the nights

I used to love my daughters night time routine.  Since before she was born I would read out loud to her before bedtime.  While she was still in my tummy I would read her from whatever novel I was reading.  About that time, the Harry Potter books were coming out and she read them right along with me! After she was born I decided to read books for her at nighttime.  I would read 'One Fish Two Fish' and 'Just me and my Dad'. We would snuggle up under the covers and read stories about the very interesting lives of the 'Bearenstein Bears'.  We learned all bout Unicorns and Feelings and Fairy Tales.  By the time my daughter was 3 we were back to 'One fish two fish', but this time she was reading them to me.  She said one time that the stories were better when I read them, so I never made her read her own bed time story again.  We moved onto chapter books before she was 5,  The 'BFG' and 'Matilda' soon became our favorites.  We loved being piled together on the bed listening to Roald Dahl ignite our imaginations with vision of Giants and little girls with Super Powers. Those were special times.  The best 20 minutes of my day.

Often times I would come downstairs and see my husband asleep on the couch.  He worked 12 hour shifts so I could cuddle with my daughter and read stories.  I would put him to bed too and go back downstairs and watch TV quietly or plan the next days activities. And so, the days passed like this for years.  Every night the same thing.  Bath time, snack and a drink, then stories in bed with mom and then off to dreamland for both of them. These times, it seems, were the best of times.

When my husband was diagnosed with brain cancer everything stopped.  The week he was in the hospital, she was put to bed by Granma and Granpa or the neighbor she was staying with.  After he died a week later, I went to her room to read her a story and I couldn't see the pages through my puffy eyes.  We turned on a Disney Princess movie instead and I got into bed with her and we held each other and fell asleep.  We kept doing this night after night, falling alseep together hugging or holding hands to the sound of a Princess singing. It seems neither one of us wanted to be alone in the winter darkness when our world was turned upside down.  There was suddenly so much insecurity and unknown and now we only had eachother, Roald Dahl became silent.

My daughter continues to love reading.  She loves books!  At eight years old, she has read all but the last Harry Potter (because the last one is too scarey), to herself snuggled into the corner of her bed where mom used to be.  She had read and re-read every book on her shelf including 'Matilda' and 'The BFG'.  She has expanded her interests with countless book about animals, nature and outer space. We make a weekly trip to the thrift store to keep her in reading material!  Even with all of this, I have yet to read her a bedtime story.  I feel incapable of feeling the warmth and love that reading once brought us both.  All I feel is loss and emptiness.  The loss of my husband has somehow tainted me.  We still sleep together almost every night, but we have upgraded to the big bed in my room.  We still fall asleep to the singing of Princesses while holding hands...It's been almost two years.