Christmas Season

We are now six Christmases in and I have yet to celebrate Christmas again.  I have managed a small tree for a few of those years and in 2014 I understood fully why I just couldn't do Christmas but even in the early stages of catastrophic grief I believed Christmas would come back for us in a year or two.  It is surprising even to me that six seasons later I am still not having Christmas.  

I have worried that it was a rebellion of sorts stemming from an unrecognized underlying anger with God but I really did not "feel" angry anymore and don't feel that I would ever do that so I really couldn't understand why I was actually, intentionally balking at having any kind of Christmas celebration.  Last year I actually felt like Christmas could possibly "come back".  I was a little enthusiastic about decorating and even purchased a new smaller tree but then December 3, my sister went to the hospital with pneumonia.  When she got to the ER by ambulance her fever was over 105 and she went into a coma and ended up in ICU on life support for 15 days.  Waking up by nothing less that a pure miracle on Christmas Eve --the entire month of December missing from her life.  It took six months of therapy to get her mobile and back to maybe 75%.  She will never really fully overcome that huge setback.  

So this year I was fully expecting to have Christmas on track full steam again.  Not.

I have less enthusiasm than I had last year.  It seems Christmas returning is farther away than it was four years ago.  And I have been totally baffled as to why.  This morning I read a devotional that I get by email daily.  It was about Christmas.  It really ended up being nothing about anything remotely familiar to my life and yet the beginning of it hit me like a brick -- an epiphany of sorts and suddenly I realized what my deal with Christmas is actually about.  It is not, as I had worried, a rebellion towards God or what Christmas stands for at all.  It is about what Christmas had become for me.

As a child I was such a dreamer.  I was beside myself over Christmas every year.  The promise that it held of the latest and greatest new toy being advertised on TV, a family outing to pick out a tree, everyone gathering to decorate it, the lights, the beautiful packages with ribbons and bows.  And of course every year I prayed for snow.  I live in Atlanta, Georgia - never in my life did I see a white Christmas but it didn't stop me from praying for it in rapt anticipation year after year.  I stared out the window into the darkness late into the night Christmas Eve looking for Santa's sleigh.  I imagined of my mother putting out cookies and milk for Santa and the family gathering around and singing Christmas Carols as we hung stocking on our fireplace.  I was a hopeless dreamer.

I was the oldest of four children born to two alcoholic parents Christmas for us was about as far from my Norman Rockwell dream as it could get.  

My mother always saw to it that we always had a tree and toys.  And I should have been more thankful for what we did have I guess.  But it wasn't toys I longed for.  It wasn't greed that fueled my disappointment.  I wanted "family".  I wanted normal.  I wanted the things money could not buy.  I wanted my mother home for Christmas.  I wanted us all gathered around the table for a festive Christmas dinner together.  I wanted us to spend time together baking cookies, wrapping gifts, singing carols.  But she never was.  She was gone.  Almost every Christmas eve as long as I could remember - sometimes she worked, sometimes she was just gone all Christmas Eve.  We never saw her till Christmas Day - grouchy, half asleep and hungover.  

We were left with Daddy and Daddy was crazy-mean when he was drunk.  Our Christmas Eve was spent wondering what lay in store for us before morning.  Were we going to be beaten or were one of our pets going to be abused or killed.  And Christmas for some reason brought out the absolute worst in him.  Ghosts from his raising I'm sure.  So we had memorable Christmases but not the kind Norman Rockwell would paint about.  

One memorable Christmas Eve, while Mama was working of course, he gathered all of four of us into the car (usually in pajamas, barefooted and without coats) and informed us we were going for a ride.  It was his thing to get drunk and want to drive around - a particularly terrifying event for all of us.  He drove around for about a half hour and then pulled down a dead end street and parked the car.  He turned off all the lights, opened the door and got out which was also very typical of these late night rides.  And he disappeared into the darkness leaving all four of us in the cold, dark car wondering what was coming next.  When he returned we heard him open the trunk of the car, fumble around, cuss and then he pulled open the drivers door and got in.  He was carrying the 38 caliber pearl-handled pistol that he had dubbed "Old Smoky" that always seemed to appear when he had a few drinks.  For a little added drama, he had a glove he also had taken from the trunk of the car and tossed it into the back seat to my sister closest to me in age and demanded she check it out and tell him what she found.  

She answered, "bullets Daddy."  

"How many?" he demanded.  

"Five" she said.  

"Yes, he agreed.  Five; one for each of you and one for your mother."  

We all started to cry and ask why?  What had we done?  

No answer.  He got out of the car again and disappeared into the dark as all of us sat there frozen waiting for the shooting to begin.

Then he later comes back to the car and without another word cranks the car and heads for home.

