Tag Archives: Dave Evans

The First Noel

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Photo: Sweet*Shot on Flickr

This year is Mini-Boy’s first Christmas and he seems to sense the excitement… he sure does enjoy the lights on the Christmas tree. Maybe I’m the one who is excited about seeing him unwrap gifts for the first time while dressed in a Santa-suit sleeper on Christmas morning or maybe I’m just making it up.

It’s also the first Christmas without Dave.

We have to do things differently this year. Trying to continue with the same traditions we’d been building together over the years would, no doubt, feel forced and lacking. Not just for me, but for the rest of his family as well.

We used to go over to his mom’s house for Christmas breakfast of eggs in tomato sauce, hot capicollo and pan-fried oysters. We’d open our gifts together while Dave and his mom would begin to try to outdo one another in the kitchen in preparation for a multi-course feast. I think I have his grandma to blame for that one… the first time I participated in one of these meals was at his grandma’s apartment. She managed to serve a 7-course meal for around 12 people from her little galley kitchen. A family friend had mentored me through the process. “Just take a bite or two of each course. You need to be able to make it to the end.” Sage advice indeed.

The first Christmas we spent in our home after we were married, Dave decided to outdo even his grandma (sorry Susan). I lost track of how many courses he served to 14 people from our own tiny galley kitchen. The meal ended with flames in the kitchen as he served up Bananas Foster for everyone. It was pretty spectacular. In years following we have had our Christmas dinners at his mom’s place.

This year I wanted to offer his mom a rest.

I know this is hard for her. My life is in such flux right now that I’m really looking ahead to what is to come and this particular Christmas feels like a sort of single, random Christmas stuck between two existences. I had to fight the urge to not even do Christmas at all, but that wouldn’t have been fun or fair for my boys.

So I’m going to “do” Christmas this year… my way.

I’m not sure how good of a job I’m doing – I’ve never been good at sending out cards – but I got a tree and got it decorated. Dave’s mom helped decorate it with Mini-Man and he’s very excited about seeing the gifts arrive under it. He keeps asking each day, “Is tomorrow the day that there will be presents under the tree?” Sadly, I have come to the conclusion that all the gifts I so diligently bought way ahead of time are not going to wrap themselves and, thus, I must stop procrastinating and get it done. I’m excited about singing for the Christmas Eve services at my church and having Dave’s mom bring the boys there to celebrate before she takes them back to my place to tuck them in for the night. I’ll join her for a Christmas Eve beverage of the adult variety when I get home and we’ll get to work preparing the magic for the next morning. Christmas morning will see a quiet gift-opening at my place and then I’ll be getting busy preparing a turkey dinner.

I’ve never cooked a turkey on my own before.

When I went to Mexico in the early weeks after Dave died I recognized that I’d have to learn to do things that I considered “his job”. For instance, I had to learn to transform transformers. I know, this sounds random… and it is, but it’s similar to cooking a turkey for me. At first I kept resisting Mini-Man’s requests to have Bumblebee transformed because I didn’t know how to do it and I was angry that I even had to… that was Dave’s job. But he wasn’t here to do it anymore.

So I learned.

I sat down one night and spent a good hour figuring it out. When I finally got him from a robot back into a car I had an overwhelming sense of accomplishment. I know it probably sounds stupid, but it began a journey towards my feeling like I can manage. Like I can do all the things I need to do to get by without Dave. And so now I will learn to cook and serve a turkey dinner in the same manner. Well, maybe not the SAME manner… there is no way I’m doing a seafood course and a pasta course and all that stuff. But, I will cook a turkey complete with stuffing, veggies, potatoes, cranberry sauce, gravy and such.

I know I can do it. And I know it will be empowering but bittersweet.

The only one tradition I do want to keep is one we started just a couple of years ago with Mini-Man. On Christmas eve he’ll bake a birthday cake and for dessert after Christmas dinner we’ll sing happy birthday to Jesus and enjoy a piece of cake together.

After all, Christmas is about Jesus anyway. And birthday cake is WAY better than Christmas cake.

