In exactly two weeks from today, it will be my husband’s one year death anniversary. 

In my culture, we would acknowledge his passing by paying respects to him by cooking his favorite dishes, setting up an altar with his photograph, lighting candles and incense while we speak to him. Only after the incense has extinguished do we get to touch the food for ourselves. 

But here in middle America, no such thing will happen.

People will comment such trite things to me, such as, 

“I can’t believe it’s been a year, how are you doing?”

“He was such a great person.”

“I’m sure he’s looking down from heaven and smiling at you.”

Whatever.

It’s been a year fraught with grief, sorrow, loneliness, but mostly anger.

Anger illogically directed at him for dying. He had promised me at least twenty more years with him. Anger at cancer. Anger that there was no cure.

A lot of anger stemming from the weird relationship he had with his adult children, who he praised all the time as if they hung the moon. Angry at him for his delusional pride in them, thinking they were oh so smart and accomplished thinkers and trailblazers. 

Parenting does not come with any instruction manual. We are all winging it, some more successfully than others.

I’ve always parented based on my gut feeling. I feel I intuitively know my kids very well because they were attached to me in utero. Sometimes psychically even, for example, when I knew my oldest had pneumonia before he had even been seen by any medical professional.

What is the correct way to parent? Is it just as harmful to give your kids everything, as it is to withhold things from them? Does it do them harm when you praise them for something that doesn’t need to be praised?

In Costco a few weeks ago, I couldn’t help but hear this mother talking to her little kids as if she were having an adult conversation with them but done in a sing-songey voice. She was explaining to them every damn little thing: “that is a banana, we don’t eat chips, we’re looking for only organic.” Yadda yadda yadda. I wanted to punch her lights out.

It’s not that big of a deal that your five-year-old knows what a damn banana is. It does not mean he has Mensa IQ.

Anger at my husband is accompanied with resentment. When we discussed his will and I asked to be removed from it to avoid any conflicts with his children, he said I didn’t have any faith in him. He said he was hurt that I would think he had raised anybody who would be spiteful and ugly.

For the last year, I have had to contend with his “faultless” kids in so many ways, that my anger at him has repeatedly fucked with my blood pressure, my stress level, my sleeplessness. These people have no respect for others or any social graces. I am so mad at him for thinking that they are exceptional people when they are actually loathsome. I’m so mad at him for being such a smart person but so dumb when it came to his kids.

I’m so mad that the harmful things done to me by his children has tainted my relationship with him. I know this is wrong and I am trying very hard to let go of this anger. I have officially erased them from my mind. I am not anticipating actually receiving anything from the estate.

I have  the car that he loved to drive. And I have some of his cremains, thanks to the funeral home. (His children forbade me to have them.) I have some photos and I saved all of the texts and emails and notes that we exchanged. And I have my memories. In exactly two weeks from today, I will look for him among the stars in the night sky that he used to name for me. I will celebrate him as my childless husband.