My first husband died of a brain tumor. Now that my second husband is deployed, my constant grief makes parenting so hard.

• My first husband died of a brain tumor. My second is deployed and will be gone for a year.
• I'm living with compounded grief, from my loss, the pandemic, and his deployment.

"Daddy, Daddy, Daddy …" my daughter Lilah wails as she buries her face in her pillow. I tuck her Daddy doll and one of his shirts into the curled space between her chin and chest and rub her back. "No!" she screams, "I want my real daddy!" She throws the Daddy doll and it bounces off the bedroom wall onto the carpet, and her baby sister starts to cry down the hall.

My husband was recently deployed and will be gone for nearly a year, and she has screamed for hours every night since he left. She is 3 years old, and this is so hard.

Every day is relentless, and most days I don't feel as if I'll survive. I had convinced myself it was just a matter of making it through the days, of surviving the specific length of time.

I knew this deployment was going to be hard and that solo parenting three kids through a pandemic with no family nearby would feel impossible at times, but I also didn't expect my grief to return with such raw ferocity.

A pandemic, a deployment, and memories of when my first husband died

After a difficult pregnancy and early delivery, the pandemic hit almost immediately after my third child was born. It robbed me of maternity leave and anything resembling rest or respite, and it was followed so closely by my husband's departure, one grief after another.

I am exhausted and completely burned out, and I was already there long before the deployment started.

Also, in a situation that feels both uncanny and a bit cruel, my daughter's cries bring back the long nights after my first husband died from a brain tumor when my eldest daughter, Zoe, was almost the exact age that her sister is now.

For months after he died, Zoe also cried for her daddy. Now, every time Lilah screams for her daddy, I am back to Zoe screaming for hers, and I am back to my first husband's body growing cold in my arms.

And then I'm right back here in my kitchen, fiercely willing my living husband not to get hurt or die.

Every night that I cannot feel his body next to mine, I worry. My first husband was strong and young, and then he died.

I'm always worrying

The truth is, I've never fully recovered from my first husband's death, and that I was fortunate enough to find another amazing partner in the aftermath makes disaster feel even more likely sometimes.

Part of me is waiting, always, for the bottom to fall out of my life, and the current circumstances — the pandemic, my husband's lengthy deployment, my own renewed grieving — only feed the fire of my brain's frantic worry.

I also never thought I would have to live through this specific anguish again, unable to protect my child from the loss of her father. And now that I am here, I thought I would be able to handle it better.

Deployment is not death, but it is absolutely filled with grief. And even though this is only a temporary loss, Lilah's nightly screams tell me that it doesn't matter that he's not gone forever; it hurts now, and it hurts badly. I do my best to support her through these feelings, but it never feels like enough.

I don't pretend I can protect my children from most things in this life, but I did not see this compounded weight of death, loss, and leaving coming. It has shaken me to my core, and most days it is all I can do to brace myself and hold steady through the storm.