“Are you sitting down?”

Before that moment, I always thought that was just something that you heard on TV. I’m certain no one had ever even said that to me before.
I absentmindedly acknowledged that I was in fact sitting down even though I was not.

“He’s gone. He died today. I’m so sorry to have to tell you, but I knew I had to warn y’all before you see it online.”

This call was from my son’s former stepmother. She was calling me to tell me that the father of each of our children was gone.
I don’t remember exactly at what point I ended up sitting, but I was definitely standing when I answered the call and before her words were even all spoken, I was seated.

Grief is so tricky. I had not seen this man in years. I didn’t hate him, but I couldn’t remember the last time I loved him either. Even the encounters a few years before had not been something to remember fondly. But in that single breath, that is not who she just told me was gone. The person she was calling me about was the person I had once loved so hard I could feel it in my chest, once stayed up all night with planning a future, and once created another human life with….
In the next breath, I realized that I now had to go tell my child that the father, who he also had not seen in many years, was gone. As if he already had not been struggling to not feel alone enough in the world. I now had to take away the fantasy, that I was well aware he held and had just earlier that week encouraged he hold on to, of a future relationship. Maybe a future years down the line, after unburdening some unspoken words and pain, but still a point in time that could have meant closure or healing.

I don’t remember how the phone call ended.

I was so fixated on my next task, to go wake my child up.
The details of my son’s grief and his story are not mine to share, but I can say that nothing can ever prepare you for that conversation and for the immediate aftermath. The despair, the anger, then the silence. For days there was a deafening silence.

In the days that followed, I was so grateful that despite our very difficult history, I’d always been very careful to speak positively of my child’s father and regularly said things like…

“You are so handsome. You look just like your dad. It’s uncanny.”

“Your dad has always been so handy and can fix anything, just like you.”

“Your dad loves chicken spaghetti too, probably because it used to be the only thing he knew how to cook.”

“Your dad loves that band. He used to sing that song to me anytime it came on.”

And even during the harder conversations…”Your dad is not a bad person, and I know he loves you. He just has an illness, and it doesn’t have a cure.”

How do you help a child navigate mourning someone they barely knew, but who is a part of them? How do you console them for a loss of someone who already felt gone?

The answer is, I can’t answer that. This story is not intended to share advice or to inspire anyone about how our family has overcome these challenges or this grief.
This is just as a small peek into someone else’s life at one of its hardest parts.
Like driving by a random house with the curtains open at night and catching the most brief glimpse into this stranger’s world, and somehow it seeming familiar and foreign all at once.