always been proud of my mind. I was the person people called when there was a problem to solve. I worked in healthcare. My days depended on quickly assessing situations, organizing chaos, making decisions…and I loved it.

Now I couldn’t remember what I’d been doing for the last four hours.

When Brian’s Aunt Donna and his cousin Kelly arrived in the days following Brian’s death, they began speaking about the “fog” that was coming. Both had become widows themselves in recent years under incredibly traumatic circumstances and were speaking from all too real lived experience. At this point I was so angry and resentful that this “fog” they spoke of sounded like bliss. When they spoke all I could hear was the voice in my head saying “Bring it on.”

Being in a fog sounded like it would provide relief from the anger, the hurt, the fear and the questions that kept playing in my head and would never get answered.

Looking back now, I know that they were trying to spare me, but I wish they had talked more about it. That this “fog” was paralyzing and all consuming. That it could be a whole body experience where everything just felt physically and mentally heavy. That it was an indescribable fatigue that you could feel in your bones. It was a numbness despite feeling unbelievable anger and sadness.

I wish they told me it would get better, but that I may never return back to what I was. Maybe then I wouldn’t have been so surprised by the impact it would have — that as I was mourning my husband I would also end up mourning my brain and my competence.

What strikes me now is that at the time the fog was settling in is exactly the same time the world was asking and expecting everything of me. Changing or removing names on accounts, remembering to pay bills, cleaning up and figuring out what to do with Brian’s belongings. I didn’t want to think about some of these things, and I wasn’t ready to deal with his belongings no matter how many people asked or encouraged me to do so. It got to the point I just said screw it. The bills would get paid, and when I felt like changing the names, I would. If I wanted to keep his belongings, his car, which I did for two years after his death, I would. The standards and expectations could go screw themselves. If I didn’t have Brian’s life neatly wrapped up with a bow in a month, so be it. In fact it felt gross to me that anyone would expect that. He, and his death, were far more than a series of business transactions and the removal of his belongings. Everyone and every institution would survive. I wasn’t ready to not see his name on our checks. So fuck ‘em. The checks were staying as is.

There was one thing that could not wait — re applying to adopt my daughter.

Within 48 hours of Brian’s death Kailie and my DCF social workers were at my home discussing what steps needed to be taken to stabilize Kailie’s placement with me and move the adoption forward…eventually.

Our social workers were kind and compassionate, but there were policies around this kind of thing. First steps - redoing my will and providing detailed financial statements asap that reflected my ability to provide for her on my own. Within two weeks of Brian’s death I was sitting across from our family attorney - a man who had been Brian’s babysitter as a child - signing my will. All as my brain was falling deeper into the fog.

In the following weeks K started her Freshman year of high school and I had not yet returned to work. I would get up and drive Kailie to school and on returning home I was depleted, like I had just used every ounce of my energy and mental ability to get her to school.

Somewhere during those weeks I discovered The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City and Below Deck. They were perfect. They asked nothing of me. No complicated plot. No emotional investment. No thinking. Everything else in my life demanded something I no longer had to give.

I had heard not to make big decisions in the first year after a loss. How is that supposed to work when life doesn’t stop asking? I spent my days trying to imagine what a return to “normal” daily functioning would look like and if I would even be capable. It’s not that I didn’t think I was strong enough to return — it was that my brain and how it functioned was changed.

On July 27, it will be 5 years that I lost Brian. My brain is better, but it has never returned exactly as it was. And yet the world never stopped expecting me to show up fully.

We tell grieving people to take care of themselves.

Then we expect them to return to work.

To make financial decisions.

To parent.

To remember appointments.

To function as though nothing fundamentally has changed.

I have often wondered why the fog of grief isn’t seen as a cognitive injury. Other events that affect the brain, such as a concussion, are recognized as requiring rest, accommodations, and time to heal.

Are the cognitive changes of grief not recognized in the same way because there was no obvious physical cause? Or because the cause of the injury is uncomfortable to discuss?

Those are questions for professionals far more qualified than me to answer. What I do know is that, for me, the impact was real.

