A Day in the Life of a Surviving Spouse
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The prompt for this round of the FEDforum is: What is a day in the life for a member of your organization? This week, hear from Survivors of Blue Suicide Foundation (SBS). This article was written by Samantha Poore, SBS President.
Our day starts around 8:00 a.m. when I hear my three kids moving around. Some days I have the energy to go downstairs and make them a nice breakfast but other days I have a harder time getting out of bed so they grab something easy. I usually end up asking 8-10 times if they’ve all brushed their teeth and got dressed for the day. They get sidetracked with the dog, a show or playing with each other. I call mornings in our house a hot mess due to all the usual chaos. I will usually call one of my best friends (each have 3 kids too) to check in and see if they want to hang out or take the kids the local aquatic center. I really like to keep busy with my friends so my kids have other kids to play with and so I don’t feel alone. I’m not always with other people but I find that when I'm alone I tend to have more triggers over Sean’s death. I get upset over little things, like the other day when my fan wasn’t working properly and I had to spend five minutes trying to turn the light off before we all went to bed. It turned me into a hysterical mess. When things like that happen my brain automatically has thoughts like “It wouldn’t be like this if Sean was still here.” It just makes me miss him even more than I already do.
Sports season is even more crazy. The boys play flag football and baseball and this year they overlapped a little because of Covid. Brooklyn is in dance class and gymnastics. That’s a ratio of six extracurricular activities to one me. I find myself enlisting the help of my friends, teammates or family. I've even had to go from one game to the next and back to the other game all in one day so the kids knew I was at each of their games. I hate missing any of them. My daughter had to miss multiple dance/gymnastics classes because I couldn’t get the boys to baseball practice/games during her classes because it’s just me.
We sit and eat dinner together as a family. We pray before our meal and thank God for our beautiful day, our health, our family and friends, and we ALWAYS thank God for Daddy (Sean). The kids love that part the most. Our nighttime routine can get hectic. I’m usually hollering for the 5th time for at least one of them to get into the shower, brush their teeth, get pjs on and get into bed. I give them all kisses and hugs and sometimes read to them if I’m not too tired. That might sound like a usual night in any home with kids but here’s where its different, at least four times a week, someone gets up from bed crying because they miss their Daddy. They come into my room, bawling, wanting to be held and ask me questions about him or tell me what they miss about him most. It breaks my heart every time. I usually hold them for about five minutes until I can get them to talk about it and calm down. I take them back into their rooms and lay them down. Then I’m left feeling so helpless and emotional the rest of the night.
This may sound like anyone else who has three kids, but the difference is, I’m doing it alone with the extra emotions that come with a suicide loss. I have my daughter crying frequently and my oldest often asking why his dad did what he did, why he wasn’t enough for him to stay, and if it was his fault his dad left. It’s awful. At the end of the day though, we talk about Sean often so my kids know who he was and we are very comfortable with showing our emotions. That is a huge blessing at the end of every single day.
This column from Survivors of Blue Suicide Foundation (SBS) is part of the FEDforum, an initiative to unite voices across the federal community. The FEDforum is a space for federal employee groups to share their organizations’ initiatives and activities with the FEDagent audience.
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