So this Christmas I want to embrace its uniqueness, love my family, sing some songs, learn some new skills and life lessons, bless others and thank God for sending the Savior.

Only good memories remain

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It’s five months tomorrow since Dave died. It’ll also be my birthday.

The last time I shared my thoughts on the process of dealing with this was two months ago and life is beginning to make sense again. The fog has lifted some and I’m starting to feel more comfortable with day to day living as a single mom. I’m really grateful it’s summer because the late afternoons out at parks and beaches and hanging out in Dave’s mom’s back yard by the pool gives me a great excuse to order take-out dinners or eat picnic foods. I’m still not particularly skilled in the kitchen but I’m very much looking forward to getting a new barbecue and eating a steak for the first time in 5 months. Adding to the challenge of the dinner hour is that mini-boy is now fully involved in the food scene and so I have to make sure I have adequate soft cooked, chopped and minced foods for a 7 month old to gum. I’m very much looking forward to when he and mini-man can eat the same meal.

I miss him every day.

I still get regular reminders that he’s gone… a letter in the mail “To the Estate of…”, mini-man blowing a dandilion and wishing for his dad back, a realization that there’s something I don’t know how to do that Dave would have – like switching the hard and soft tops on our Jeep… and I still sometimes get broadsided by something that I didn’t expect. For instance, last weekend I took both kids and Dave’s mom to see The Lion King at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. I LOVED the movie and I had heard such great things about the musical that I just had to go. Well… I probably should have thought a little about the plot before heading out all excited. The part where little Simba sits trying to wake up his dead lion dad was painful and a couple of songs in the second act had me wishing I wasn’t there… I’m glad I ended up in the crying room with mini-boy; I think I may have cried more than he did. The show was amazing, but it sure was excruciating to watch.

I think the thing that breaks my heart the most is thinking about my boys growing up without their dad. In fact, that was the very first thought I had when I found out he’d been killed.

I have some good male friends who have been hanging with mini-man lately and getting some quality guy time in with him… he’s absolutely craving male attention. You know, wrestling, kicking stuff, playing with swords etc. He will take it wherever he can get it… and that is fine for now. Even if and when another man might come into our lives, he’ll never be their father. He’ll never care quite as much. No one could possibly care quite as much as Dave did. But I do trust that God will build a beautiful story from my boys’ lives even without their dad.

I’m still working on organizing our home.

I have an overwhelming need to get it to a certain level of livability with two kids and only one person to pick up after all three of us… especially before I go back to work in January. I’m a little scared of going back to work. I can’t imagine how I can run my household, adequately parent two children and work a full time job… but plenty before me have done it. I’m sure I’ll learn. It’s kind of strange… you would think losing my husband while my youngest was so teeny-tiny would have been the worst thing; but in all honesty, that has been a huge blessing. The fact that I will have had almost a full year before I have to go back to work has helped tremendously with living through this ordeal I’m sure. Knowing I can just focus on myself, my kids and our home has been one of the things I’m most thankful for.

For the most part I’ve gone through all of Dave’s stuff and have two very full boxes of keepsakes… photos, journals, his bible, some clothing – particularly t-shirts that appear in the photos – tie clips, cuff links, the neck chain he wore when we got married, his poker chips and playing cards… I’ve tried to save everything that the boys could one day use to connect their dad to the memories or things they could simply use and enjoy. I have yet to go through his dive gear and figure out what to do with all of it and I haven’t yet touched our storage locker in the basement. I also have a bunch of motorcycle gear I’ll probably just keep – his jacket, my jacket, a couple of helmets, gloves, and a big riding backpack etc. Not that I think I’ll ever get back on a bike at this point… but the truth is I know Dave would still want his boys to ride one day. I’ll tackle that when the time is right.