My mind is still finding its way out of the fog some days, and I most certainly am not the person who walked into it.

Grief took away the thing I trusted most about myself: my mind.

I am learning to trust the mind that has found its way through the fog. I just know now that it is not immune to heartbreak.

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I expected grief.

I did not expect rage.

Furious, wild, all-consuming rage.

That is what I recall feeling in the days and weeks immediately following Brian’s death. No, I was not angry at him. He was the person I was least angry with, actually.

I was angry at the world, at the universe, and especially at God himself. I was angry about bureaucracy and paperwork and all the phone calls I had to make. I was angry that I would never grow old with my husband. I was angry that I would not get to parent with Brian. The list could go on.

I do remember when I first realized how quickly and strongly the anger came on and started building. It was the very night we got home from Maine. Family was at my house, and I was sitting in the dining room with them. Kailie was in the living room on the couch, still clutching her stuffed animal. Her Youth Pastors had come over to support her as well as her former foster mom, who was by now extended family. For a large part of the night, I felt dissociated. The scene going on around me didn’t feel like it included me. I felt like I was watching it from somewhere else. The sounds reminded me of when you are underwater and you can hear things at the surface but can’t quite make out what it is. This is what my home sounded like to me. Then Kailie’s words from the living room cut through all of that like a knife.

“I don’t even know if we are going to be able to stay here.”

Kailie was chatting away with her pastors when she said this. It was like someone had slapped me back into reality, and all I could think was “what the fuck.” Seems my mind was suddenly filled with a whole dictionary of very colorful and descriptive four-letter words.

At this point, I had not considered for a moment the thoughts that had to be rushing through Kailie’s mind. I was stuck in the cycle of reliving the morning in my head over and over again. Her statement was the first indication that grief was about to ask even more of me.

It was also the first time I realized — and resented — that this wasn’t just about me.

K (one of my many nicknames for Kailie), was technically still in foster care with her adoption pending.

In the state of Massachusetts, a child must be in an adoptive home successfully for six months before the paperwork process to finalize the adoption can move forward.

Brian died at month five of that wait.

What is going to happen to her adoption?

Grief truly doesn’t arrive as one wound. It keeps arriving.

I suddenly was back in my underwater world where I was simply trying to contain myself. I wanted to scream. Part of me wanted to throw everyone out, and at the same time, didn’t want any of them to leave. I just wanted to be left alone with my thoughts to start to process this, and it was becoming clear that was not going to happen. I think it was in these moments that the enormity of what it actually means to be a parent and to have to parent on my own fully hit me. It also hit me when I looked at my Dad, who at 84 years old was still parenting me at 46. Still picking me up and putting my pieces back together. It was then I realized this was my life now and forever.

The next morning when Kailie finally got up, I was sitting on the deck. I have no idea how long I had been there. I asked her to come and sit with me, and she looked terrified. I told her that I had heard her conversation the night before and knew she was worried. I reassured her that we would be staying right in the home that we had shared with Dad. It was more of an adult conversation than I expected to have with her. I promised her that to the best of my ability, I will keep her informed of things and will not surprise her should we need to make any changes. It was a good conversation, and we both were crying through it.

When it was over, there it was again. That gnawing, pissed-off resentment. I was pissed I had to be the adult essentially, yet everyone around me needed me to. It sounds so ridiculous now, but that’s the truth of where I was. I was angry that I had to compose myself. Angry that I had to think about things I wasn’t ready to, and share things I didn’t want to. And I deeply resented that I had to think of anyone or anything other than myself and my broken heart, even if that person was my daughter.

I felt like the worst, most angry person alive, and frankly, I didn’t care.

I knew I needed help, and fast. I called my therapist I had seen in the past, and she was amazing as always, getting me in as soon as possible and as often as possible. I will never have words for how grateful I am for her and for the space she held for me to say all of the ugly things without judgement, and with validation at times, and to help me find compassion for myself, and coping skills to move beyond the anger.

