When I’ve gone to write posts for this blog, the words just fell out of me. But not this time. This time it doesn’t feel like I have any words to give. Sometimes it feels like this is all I am now, and all I have to say, and all I have to give the world, is his death. And when I’m done talking about it, there’s nothing else to say. I both want everyone to know about it without speaking it, and for everyone to never know it ever happened. It’s just so exhausting, being the only thing that exists in my mind now.
I started swim lessons with my 18 month old. I don’t know anyone there and it’s somehow comforting knowing that none of them know my life story. There I am just Everest’s mama and he is just Cassie’s son, and we come together to splash in the water and forget the world. And it would be that simple if everything there didn’t remind me of him too, how this was supposed to be what he did with Everest. And how this would be so much easier for him. How he could place Everest on the floating mat and on the wall so much easier, because I’m too short. Then I find myself getting mad that the instructor doesn’t know my story, doesn’t everyone know? Maybe she wouldn’t be asking me to do these things if she knew.
It’s exhausting. It’s exhausting trying to figure out all the time what reality I want and what story I want to tell. Because there’s no time that will be easier than this moment. It won’t necessarily be harder, and this moment isn’t easy. But there will never be a reality again where he exists on this plane with us. So for this post, this is all I have, and it feels like too little, yet it feels like so much. Which really sums up widowhood, too little and so much.
About Cassie Dockter-Reeves
Cassie Dockter-Reeves struggled to write this bio. Who is she now that her husband died? Sometimes she doesn’t know anymore. She is the mother of sweet Everest, her (currently) 15 month old. She is the Mutti to kind Jude, her almost 9-year-old stepson. She is the little sister to 2 awesome older sisters and 2 brother-in-laws. She is the aunt to 2 wonderful nephews and 1 amazing niece. She is the daughter to 2 loving parents who they are lucky to still have. She is the friend that is like family to several. But her favorite thing was being loved by Jonathan, she was most proud of (along with the role of mother) being his wife. His loving her helped her love herself. She doesn’t really know who who she is anymore as she has changed so much since her husband’s death, and it’s too fresh to know, it’s only been 4 months.
Cassie works a full-time remote job as a workforce management analyst. She loves photography and whales and the ocean and the mountains and has recently found the love of reading again. She has the most anxious dog who started her life as a stray and is a mutt (11 breeds in all, yes, she DNA tested her), named Livie after Olivia Benson on Law & Order SVU, because her husband knew her love of that character. They were together 6 years; were a family of 3 with his son Jude for 5 years; a family of 4 eight months after that when we adopted our dog; married in Cannon Beach, OR on July 26, 2021 (yes, because of The Goonies - Jonathan’s ring is engraved with GNSD - Goonies Never Say Die); and became a family of 5 with the unexpected early birth of their son, Everest, on March 24, 2023, who moved mountains to be here after infertility and a high risk pregnancy.
She is a newly single mom, and it’s challenging and rewarding and exhilarating and exhausting. She wasn’t supposed to do this alone. Her husband died from his bipolar disorder with psychosis at the age of 40 on February 29, 2024. And they are slowly learning to live again as a (smaller) family.
You can find her photography at: https://www.instagram.com/photographybycasandradockter?igsh=bGN1a3k4NzRhNTVr&utm_source=qr