I’ve had the old barbecue taken away – Dave had been complaining that it was dead and we needed a new one, I’ve put up a bunch of new toy shelves in the boys’ room and I’ve had all the carpet and upholstery cleaned. Now I just want to finish clearing all the paperwork and stuff off my dining table and get the new barbecue picked up and put together. I know I won’t feel totally peaceful even then… it still feels like I need to do stuff. But I think it will help to feel like I’m kind of settled in now for the long haul… or at least the next couple of years. I’m still holding out hope that I will be able to buy a house once I’ve settled with ICBC.

I have a few things that I’m looking forward to.

In September I’m taking the boys and Dave’s mom to a bereavement camp called Camp Kerry and my parents want to take me and the boys to Mexico in November sometime. That will be nice. Plus, a while ago, I won a week in St. Maarten from Porto Cupecoy so I’m hoping to take that in March next year – by then mini-boy will be old enough for me to leave him with Dave’s mom and mini-man and get some quality adult-only time with a girlfriend. I’ll likely be spending Christmas at Harrison Hot Springs as well – we want to do something different so we’re not just kind of having the same celebration we always have minus Dave. That would be too hard.

I have found a couple of online resources that have been a source of comfort to me:

  • Young Christian Widow – a blog written by a woman who lost her husband to brain cancer and who is raising her three boys
  • Widow’s Voice – a blog written by a variety of widows and widowers

I am also planning to join in the Grief Share program at Valley Church in September.

Over all I do feel a certain amount of peace that I can only attribute to God. I have been able to be very kind to myself, allowing myself every thought, every deed, every self-indulgence, every angry moment or sad moment without self-judgement… again, that can only be from God given how hard I normally am on myself. Dave’s death has, no-doubt, changed me in some profound ways… I’m sure I haven’t even discovered the half of it yet.

It’s funny… when I think about Dave now, all that remains is the good stuff. I mean, I know the bad stuff was there, but it fades into the background of my memory bank leaving only the happy memories to be enjoyed. All the disagreements, hurts and trouble we’d shared over more than 10 years become a distant past and the only important stuff… the stuff I’ll cherish and remember always, are his dreams, strengths… his love and commitment to his family, his joy of life and what he wanted for our family. I hope I can honour his dreams for our family without him.

I’m so very grateful for my family and my friends who have really stepped up to love on me and the boys. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

If you’re new to my blog or have just stumbled upon it through a search engine, you can read all the entries about the death of my husband here.

Time Stands Still – The Story Continues

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Photo: Ruud Raats on Flickr

Three months.

It feels like forever and it feels like just yesterday. This weekend marks three months since Dave died and here is the continuation of my story. While most of the time I’ve felt fairly peaceful, this weekend was hard. It was shaping up to be a fantastic weekend: I had two music rehearsals on Saturday and was doing the music for my church on Sunday. I love a weekend full of music… something about it is so soothing.

Saturday morning started out well. I got mini-man settled at a friend’s house for a play date then took mini-boy to the church where another friend was going to spend the morning with him while I attended my rehearsals. I then headed up to school where the Black Bear Band was meeting for our final rehearsal before our last gig of the season – the Ladner Band Festival (gotta love the website – 1996 word art, but I digress…) on June 12th. Rehearsing wasn’t the reason I was attending, though… see, our music director – one of the top names in music instruction in the Vancouver area for the last 30 years or so – is leaving us and one of the band members composed a tribute piece in his honour. Saturday was the day we surprised him by performing it for him. To be honest, I was more emotional than I thought I’d be. While the band will, of course, go on, doing so without our fearless leader will be a real shift for us… but such is life I suppose.

So after the tribute piece was presented I had to jet to get to the church for my rehearsal for Sunday. I love singing with these guys… I’ve written before about how music affects me, but even amidst life’s trials, I feel like I was created to make music for God. Like that’s why he made me.

Sidenote: It’s so strange when I think back about it… when I was young – maybe in my teens – I did one of those career quizzes… the ones that tell you based on your likes and dislikes, interests and abilities, what you should consider doing for a living. Well the first suggestion was “Composer” and the second was “Music Director”… I thought, “Yeah… sure. You got the wrong girl.” But here I am some 20 years later writing music. Funny that.