Within a month of Brian’s death, I also had joined a faith-based grief support group, and it was there I found my people. I never in my life saw myself as a support group type, but here I was, and thank goodness. They understood the anger and resentment. They even laughed with understanding when I shared how I wanted to march right up and rip a flag out of a person’s hands at my church who was worshipping with it because it made me so irrationally, wildly mad. Or when I said I had used all of my energy on the way to the group to keep my car on the road and to NOT drive through my neighbor’s lawn to take out their Christmas decorations. They also shared what helped them and their families, and what didn’t. It also challenged me to hold on to my faith even when I felt abandoned by it. I felt at home with this group of people. I felt a little normal again when I was with them. We were a small group that no one wanted to join, and they helped me more than they could know.

I thought grief looked like sadness. I knew from losing my mom some twenty years before that it has many faces. My grief in this moment looked like resentment — at a world that keeps on moving and expects that you should be back to “normal” in short order. Grief made me angry. It made me shout at people who didn’t deserve it. I could not see the beauty in the things around me. At least not right away. I felt deeply alone even though I was flooded with amazing family and friends. I am forever changed. There is no return to “normal.” It’s establishing a new normal, like it or not. These are ugly truths of where I was and I am not ashamed of that. These emotions also didn’t last forever, and they sometimes still creep back in. What I’ve learned is they are one of many emotions grief arouses and there is truly no right or wrong, even when the world tells you otherwise.

If you are in it right now - the ugly, furious, resentful place - I just want you to know - I was too. If that’s where you are, feel it and know it’s okay. There is grace for you in this place.

I promise you, these emotions don’t last forever, even when they still visit sometimes — uninvited and unannounced.

Now, instead of fighting them, I recognize them for what they are - not a failure of faith or character, but another language of grief.

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We had just returned from the bakery in town where I had taken the five kids to pick up a birthday cake for my friend Liz. I was standing outside alongside my car pacing. There was no cell reception in this part of Maine unless you stood in one perfect spot. We were in a wooded, secluded spot on an inlet on the coast. It was beautiful, and I was terrified, completely unable to stay still. It had been hours at this point since someone had tried to reach Brian and he had not responded. I realized it at the bakery, where there was cell service. Someone had texted both of us to say they had arrived at our house to do some work. The message had been sent some three hours earlier and Brian hadn’t responded.

I was clammy, unable to stay still. I told my friend Liz, whose cabin we were at, that I may have to go—that something was wrong with Brian. She tried to reassure me. Brian had some long-term health issues, but he had been in his normal state of health. “You’ve worried about him for 19 years. I’m sure he’s fine.” Even if he was, I was not fine. I was shaking, and trying desperately to stay in that one spot. I was waiting for my Dad and one of Brian’s friends to arrive at the house to check on him.

In the meantime I continued to try desperately to reach him. I called, FaceTimed, set off his missing phone alarm, and even used our doggie cams to call him. But the dogs were not where they usually were, and there were none of the usual morning sounds in the house. Nothing. I just knew something was off. The only explanation I could cling to was that he had gone to work and forgotten his phone. Please God, let that be the case.

My Dad entered our home while I was on the phone with him. What if this is bad? How do I drive home and keep it together? What do I say to Kailie? What happens to her adoption? Am I prepared for this? What about the dogs? Have they been alone long? Fed? Let out? What if he fell or something and my 84 year old father is walking into a bad scene? My pacing intensified and I lost my Dad’s call more than once.

I knew from my Dad before the call dropped out that Brian’s car was home. I knew then this was bad. I got my Dad back on the phone and he entered the main floor of the house and went to our bedroom. I shouted “Is he there?! Is he alive?!” My Dad responded “Yep he’s here.” And then asked where the lights were for my bedroom or how to pull the shades up. I yelled “Jesus Christ Dad! Just rip the curtains down if you have to! Just tell me! Is he breathing?! Is he alive or dead!?” Then the response: “No. Doesn’t look it… He’s gone”. My Dad was calm and steady on the phone with me, everything I was not. Dad described how he was lying in bed and said he looked very peaceful. I don’t remember a thing of the call after that.

