At the end of April of this year, my ex husband (divorced nov 2019) and father to my 9 and 7yr old boys, died in a tragic Uber accident where he was a passenger. He died instantly, and none of it was his fault! Telling my children that they would never see their dad again, is the hardest thing I have ever had to do. He had just been up for a visit with the kids 2 days prior (which him and I fought pretty much the whole time...only over text mainly, not around the kids) In one text he writes to me, “don’t worry, I probably won’t be alive in 2 years”...my response was “do you know what it would do to ur kids if you were to die?”...two days later, he was gone. Even though him and I couldn’t be married to one another (his bad financial infidelity and substance abuse issues), I still saw him as a good close friend of mine...and were co parenting with the children’s best interests in mind, and it seemed to work. He was the parent who was the patient one with the kids, the soft, push over parent the calm one during stressful times... he also would clean the house well when he was over for his weekends, and I got a few days to recharge my parent batteries away from the children. It’s been a few months now, and every month just poses it’s own new challenges. My kids have never felt this feeling before, grief, and honestly I haven’t felt it this strong before either! They are in therapy, but I don’t know how much it’s helping. We constantly are on edge with one another, and I feel my much added stress to my life is causing me to be short tempered and have a bad attitude towards the kids, and fear I’m doing more emotional damage sometimes by how I say things to them (never degrading). My youngest will talk to me very disrespectfully and I would punish him under other circumstances but know his attitude is a combo of handling his grief and modeling my bed behavior. I was crying with him on the couch after he was bad mouthing me for telling them they needed to help pick up the house because when I go home from work it was such a mess and I was already so exhausted from working all day to clean up the house alone. I sat down and cried next to him because I knew it was his grief making him this way, and I told him how much I missed his dad, and that I feel like our family is missing balance with out dad. He tells me we can’t be a family anymore because dad is dead. It just brakes my heart so much to watch my kids go thru this, knowing there is nothing I can do to make it better for them. I’m sad thinking about them not growing up with a dad cuz they are so young. I just don’t know how to handle my grief and still keep it together for their sake...when some days I don’t even want to get out of bed, but have to because I’m the only parent now and have to work. Something that I suffer with is “did I pray for this to happen?” Truth be told, my ex was not father of the year by any means, he had no job, no car, no place to live, his life crumbled when I divorced him. He never paid me a penny for child support, but would watch the kids every other week so I didn’t have to pay for babysitters when he was at the house. The money wasn’t what I wanted from him anyhow...I just didn’t want him to disappear and the kids not see him for a long time and wanted him to be a figure in their lives. Well the children are given survivor benefits from his SS, and I was shocked to be informed that the amount they will continue to get til they are 18 will make it so our family will not financially struggle anymore...something I prayed for almost ever night, financial stability...and with the lawsuits that are filed pertaining to his death, the kids prob will have a nice trust that would be theirs once they were 18, paying for college or whatever. It’s so sad to think that their dad will help the family out financially better after his death than he ever would have been doing were he alive. It’s a lot to take in, and deal with daily, I just hope I’m not damaging the kids more by my grieving, and hope their teen years have mercy on me.