I haven’t written a post here since Bret’s passing. I started this site as a way to keep our family and friends updated on Bret’s battle with cancer, and my posts were almost exclusively focused on how he was doing. Thus, when he passed away I didn’t see the need for additional updates. However, I have been blown away over the past 6+ months by the continued care and concern for how the girls and I are doing, so I thought I would go ahead and use this forum once again to provide a few updates on that topic for those who are interested. I suspect I will post less frequently than I did when Bret was actively undergoing treatment, but I will endeavor to occasionally answer to the question of “how are you all doing?” with a bit more color and detail than my typical response:  “We are surviving”.

I am going keep this update primarily focused on the twins, in large part because my grief is a lot more complicated and I frankly think I am still in a state of shock about the whole thing. I honestly cannot believe any of this happened, from the initial diagnosis to his death. I read an article in the New Yorker written by Amanda Petrusich, who lost her husband in 2022 when her daughter was only a little over a year old. What she wrote resonated with me deeply:  “It feels dangerous to say that it is possible to die of a broken heart, but anyone who has gone through it knows how grief can feel insurmountable sometimes. It is a violent rupture. You prepare the tourniquets, you apply pressure, you pray that you will stop bleeding before it’s too late.” I guess that’s where I am now, applying pressure and praying that the bleeding stops. While I very intimately understand – now more than ever – how it is possible to die of a broken heart, I know that I won’t because I know that I can’t. I must go on for my girls, and I will go on for my girls. On some levels there’s an irony here, or maybe for those who believe in such things there’s a greater power at play. I think most of you know that Bret wasn’t sure if he wanted more children when we first met, but the truth is had we not had children I do think I just might die of a broken heart from losing Bret. In that sense my girls (including my oldest one J) are quite literally saving me. 

I am so sad for the girls that they will grow up without Bret physically present in their lives. I am devastated that they didn’t know him longer, and that their memories of him are likely to be very faint if at all. I am crushed that I couldn’t protect them from this tremendous loss. I worry that their lives will be harder in certain ways. I hate that they don’t have a second parent to turn to when my arms are full (either literally or metaphorically).

Yet I recognize that these are all MY emotions, not theirs. The blatant truth is that the twins are all right. Actually, they are better than all right. They have proven to be strong and resilient beyond my wildest dreams, and they are two of the loveliest, happiest, funniest, most outgoing and joyous little creatures I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. They almost immediately accepted their Daddy’s passing as just a normal part of their existence. Their reaction was similar to the reaction they give when they have a friend over for a play date and I tell them it’s time for the friend to go home. They were sad, but not in a particularly emotional way. When I told them that their Daddy had died their reaction was along the lines of, “Awwww. We will miss Daddy. Can we go back to playing with our dinosaurs now?”

I think every family who goes through this sort of trauma and tragedy handles it differently, but my approach (in heavy consultation with a team of child psychologists) has been complete honesty delivered in age-appropriate terms and language. I started talking to the girls about their Daddy being “very very very sick, in a way that most people never get sick” when he had his first surgery. I was encouraged to emphasize his illness in this way to avoid a situation where the children become fearful that every time someone gets sick with a common cold, for example, they are at risk of dying. I was advised to use the words “brain tumor” and “cancer” so that they heard it first from me not someone else, so I did. But when they asked what those terms meant I put it in language that was easier for them to digest: “Daddy has a boo boo on his brain.” This is largely the refrain that I still use today, with further color to explain his death: “Daddy had a boo boo on his brain that eventually made his heart stop, and he died. What that means is that his body lives in the ground now, but his soul and his spirit will live on through us and all of the people that knew him and that love him. He will always be in your heart.” 

I have tried to be delicate in addressing the more spiritual aspects of where their Daddy is now as I do someday want the girls to make their own decisions about their spiritual and religious beliefs, but they know that Mommy believes that Daddy lives in heaven now, which is a beautiful place where nobody is sick and Daddy is having tons of fun. They also know that I believe that their Daddy is watching over us constantly, and that he will always be our guardian angel. Adorably, they sometimes confuse the word “angel” with “fairy” and they will tell people, “My Daddy is a fairy.” This always makes me laugh, and I know that it would make Bret laugh too. G-d do I miss his laugh…

Perhaps because I have tried to be so honest with the girls about everything they talk about it all very directly. For example, they will say things (occasionally at socially inopportune times) like, “Our dad is dead.” This matter-of-fact way of discussing their Dad knocks the wind out of me, and is surely jarring for others who hear it. They often need reminders or further explanation about things, and I have to repeat myself a lot. This is a reality for any parent of three-year-olds, but it is incredibly challenging to have to recite the hardest conversation I have ever had to have over and over again. Every couple of days I am hit with a gut-wrenching question like: “Is Daddy coming back?” “What happened to Daddy and where did he go?” “Is Daddy still dead?” “What does dead mean?” “Why did Daddy die?”.  As emotionally taxing as these conversations are for me, for the twins it’s simple fact gathering of the sort that their beautiful, sponge-like brains do all day long. They seem to have come out of this nightmare without long term emotional damage, which is a monumental relief to me. Unfortunately I have friends - including several who we met through our journey with glioblastoma – who are grieving the tragic loss of their spouse/partner while having to be simultaneously concerned about the mental health and emotional wellbeing of their children. I cannot imagine that added stress and anxiety in my life right now, and my heart goes out to anyone who is in or has been in that position.

Although the twins have readily accepted what happened to their Daddy, they very much wish he was still here and tell me at least daily, “I miss Daddy.” To this I can only reply, “I know baby. I miss Daddy too.” Missing someone is a form of love, and I will never stop doing what I can to encourage and remind the girls of their love for their Dad and his for each of them, so I usually suggest that we draw their Daddy a picture, go get a scoop of his favorite ice cream, send a balloon up to the sky for him, read one of his favorite books together, or decorate a rock to take to his grave.

The twins have each developed their own ways of staying connected to their Daddy, which I find absolutely fascinating. A few weeks after Bret passed away Blake saw a sunset and began enthusiastically waving to the sky, saying, “Hi, Dad! It’s YOU!” She steadfastly believes that her Daddy is in every beautiful sunset and rainbow, and even gets upset if she misses a sunset because she will say, “I didn’t get to see Daddy tonight.” Forde believes that Daddy drops coins for her to tell her he loves her and is watching over her. Every penny, dime, nickel or quarter she finds on the ground she sees as a message of love and encouragement from her Daddy. She also believes that when she sees an animal in nature her Daddy must have sent it to say hello to her. None of these ideas came from me, which blows me away and reaffirms for me the magic of life and of love.  I think both of their unique interpretations of their Daddy’s continued presence in their lives are absolutely beautiful, and I hope that they feel this way about some of life’s daily pleasures -- sunsets, rainbows, tiny treasures and wild animals --  forever.