Had he not felt well? Why wouldn’t he have called me or an ambulance? If I was home I could’ve tried to save him. I am a nurse after all. I’ve made a career caring for others, and I wasn’t even there to care for the person I loved the most in this world.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to vomit, or if I needed to sit down. I did neither. The police called and told me they knew I was in Maine with little cell service and they asked me not to move because they will need to reach me with questions and they needed to notify the coroner. “He cannot be there when I get home. My daughter cannot see that.” Those were the only words I remember speaking. But there was part of me that wanted to see him. I wanted to say goodbye privately and be there with him when he left our home for the last time. I wanted to see the scene myself so I could try to piece together what happened. None of that was an option for me because it couldn’t be.

I could not tell Kailie the truth in Maine because I knew I could not safely drive and console her. We had to leave because Dad was not doing well and they were taking him to the hospital. That was the message.

Kailie was already crying because she saw me crying and she was scared. Why wouldn’t she be? She had already lost both of her biological parents. What does this mean for her adoption? Was I prepared to be a new, single mom to a teen overnight? This was not the plan but it was where I was.

My friends frantically threw our belongings into the car. I remember my friend Liz grabbing me firmly by my shoulders and looking me in the eyes and saying “Time to find your mom strength. You can do this. You just have to focus on Kailie and getting home.”

The drive home was four and a half hours. When I saw an unknown number pop up I would pull over and jump out of the car to take the calls while Kailie said “MOM! Just use the Bluetooth!” I didn’t want her to know it was the police so I told her the reception was too bad I had to be outside so I could move to the best spot.

I remember parts of the ride. I remember it being eerily quiet at times. I remember Kailie hugging a stuffed animal and her blanket asking questions randomly about what was wrong that Brian had to go to the hospital. I remember the GPS sending us the longest route home because of traffic and me wanting to just scream. I remember looking at the cars all around us thinking how can they be going about normal life? I am driving to a completely different, unknown life yet they all look so normal. I remember thinking how when I had pulled out of our driveway two days earlier I had no idea it would be the last time I would see my husband alive.

When we pulled up to the house, my dad, brother, and sister-in-law were waiting there in their car. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I walked into the house. I just knew it was not the same home I had left, and never would be again.

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It was December 2019 and she was 12 years old, in her school gym uniform snapping her fingers at me telling me to quiz her on Harry Potter. I had heard about Kailie for nearly a year, but this was my first time meeting her. She was small, spunky, adorable, and just a bit sassy. It was that spunky sass and the feeling in my gut that I had never felt before that told me I had just met my daughter.

Brian was not with me that night. We were struggling with the realization our journey to become parents was seemingly over.

After years of infertility treatment, Brian and I had chosen to pursue adoption. It was fall 2018 when we completed all of the “things” you are required to do to be licensed in the state of Massachusetts to adopt, so Brian and I had entered the “waiting period”. Then in March of 2019 we learned the agency was no longer able to service adoptive families, essentially ending our journey to have a family.

In the months that followed, Brian shared for the first time that his family had fostered when he was young. In all the years I knew him this was the first time I had heard this. He shared how he wonders about the kids that had been in their home along with a few stories about them. Then Brian mentioned adopting an older child and talked about how much need existed in our own community. I was shocked. Where was this coming from? And an older child? I’m embarrassed now to say I had perceptions and they weren’t good.

He said he was turning 50, and didn’t want to be almost 70 at his child’s graduation. He had lost his Dad when he was just 19, and he did not want to leave a young child behind himself. He said an older child fit our ages better. I could barely believe the conversation. Fostering or adopting through DCF was never in my thoughts.

In those same months of early 2019, and completely unknown to us, Kailie moved in with a foster family who I shared a mutual friend with. It was this friend, Kim, who had known about our infertility and adoption journey, and over the following ten months shared Kailie’s story—relentlessly at times. It was when she heard we both shared a love of Harry Potter that she quite literally put her foot down and told me enough was enough, I had to meet her.

The event I met Kailie at in December of 2019 was a volunteer event for the foster care ministry at our church called Bags of Hope. They provide duffle bags monogrammed with youths names who are experiencing their first Christmas in foster care. The bags were stuffed with age-appropriate items for the child as well. Kailie had received her bag the year before despite having been in care for nearly 6 years at that point.

