The Mourning Detour: Dead Ends, Fiancées and Scenic Disasters

Introduction

When a child dies, it feels like the earth cracks beneath you, swallowing everything stable, familiar, and sacred. Grief rewrites your entire story, tearing through existing relationships with the force of a hurricane. No relationship escapes it untouched, and sometimes, what was already teetering before the storm comes crashing down for good. That was the case with Kingston’s dad and me. We were divorced but still living together—attempting to maintain some semblance of normalcy while chemo sessions, sleepless nights, and the slow, agonizing countdown to the inevitable consumed us.

This is the story of how that arrangement unraveled, leaving behind shards of shared trauma, emotional missteps, and one of the most cringe-inducing, poorly timed “new beginnings” in the history of grief. Buckle up—there’s humor in the darkness if you know where to look.

Co-Parenting Through Chaos

Our relationship had become the kind of thing that felt like keeping a cheap inflatable pool patched together with gum and prayers. But when Kingston got sick, everything shifted. We thought that living together through the chaos of treatment might give our children some stability—like a bandage on a bullet wound. For a time, we managed. We tried; we really did.

But if our relationship was a house of cards, Kingston’s illness was a gust of wind. His dad already struggled with mental illness—the kind that’s almost impossible to navigate even on a good day. And I, in my own fierce way, threw myself entirely into parenting, into caring for Kingston with every molecule of energy I had. My way of grieving—writing, crying, and talking endlessly about it—was like a steady drumbeat. Therapeutic for me? Yes. Tolerable for him? Absolutely not.

In the end, we were like two people rowing in opposite directions on a sinking boat, each one convinced the other was pulling them under.

The Last Month: When He Walked Away

His father lasted almost to the end, but not quite. The final month of Kingston’s life, he moved out. And while part of me knew it was what needed to happen—it was what I wanted, even—that didn’t make it hurt any less. It wasn’t just the fact that he left. It was how he left. It was the middle of the hardest month of our lives, and there was me and Zuma—grieving in advance, watching Kingston, walking Kingston to death’s door—while he packed his bags and checked out.

It felt like someone trying to sneak out of a burning building by casually whistling and pretending nothing’s on fire. And of course, he blamed me. Because isn’t that the way it always goes? Somehow, in his mind, my grief, my relentless way of being, and my inability to cope in a way that made sense to him were the reasons he left. I guess if you can’t process your emotions, the next best thing is blaming someone else for having too many of them.

New Girlfriend, New Life, New Level of WTF

Now, you’d think that after leaving in the eleventh hour, he’d at least take a little time to process, right? Maybe reflect. Sit with the weight of losing his son. Or I don’t know—grieve properly? Nope. Instead, he launched himself into a new relationship faster than a Tesla going 0 to 60.

About a month after Kingston died, he waltzed into our daughter’s 9th birthday party holding hands with his “new friend.” And just when I thought things couldn’t possibly get more ridiculous, he introduced her as his fiancée. At that point, I half expected circus music to start playing in the background. I mean, if there’s a Guinness World Record for the worst timing in the history of human emotion, this moment was surely a contender.

I stood there at my daughter’s party, surrounded by cake, streamers, and kids who were way too young to understand the emotional car crash happening in front of them, thinking: “This is what you’ve chosen? This? Out of all the ways to deal with grief, you picked this one?” It was like trying to cure a migraine with glitter—confusing, ineffective, and kind of insulting to everyone involved.

The Nonsensical Solution to His Grief

Look, everyone grieves differently. Some people cry, some people write, and apparently, some people get engaged before the flowers from their child’s funeral have even begun to wilt. I imagine his thought process went something like this: “I know what’ll help with the unbearable sadness of losing my son—a brand-new wife! That should patch things up nicely.” It’s like trying to plug a leaky lifeboat with cotton candy—colorful, sweet, and destined to dissolve the second it touches water.

To be fair, maybe he really believed this was the answer. Maybe the idea of sitting all alone in the raw, uncomfortable reality of his emotions was just too much, and he thought “fast-tracked love” would save him from the wreckage he had caused. But introducing his new fiancée at our daughter’s birthday party, just a month after we had lost Kingston, was a plot twist so outrageous I almost had to admire the sheer audacity. Almost.

A Fiancée with My Sympathy

I’ll give him some credit; compared to most of his previous romantic choices, this one was an upgrade. Honestly, I mean her no disrespect. She seems like a decent person—but is still, to me, just the unfortunate soul who wandered into emotional quicksand without realizing it. I almost wanted to pull her aside, hand her a flashlight, and say, “Blink twice if you need help.” Lord knows she is going to need it.

But let’s be real: there are only two possible scenarios here, and neither one paints a flattering picture.

Option one: he spun her a tall tale so dramatic it would put a daytime soap to shame. I’m talking about convincing this sweet unicorn of a woman that I’m some kind of unhinged monster—the kind of villain you’d leave a dying child to escape from. Because who just up and abandons their terminally ill kid unless they’re being hunted by a certified psychopath, right? So, in this scenario, he’s either a pathological liar with the storytelling skills of a Hollywood screenwriter, or she’s fallen for the worst performance of his life. Either way, he’s pulling off the role of the century.

Then we have option two: she’s not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. Because let’s be honest, no rational person moves from the fresh grief of losing their own child to playing house and getting engaged to someone they’ve barely known long enough to trust with their Wi-Fi password. She went straight past cautious optimism and jumped headfirst into a romance built on, what…faith and a motivational quote? It’s like trying to put out a fire with a sprinkle of hope.

So, there you have it. Either he’s a world-class con artist with zero shame, or she’s the kind of hopeless romantic who’d buy beachfront property in the middle of the desert. And I can’t decide which is worse.

Regardless, his plans are about as genius as trying to cure a migraine with cotton candy—colorful and sweet, but ultimately useless and a little offensive.

Laughing Through the Absurdity

In the end, I had to laugh. Not because any of it was funny, but because if I didn’t laugh, the absurdity of it would swallow me whole. His way of coping—slapping a ring on the nearest willing participant and calling it a fresh start—was never going to make sense to me. But it wasn’t my job to understand it. It was his mess to navigate.

All I knew was that while he was out playing house with his new fiancée, I was left holding the pieces of our old life, trying to build something new for myself and my daughter. It wasn’t fair, but grief has a way of being brutally unfair. And at the end of the day, all you can do is laugh, roll your eyes, and keep moving forward—because standing still will eat you alive.

Conclusion

Relationships after the death of a child are complicated, messy, and often impossible to salvage. Some partnerships aren’t built to survive that kind of trauma, and that’s okay. What isn’t okay is introducing your new fiancée at your grieving daughter’s birthday party 31 days after your son is cremated. But hey—everyone copes in their own way. Some of us write, cry, and talk our way through the pain. Others hit the emotional fast-forward button and hope for the best.

In the end, his choices were his to make, and mine were to let it all go—not without a fair amount of dark humor, of course. Because if grief has taught me anything, it’s this: sometimes you have no choice but to laugh at your pain—because if you don’t, someone else will.