After my rehearsal at the church I heard the Black Bear Band had gotten together at the pub… SOP after rehearsals and I was suddenly sad I couldn’t join them because I had mini-boy with me. I wanted so badly to spend a little more time with them before we break for the summer, but also found myself feeling very lonely given that I couldn’t get my mind off missing Dave. I wanted nothing more than to be surrounded by friends and laughter. I ended up letting the baby nap in the car while I ate take-out sushi and listened to some music in the mall parking lot. Yep, really exciting. All the while wishing I had some people to hang out with on this now beautiful day.

I cried.

I don’t cry often. I cry mostly when I’m stressed or frustrated… and I cry when I’m overwhelmed with joy and gratitude. But not usually for sadness; it’s very weird I guess. Maybe I just avoid it. It makes me uncomfortable. In addition to having two kids who keep me extremely busy most of the time, I’ve filled my life with sweet distraction… most likely to avoid facing the fact that Dave is, in fact, gone. Sometimes I still don’t believe it. Sometimes I feel like I didn’t love him enough though I know I loved him with all of me. I still do… and I see him in my babies. I can’t imagine ever not missing him terribly.

Many of my friends and family have been wonderful… some people I barely knew before March have been my biggest supporters and some people I thought would be there for me have been noticeably absent. My new friend Brenda has been a God-send to me. She has three kids of her own and the oldest is 4 ( a great match to play with my 4 year old – win!), yet she is so willing to take the kids for me when I need to go to appointments or even just out for a run. We have great conversations and I feel like I can tell her anything without fear of judgement. She has really made this much easier on me… I only hope that she doesn’t tire of me and my requests and that one day I’ll be able to repay her or at least pay it forward.

I’ve become very wary of single men. I have had a couple of single male friends who have just given me a vibe that made me uncomfortable and, while I am absolutely craving male attention, I don’t want to even put myself in the position to have someone seek out something I am completely unprepared to give. I am in no way, shape, or form “on the market”. So mostly I’m avoiding men altogether… even my friends. Even when I do find myself in a position to want to date again… the field is narrow my friends. Very. Narrow.

So for now I’m swinging between writing and playing music, staying active by getting to the gym and out to run as often as I can, learning to be a better mother (I picked up new art supplies and, get this… baking supplies just the other day for the next rainy afternoon at home), and avoiding my emotional reality at all costs.

We’ll see what the next month brings.

If you’re new to my blog or have just stumbled upon it through a search engine, you can read all the entries about the death of my husband here.

Sharing my story with the world

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Well, it’s official. I have become a mommy blogger… or at least I’ve been recognized as one. I was nominated by Vancouver Mom as one of Vancouver’s top 30 Mom-Bloggers. I think I have Karl Woll from Outdoor Vancouver to thank for that (thanks Karl!) I am flattered and it has made me think about my blog and consider writing again.

I haven’t written since my husband’s death for a few reasons: Firstly, the myriad thoughts in my head can often be confusing and move so swiftly I couldn’t imagine coming up with anything coherent to say in one sitting; secondly, I had never wanted to be a mom blogger but at this time in my life I have very little else to discuss aside from my husband’s death and my grieving process; lastly, I wasn’t really ready to share that grieving process with the world as I didn’t want to crank out posts that would just make people feel sorry for me.

Now that a couple of months have passed I can think more clearly and want to begin sharing my new story with you. Blogging sure puts you out there and it really can take quite a commitment to sharing some of these thoughts in hopes that they may have some kind of profound effect on someone somewhere.

So here goes…

Dave and I were together 10 1/2 years. We were married for 5 1/2 of those years and our oldest son just turned 4 in March and our youngest is now 4 months old. Dave and I had quite a crazy relationship and it took a lot of learning and a lot of commitment to make it work and to make it good. In the last 2-3 years we had really learned to live for each other, parent together… we’d become one. But it took a long time to get there. We were both excited about the future – Dave especially. I was more nervous because I don’t really like uncertainty, but he made me feel safe.

I would have gone anywhere with him.