I wanted to go and support the work, but emotionally I still was not ready. With our adoption journey seemingly ended, Brian and I had let our state licensing lapse in October 2019. The year before was my first year going to Bags of Hope and it was excruciatingly hard to reconcile the piles of bags, some as high as my shoulders, each representing a child in need, with Brian and my experience of childlessness. Of waiting for an adoption to move forward. Of our miscarriage and the pregnancies that never progressed as they should have—yet there were thousands of bags. Now that our journey was officially over I wasn’t sure I had the emotional strength to see all of the bags and what they stood for.

I also knew I would continue to hear about Kailie until I met her. When I finally did she was charismatic and funny. She had energy that lit the place up and a take charge attitude. She seemed happy and well adjusted. She did not fit any of the assumptions I had carried about children in foster care, especially older children.

I had brought her a gift wrapped as if were being delivered by owl to Hogwarts, complete with the school crest. Inside there was just a bunch of little Harry Potter trinkets. She was so excited and thankful. Better yet I was able to stump her on a question or two in our Harry Potter trivia match, but she was good. She knew her stuff and had left an impression.

I spoke of Kailie with Brian over the next few months to the point he said “what’s with this Kailie you keep mentioning.” He knew what was up—I was tippy toeing him into the idea of it. Joke was on me – he really did not need any tippy toeing.

The text came in February 2020. I was at work and Kim texted me “Would you and Brian be willing to take Kailie out for ice cream?” What?! It was February. In New England. Ice cream was not something that usually comes to mind then. I asked her why and what was going on. Kim’s reply was heartbreaking.

Kailie’s social worker wanted Kailie to participate in an adoption event where licensed families come and meet children “available” for adoption. I can only describe it as speed dating for a child. I was sick at the thought of it. Kim said if Brian and I took Kailie out her social worker would be able to say there was a lead for her and spare her the adoption event.

I texted Brian right away and asked if he would be willing to take Kailie out for ice cream with me. He responded immediately with three separate texts: ”What?” “WTF you up to?” and “Ice cream when.” I knew he was in.

We met on a Friday. I came from work and met Brian in the parking lot of the church that Kailie had youth group at. Brian was nervous, not even looking at me when I pulled up. I saw Kim and Kailie’s foster mom pull up. Brian and I went over and I introduced Brian to Kailie’s foster mom who I had met at Bags of Hope. Then Kailie, Brian and I we were off to the Friendly’s across the street.

We sat down at the table and got some menus. Kailie scoured every last item on that menu and was chatting about them all, how much she loved some things and didn’t like others. If there was something she thought sounded delicious she would kiss the tips of her pressed together fingertips like a chef. Could she and Brian share a love language? I’ve never seen a 12 year old talk about food this way. Brian wasn’t even looking at the menu. He was completely focused on her.

Brian asked her “what is your favorite meal?” Kailie explained that on her birthday she gets to choose the meal the family has and her birthday was coming up in a few short months and her favorite was “ribs and collard greens” and that’s what she wanted for her birthday meal. I looked at Brian and he was smiling ear to ear. The joke to this day was she had him wrapped around her little finger at collard greens.

The next month in March of 2020 we were submitting our application to once again become licensed to adopt in our state. At the same time the pandemic hit.

Brian and I saw Kailie one more time just before everything shut down. While in the car waiting to go into the movie theatre Kailie was chatting away from the back seat. She was talking about how she was turning 13 soon, and how she didn’t know what would happen to her. How she wished she was in foster care when she was a baby because babies get adopted and she wouldn’t remember anything, and how people don’t adopt “older kids.” “I don’t know why people are like that” she said. Brian was in the passenger seat trying hard to sit still. I was trying to find words. She went on: what happens when she turns 18? Does she get thrown out of her foster home? Can she stay there even though they are not adopting her and she’s 18?

