'Our grief was never too much': widow pens letter thanking her daughter's 'new daddy'
Caroline Stephenson was just 29 years old when her husband, Shayne, passed away suddenly.
With two small girls, aged 2 and 4, she was now facing a life of uncertainty without her husband and their father.
"I never could have anticipated my life as it is now," she told Love What Matters.
"There are just some happenings in life you’ll never have any preparedness for. No matter how much life you’ve lived, experiences you’ve had, nothing can armour you with the appropriate readiness at the no-moment’s-notice it all changes forever."
Grieving, Caroline left her home city of Houston and move to Florida, hoping to start afresh with the children.
Soon, she was followed on social media by Jessep, but at first she didn't pay him any attention.
"I wasn't in the state of mind to entertain ideas of beginning any romantic relationship. He was just another random 'follower' on my social."
Encouraged by friends, she gave him her number and after a month of texting they went on a blind date.
"I just wanted to see if I could do it. Go out again, on a limb, with my heart. I had no idea how I would feel for him or if I could love or be loved again. I showed up anyway."
She realised that despite still grieving for Shayne, she too had her life to live.
"I hadn't been a widow a full year, but something was calling on me — that I was not meant to live alone. I shared too much love with Shayne and carried too much around to have died with him that day. I had all this love to give, it was overflowing, and I didn't have a clue as to where it would all go. What do I do with all this love I have for someone who isn’t here anymore to receive it?"
After a few months of dating, Jessep's former partner and son's mother passed away. Caroline decided it was time to take action, Jessep and his son Maddox moved to Florida with them.
"I decided I wasn't letting them go. Come what may. Whether this was romantic or friendship, didn't matter to me. All the extraordinary support and love I had been shown through the death of my husband was going to be given back. In whatever capacity I could do that from here, and whatever was needed."
From time to time, however, the girls still ask for their 'Daddy Shayne':
"Just recently Jessep stepped in at Brooklynn’s preschool to participate in ‘Donuts with Dad.’ I choked down heartache after she asked me in the car, ‘Will Daddy Jessep eat donuts?’ ‘Yep,’ I replied. ‘Will Daddy Shayne be there?’ ‘No, baby. Daddy Shayne isn’t going to be there. But Daddy Jessep will be, and he’ll always be here for you,’ I said as I tried to gulp down a golf ball of grief."
Jessep, however, has taken it all in his stride, something that Caroline is extremely grateful for.
"But Jessep keeps holding onto us tighter, loves bigger and more fiercely than anyone I have ever known. Not once has he looked at me or any of our kiddos and said, ‘Your grief is too much.’ Or, when I talk about Shayne, ‘Your love for him is too much.’ We’ve never been ‘too much.’ He has taken it all in and loves big in his own miraculous way."
While they still miss Shayne, she feels lucky that Jessep is there to share the big milestones with them.
"There is an aching pang I feel every time the girls hit a milestone or do something for the first time and their Daddy Shayne is missing it. But, I am so heart-exploding with gratitude THANKFUL I have someone here, now, who is willing to scoop all of us up in our grief and sadness and raw edges and do it."
Now, none of them take life for granted.
"The common denominator is our sense of urgency to not take for granted what we have now. None of this happened on accident. And a deep conviction, a knowing, that we deserve to create a very happy future, together. And happiness is playing the hell out of the cards you have been dealt, no matter what they are. Happiness is still ours for the taking.
"Love is the way there.”