As tragic as his death was, I really feel like God prepared me and my heart for it. It’s only in retrospect of course that I can see it, but a combination of leading and revelation in my life somehow put the pieces together to where it made sense. I had been writing about how I felt God’s leading to stop working so hard and take time to enjoy my family even though I thought I was working hard FOR my family. Dave was off work from an injury and we had no idea what he’d end up doing or how he’d make a living and yet I felt overwhelmingly like I was not to focus my attention and time on my career, which is totally counterintuitive for me. Since our youngest son, “mini-boy”, was born in December and until the day Dave was killed, we spent every day together as a family enjoying one another – going to parks, beaches, playing video games, day trips… talking about our dreams and learning how to live our new life as a foursome.

That time was absolutely precious and I believe it was a gift.

You know how you live with some kind of expectation for the future? You have a plan… you can envision where you’ll be 6 months from now, a year from now and you have a picture of where you want to be 3, 4, 5 years from now? We didn’t have that. We were living each and every day trusting God would work his plan in our life, that he would provide for our financial needs and that things would work out in whatever way they would. We had talked about how we both felt overwhelmingly like something astronomical was going to happen in 2010 that would change our life forever; we just didn’t know what that would be.

We were excited about it.

In the week before he died he had done so many things that, in essence, made my life after his death all that much easier. He had moved around all the furniture in our bedroom and put up the crib for mini-boy; he had cleaned out both vehicles and had our main vehicle serviced; we had gone grocery shopping and stocked up our home not only with food, but with all those household things you need but hate to buy – laundry soap, diapers, razor blades, paper towel, cleaning supplies, aluminum foil etc… you get the picture. Finally, the morning he died he had even done all the laundry lol!

Dave liked to do some crazy things: aside from riding motorcycles he enjoyed scuba diving, skiing… we’d gone skydiving together a couple of times. He lived closer to the edge than most. For that reason, I had actually had to consider what my life would look like if he were to die. I know that sounds morbid, but I had thought about it – we had to. We had discussed how much life insurance to buy, we have some good friends who have agreed to raise our boys if I go too, and we had discussed final arrangements. I just never thought I’d need to use any of that information. In a way, though, that made getting through these last two months much easier than it otherwise could have been.

My mom had a friend who had always said, “When I go I want to get hit by a bus in a good neighborhood.” Saturday, March 6th – a day I’ll never forget – was a beautiful day. Dave had wanted to get out for a little ride because the rest of the week was supposed to be rainy. He took the boys in the morning so I could go get a workout – my favourite cardio-kickboxing class at Champions Academy, then he picked me up and took us home and got all geared up to go for his ride. He was planning to run an errand out to a bike shop in Langley and then meet up with friends who were riding from Maple Ridge; he planned to travel back home to the North Shore with them. He left our place at 12:30 and was planning to be home by 3 to go hiking with me and the boys at Lynn Canyon. Boy, how life can change in an instant.

In the end it was a beautiful day, he was excited about his future, things between us were good, he was enjoying the company of friends and doing something he was ridiculously passionate about and his death was instantaneous. Ultimately his heart was unplugged and I’m confident he didn’t feel a thing. Now, if there is a GOOD way to die… I suppose that’s it. Our last words were “I love you!” “I love you too… ride safe.” “I will,” he responded. And I know he did.

But what will be will be… I have seen the hand of God all over our life together. I wouldn’t even have my faith and salvation if it weren’t for my relationship with Dave. His life made a difference on this earth and he’s left a lasting legacy. I believe I will see the redemption following his death and I hold tight to that faith.

So now that I’ve got that much out, I’ll be sure to share more of me with you in the coming days, weeks, months.

In other news, I decided to get myself a Mother’s Day gift this year – I just picked up the brand new Canon Rebel T2i. I figure you can never have enough photos and videos of your loved ones… might as well make them good ones. The above photo is one I took while trying it out yesterday with mini-man. Can’t wait to take it off auto…

If you’re new to my blog or have just stumbled upon it through a search engine, you can read all the entries about the death of my husband here.