Brian finally broke and started texting. I thought he was on his phone trying to distract himself when I received a text—from Brian who was sitting right alongside me in the passenger seat. The text said “should we just tell her that we want to adopt her?” I responded to his text saying we couldn’t. DCF was very clear that we were not to mention anything to Kailie. She had been through too much, too many placements and a failed adoption. They wanted nothing said to her until things were certain.

After we dropped Kailie off that night, Brian cried. He cried about a 12 year old child needing to even have those worries. How if we could tell her, she may be able to put her mind at ease. How he hated the system and the world that such situations existed. How she must lie in bed at night wondering what is going to happen to her next and how no 12 year old should have to endure that.

Brian was a big guy who at times could come across as a little gruff. Anyone who really knew him at all knew that behind the exterior, Brian was nothing but a giant softie. He hated when I said that about him. He would say “yah yah” when I called him that. He couldn’t hide anymore. Kailie put his softie side out on full display.

Throughout 2020 we went through the licensing process for a second time while Kailie’s foster family became close friends. They kept us updated on everything – school projects, her grades, her calls from her grandmother, her social work visits, and of course the trouble she occasionally found herself in.

Finally in February 2021 we were able to tell Kailie we wanted to adopt her. We planned to arrive at her foster family’s home to have pizza with them all. Kailie just figured friends were coming over. Her social worker was going to meet us there and together we would tell her.

Brian and I had made a photo book of our home and the pets and our hobbies. We also had a picture frame that said “together we make a family” and added a picture of all three of us at the park on one of our previous outings. This was in a gift bag in the front seat of my car which the social worker grabbed discreetly before she entered the home.

It was a typical New England evening, snowing lightly outside. The house was busy and had an excitement to it. Brian and I were nervous beyond words. For the foster family the feelings were excited and also sad. Kailie had been with them two years and certainly added to their family.

Kailie had her suspicions that something was happening when she saw her social worker unexpectedly show up, and then of course Kim, the matchmaker, arrived. Brian and I pretended we would just wait while they met with the social worker but Kailie said it was ok for us to join them. We sat in the dining room. Kailie and her foster family on one side of the table, Brian and I across from them.

Her social worker started by saying “I come with some news. What is the question you always ask me?” Kailie responded with “Have you found a family for me?” and the social worker said she had and placed the gift bag on the table in front of Kailie. Kailie pulled out the book with Brian and my photo on the front and gasped and immediately started crying. We all did. It was a moment that is difficult to put into words. Luckily Kim captured it all on video.

Kailie was now almost 14 and as such had to agree to the adoption herself, and lucky for us, she did. Her foster siblings were eavesdropping from the other room and came in to celebrate with us. Kailie shared that they had been speculating that we would adopt her, but had no idea this was coming on this evening. She immediately wanted to call her grandmother and some friends, all of whom were so very happy for her. It was an emotional night that was topped off when she immediately asked us “Can I call you mom and dad?”

I remember Kailie looking through the photo book, and I remember Brian and I getting put right to work being presented with the report card she had just received. Kailie was a very strong student, and Brian reviewed the report card and read every comment from her teachers while Kailie looked on over his shoulder.

Brian had transformed. He was happy. Like soul fulfilled happy. He started to share our news with some of his closest friends he had known for years, and they later have said they had never seen him so happy about anything as long as they had known him. He was like a proud papa already. He was meant to be a dad and was a natural. It was an amazing, chaotic, happy time.

After a brief transition period Kailie moved in in March 2021. Our goal was to keep everything as close to normal for her as we could. Same school, same church, youth group on Friday nights, everything. Brian was the stay at home dad. He had been waiting for this. Over the few years prior he had largely wound down his painting business and was waiting to see what the future would hold.

Brian was the happiest I had ever seen him in all the years I had known him. He was dropping off and picking up, cooking meals and packing lunches. Kailie told me the rides to school often included him singing along to her teen girl music. I would come home from work and often find them building a puzzle, doing a lego set, or on the couch with our dog Lola watching an episode of The Flash during which Brian would call all the characters by names he made up just to drive Kailie nuts. She was diligent in her correction of him and he would just laugh. She even somehow got away with playing hookie one day, which she adamantly denies was hookie to this day. But the proof was in the photo that was sent to me at work – Brian, Kailie and Lola all in the car going for a joy ride, Kailie smiling away. Seemed like hookie to me. This is when I knew he was powerless against her. His softness and pure love of this child had won.

