A Word About Children – Guest Author Nicole Longstaff
This piece was guest written by Nicole Longstaff who was suddenly widowed at the age of 38 with her 6 year old daughter Sophia. Since her husband Dave’s passing in 2017, Nicole has been busy raising Sophia and continued to work in management in higher education at McMaster University. She is a candidate in the Master of Communications Management program and has recently completed a certificate in Applied Compassion Training (ACT) from the Stanford University Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. She lives in Toronto with her partner Rupert, Sophia, and their rescue dog Leo.
On a typical, busy, back-to-school September morning my husband Dave made pancakes, walked our daughter Sophia to the school-bus stop, and then dropped me off at work as he would often do. I don’t remember much about what we talked about as he drove me to work. I recall that my mind was distracted thinking about several projects I needed to work on that day. Those last moments with him before my exit from the car felt mundane and regular at the time. It was one of many morning drop-offs after all… Except…it wasn’t. Those moments would be the last time we talked. The last time our eyes met. What I would have given to know that those would be our last shared, living moments, together.
What began as a regular, busy September day transformed before my eyes into a living nightmare. Late afternoon came with a text, “Can you please come home as soon as possible? Breathing trouble,” followed by a call I missed from him while I was in a meeting. I called him back, repeatedly. No answer. I called 911 just in case it was an emergency and got home as fast as I could… but it was too late. My daughter’s school bus had arrived on the scene first. The bus driver found him lying on the steps and did CPR while waiting for the ambulance. Sophia watched from the school bus window.
Later when we got to the hospital, he was in a coma. Within hours of arriving, I was telling Sophia that Daddy died, and a new journey, Everest scale in magnitude, lay before me. My first sleepless night was spent scouring the internet, spiralling in search of something to hold onto – looking desperately for some guidance on how to best be there for Sophia. Others have gone through this, I thought – and if others have been through this, I can learn from them.
Research must have been done too. I found research featuring a longitudinal study measuring the effect of sudden parental loss on children. It gave me hope and lit a path forward for me. The findings suggested that children who experienced the sudden loss of a parent before the age of 12 thrived over time if their surviving parent maintained a routine and was able to remain emotionally available and present for them.
I latched on to the study findings and made it my mantra. It was what I kept at the forefront of my mind when I needed a boost of energy to keep showing up at work, dropping her off at school on time, picking her up, making dinner, playing with her, cuddling her to sleep, planning play dates with her friends, and accepting help from others. I ensured there was little room for the tsunami of tears that threatened to wash everything away and I left no space or time for despondency. I committed to living as routinely and predictably as possible – in many ways more so than ever before, for her – driven by what felt like a powerful wind within my soul determined to do everything I could for her then, for the vibrant, dynamic, and kind-hearted 12-year-old girl that now stands before me now, and for the grown woman she would one day become.
“I think what is really important is recognizing the pain of loss, and that it is the pain that forces us to adapt and change to the new reality. Pain is the agent of change. And along with the pain of the loss, we need support. It’s the support that we’re given at the time of the loss and following the loss that will predict our outcome.”
- Julia Samuel, author of ‘Every Family Has a Story’ and “Grief Works.’
It’s now been six years since his sudden death, and it still hurts every day in a way that is hard to put into words. There is my pain, and the pain of watching hers. I miss him and I wish she could really know and experience him. She was the apple of his eye. Her memories of life with him are fragmented and few, but photos help keep the memories alive. She wears his favorite orange Roots brand fleece when she needs to feel close and has started reading his books. She is a voracious reader, just like her Dad.
I see that we’ve joined company of many who are wounded by one tragedy or another; we are not special. We walk this path of loss and grief both together and alone. A sense of loneliness pervades, even amidst the tremendous love and care received from many generous and kind friends, acquaintances, community, and family who walked alongside us, carrying us at times while also carrying their own grief, when the pain was too hard to bear on our own.
For me the loneliness is not anything to be fixed, but rather a mix of pain and clarity that is now inextricably a part of me. It’s a way of experiencing and seeing the world that I’m now used to, that is hard to explain. My heart is wounded, but open. People often talk about needing to ‘move on’ as though part of the healing journey is to leave the person grieved, behind. The experience for me has really been more about moving forward, not leaving anything behind, but rather carrying with me great love and enduring gratitude for Dave, and our all too brief journey together.
Moving forward for me has also now included being open to new love. I struggled to be open to it for awhile, and in retrospect when I first tried to be open to it through dating, it was too soon in my healing journey, and I would run away from anyone that made me feel deep down. It really took me a while to be able to date and explore romance in a healthy, open-hearted way.
I’m now in a relationship with a man I love dearly, and who my daughter looks up to like as a father. He has embraced her as his daughter as well. They are working their way through all the Marvel Universe movies together and share inside jokes. He has two beautiful and kind daughters in university who have opened their hearts to love and embrace her, too. Having come from a broken home, I hadn’t experienced merging families in a healthy way before and wasn’t sure if we could do it at first. I contemplated ending our courtship early on as I was afraid to potentially introduce Sophia to more pain and the loss I feared might be on the horizon.
But we took the process of building relationships with each other very slowly for all involved, with great love and care. I’ve come to believe love is expansive and endlessly possible – I’m forever a romantic – and if I were to have a religion, love and compassion would be it. I am both deeply wounded and blessed beyond measure, moving forward one day, one breath at a time. When I think about what Dave would think about all of this, I picture him smiling and happy. Happy I’m happy, and most importantly that Sophia is happy.
Dave had a phrase that summed up his approach to life; ‘Mad Love.’ I like to believe that he’d be content knowing that both his girls are still living Mad Love into life.
