Only

There’s a saying about parenting that you are only ever as happy as your unhappiest child.

And I think there’s a truth in it somewhere.

Obviously, coming up five years since Steve died, none of the four of us left are where we are when it was all happening. But the impact of watching your dad die when you were so little trickles on through the years.

Sometimes I look back at photographs of the children the summer before Steve was diagnosed, or that September when the cancer must have been there but we didn’t know anything about it, when they all went to school together for the first time, and see unbridled joy, unfiltered freedom, a sparkle in their eyes and a liberty to their smiles that I don’t see in later pictures. Sure, they can still smile, and do (though occasionally need incentivising), but there’s a reservedness in their faces, and their eyes seem twinkleless. They’re there, but also not. They’re holding back and there’s an emptiness or a reservation that wasn’t there before. And I look at those photos, especially ones taken in the immediate aftermath, and I want to hug those little people and never let them go.

And at this stage I’m used to carrying the sadness of the way life turned out for me, the disappointment of dreams dashed rather than deferred, and used to bearing the weight of my own loneliness and diminished joy. For I am not joyless, not at all, but I do think that sharing joy increases it. My life is not what I expected, but I am not down and out, and I can look at what I have and not be crushed. So, it’s ok. But what I struggle with is the sadness of my children. A sadness I cannot fix, only hold them through.

I often wonder who they would have been if they hadn’t stopped trusting in the world at such a young age. If 2019 hadn’t delivered to them the terminal illness and death of their beloved father and then the numbers at the end of a virus that caused a pandemic that would further blow their lives and their routines and their expectations and their certainty apart.

I watch them navigate their lives and wonder whether had they not lost their other cheerleader, half their foundation, the security of having another person in their corner, in the audience, in their home, in the driving seat so they could get to places, things would have been different, life would have been bigger, opportunities might not have seemed so scary, they might have believed that dreams do come true and life wants to deal you a good hand if you just press into it. I watch them waiting for the worst, reducing their expectations, dwelling in anxiety, refusing to think further than the next five minutes and I know these things are a by product of what cancer did to their little minds before they were old enough to understand long multiplication, or even their times tables for the smallest.

And I see them unhappy. I hold them when they cry themselves to sleep but can’t put into words exactly why they are crying. I listen to them wondering why they never quite find their fit. I meet with the teachers who only want to help a child who doesn’t know what would help.

Are my kids broken? No. Are they miserable all the time? Definitely not. Are they also thriving, funny, smart, interesting, curious, creative, silly? Absolutely. All of the above. 

It is true that children are “resilient” when they have to be, that they keep going, that the carefully crafted routine helps them to not get swallowed up and distract them with the now. It is true that children “puddle jump” when grieving, that life keeps them splashing in and out as the reality of their experience unravels itself and their understanding of it deepens, and so not every day is spent wet and shivering, it can be just a moment of soggy socks. And I recognise that to an unknowing outsider looking in at my kids, they might not even know that anything happened to them because on the whole they are stable, secure, shining, and even often succeeding in school.

But let’s not pretend that what happened to them when they were 10, 8 and 5 hasn’t altered the trajectory of their lives, how they wander through their years, and who they will end up being.

People will tell me sometimes that they are wise beyond their years, and they are. But that’s because they learned lessons about life and death that some adults haven’t been faced with at the same time as revising their spelling test words. That’s because they have needed to learn to talk about and process big emotions, because their emotions were so big they threatened to obliterate everything.

And while how things are is not how things were when everything happened, they will carry the sadness of living nearly all their lives without their dad present forever.

And for me, I hate it for them. And no matter what I do, what we talk about, what we think of to bring the light into their dark places, there is unhappiness.

And I am only as happy as my unhappiest child.

And there is only me to try to fix something that cannot be fixed.

And being the only one here being only as happy as my unhappiest child is a real challenge (for while I want to acknowledge that I am by no means the only one who cares about them, I am their only remaining parent), because the weight of their sadness is a lot to shoulder alone, and the responsibility of being the only one who loves them like this can feel heavier when they are an unhappy child.

And sometimes, the unhappiest child is really unhappy.

Sometimes the next right thing has been to seek support, get them help, bring in the big guns. Sometimes the next right thing has been to stay quiet and listen and try to understand and share their burden. Sometimes the next right thing has been to go big or go home, and adventure until we find our happy, even if it is just a snapshot in time. And all of those have worked in their moments.

But no matter what we do, the unhappy finds its way back in. With three kids the odds are there will be unhappy on the regular, it’s just the numbers. And it’s hard when I’m trying to build, create, make something of our story, their childhoods, that isn’t just about that one terrible life defining experience, but also goes on beyond and keeps going, when I think we’re in a good place, but one of them is still unhappy, still not where they could be, still not comfortable in the life in which they find themselves, and I still can’t fix it, because none of us know how, and what it ultimately comes down to is probably the thing that is unfixable, or the way that the unfixable thing has made other things feel like a bigger deal.

And so, I guess, sometimes the next right thing is to put your hands up and say, I’m trying, I’m building, I’m planning, I’m working on it, I’m pushing towards happy. But I’m often only as happy as my unhappiest child. And there’s a part of these children, as much as I wish it wasn’t true, even as their lives hopefully grow into beautiful and glorious creations, that will, deep down, always be tinged by unhappy. 

And I don’t know whether there’s anything I can do about that, and consequently I don’t really know where it leaves me, because I don’t want to be unhappy and more than anything I definitely don’t want them to be. And that’s sad and I wish I could change it. For all of us. 

Because I don’t want our lives to be only anything. And even though he’s not here to want that too, I know I’m not the only one who ever wanted it for them.