We spent the next few months focused on settling in as a family. By summer we began introducing Kailie to extended family and close friends, including a trip to visit Brian’s family in New York and New Hampshire. In July, Kailie and I had been invited to join one of my best friends and her children at their family cottage in Maine.

Liz and her family vacation in Maine the same week every year to celebrate her birthday. This year her husband was deployed and she was hoping to keep things as consistent as possible for her family, and still make the trip. She said she also would welcome some adult company for the week. She invited Kailie and I as it would just be her, and another friend we attended college with and her children. I was excited. Kailie and my first girls trip and she was going to get to meet one of my dearest friends.

The Sunday we left Brian had taken Kailie to church while I stayed behind and packed. The truth was Brian was tired and was looking forward to some down time himself. “The kid” as he affectionately referred to Kailie, and all of his new full time Dad duties had him exhausted. When they got home we got ready to get in the car and head out. Kailie unexpectedly became inconsolable crying, hugging Brian and not letting go. They had become thick as thieves.

Brian came outside to say goodbye to me. He was standing on our front walk facing me in the car. Kailie was hanging on to him, hugging him crying saying “I don’t want to leave you.” He was hugging her back and responded “I’ll be right here when you get back.”

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Food was Brian’s love language. Every year he would ask me what I wanted for my birthday. Every year I gave the same response, “a wrapped gift.” I said that because Brian hated shopping, and I already knew what I was getting, a goofy card and my favorite meal in the world. His pear Risotto. No one can make it like he could. I’ve ordered risotto everywhere from Boston’s North End to Chicago and nothing came close. The only risotto I ever loved nearly as much as his was in Milan on our honeymoon.

I loved watching him make it, and he loved having me in the kitchen with him, even though he would never say it. If I wasn’t in the kitchen with him, he always found some excuse to lure me there - handing him a plate, grabbing a pan, or to “taste test” the food. I would always oblige, especially when risotto was on the stove. He had to get it just right: the slow boil of the bone broth added one ladle at a time, the constant testing of the rice to make sure it was cooked to perfection and not too soft. I would watch him stir and stir the rice as it slowly transformed to a more translucent color and the sweet smell of the pear and the parmesan would rise from the pan. From the homemade bone broth, to the parmesan cheese from his favorite Italian deli in Providence that he would freshly grate, every step was his gift. That’s how Brian loved. He wasn’t quick with words to apologize or profess love, he wasn’t always a gift guy, but he would make a meal and some how I always knew exactly what he was saying.

His love of food is the first thing he and Kailie bonded over. When she told him when they met for the first time that her favorite meal was “ribs and collard greens” he knew, just as I did, that he had just met his daughter.

My husband Brian’s birthday just passed a few weeks ago. He would have been 57.

It is hard to imagine that nearly five years has passed since he died.

Some days it’s hard to remember what our life felt like then.

Other days it is devastating to remember too much.

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My husband died on a Tuesday.

Five months earlier we had become foster parents to a thirteen year old girl who had already survived more than most adults ever will. Five months after that I was a widow, a solo foster parent and completely, utterly unmoored.

Nobody has a playbook for that.

In the two years that followed, my daughter was hospitalized four times for mental health crises. There were two suicide attempts. There were crisis teams in my living room on any given day. There was a day I called her social worker and said I was done - and then had to reckon, in real time, with what I actually meant by that.

What I meant was: I am drowning and need someone to notice.

What I did NOT mean was come take my daughter.

She is my daughter. That part was never in question, even when absolutely everything else was.

This is a blog about what those years actually looked like. Not the version where grief makes you wise and love conquers all. The real version - where I was angry and exhausted and sometimes deeply resentful and also completely unwilling to let go.

I’m writing it because I think someone out there needs to read the ugly truth of it to know they are seen.

Maybe that someone is you.

Welcome. I’m glad you’re here.

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