Another Christmas Eve while yet again Mama was "gone".  He put us to bed early and then around 1:00 am came and woke us all up and had us open all of our dresser drawers and empty the contents onto the floor.  Where then he instructed us to take them to the kitchen and place them into the washer to wash the clean clothes.  When they were washed, dried and folded he dumped them into the floor and said, "Now do it again till you get it right."  So we washed clothes, clean clothes, all night until daybreak Christmas morning.

There were Christmases where we had to leave home and interrupt some relatives Christmas begging them to let us stay with them because he was in a drunken rage and we had no where to go.  There were Christmases where the police came and hauled him away in handcuffs with all of the neighborhood kids watching.  

Yes, our Christmases were always memorable albeit in a "Stephen King" sort of way.  

And yet, every single year like an idiot, without fail I had hope anew that "this year" we'd suddenly wake up in a normal home and Christmas would be wonderful.  

When I left home at 14 we had still not turned into the Cleavers.  

But I determined that when I had a family of my own and it was entirely up to me - my kids would have the perfect Christmas of my dreams. Perfect of course does not exist but I tried.  God knows, I tried.

We had no money so I started Christmas shopping in July buying one or two things at a time.  I hid gifts, I wrapped gifts.  I made handmade bows.  I planned family outings to a tree farm where we went up and down rows and rows of ridiculously priced trees to find the perfect one.  I slowly over the years collected little old fashioned wooden ornaments and carefully wrapped and packed them every year like they were fine crystal and when I pulled the out the next year it was almost a "holy event" as we carefully lifted the little wooden toy ornaments along with whatever hand made ornaments my children had made that year in school.  I'd fix snacks and we'd have a little mini-party as we put on Christmas music and all decorated the tree as a family.  It was several years before we had a house with a real fireplace but once we did, I'd string live pine garland with mini-lights the length of the mantle with big red bows and all of the kids stockings.  We'd pile packages under the tree and make games out of trying to keep my middle child from peeping into his gifts before Christmas.  In later years I baked Christmas cookies and made homemade fruitcakes and divinity, the menu and the guest list grew as our little Christmas Eve party gained momentum.  

My children got married and grand kids came along and we added stockings to the mantle and our Christmases got large and loud and messy and wonderful.  We began inviting anyone that had no place to go on Christmas.  We bought extra gifts and always had tons of food.  Soon my children numbered 17 and Christmas had grown to about 30 to 40.  Then life and divorces happened. Schedules became complicated when my boys both had to fight for a few hours with their children on Christmas Eve.  Geography and time constraints and the whims of ex-wives made our Christmases begin to be stressful and difficult and everyone began to seem on edge.  The last Christmas we all had as a family 2013 working a full time job and driving 3 and a half hours a day in Atlanta traffic meant I had to work on getting Christmas together for weeks a little at a time.  I planned.  I decorated.  I cooked.  I wrapped.  And Christmas came and everyone seemed to just be in a hurry to leave.  They ate.  Unwrapped gifts and all began to get up and get ready to leave.  My son came from four hundred miles away to stay one hour and the two local children and all of their children said they had to go because they were all getting together and going to see a movie.  It was their "Christmas Tradition" now to all go see a movie on Christmas Day.  So they all left and I sat alone in the middle of all of my weeks of Christmas Crap and cried the rest of the afternoon and vowed I would never do "all this" again. 

And I never have.  That was the last Christmas I was to ever have my entire family and it was also the Christmas that I realized that Christmas as we had always known it --was over.  Truly over.  

It was not something any of them wanted --a big traditional family Christmas  --was my dream because it was something I had never had as a child.  It was never theirs.  They had always had it so to them it was no more than an aggravating annual obligation that they could not wait to get away from.  

Kids grow up.  Grand kids grow up.  Life changes.  Traditions change.  It was heartbreaking and on top of everything else I had to grieve, I also grieved the loss of our family Christmas.  And so I haven't had Christmas since 2013.  

And I realized this morning that opting out of Christmas was never a rebellion.  It was just the end of an era.  One that's time had passed.  Family get-togethers, I had assumed, much like fruitcake and homemade bread, are a thing of the past.  They still have family traditions like going to a movie on Christmas Day and even family get-togethers at Christmas.  I'm just no longer a part of their family now...

God's Strength in Your Weakness

As difficult as it has been to sit with my friend as she cares for her son in his last days I have been a first hand witness to God's gracious provision.  Her strength, stamina, resolve, faith and peace have been nothing short of a miracle.

She is caring for his needs almost around the clock getting up every two hours to administer medication so that his pain does not get ahead of them.  She is helping him to the bathroom and helping him shower and feeding him as if he were her small child again.  She talks to him like it was any other day, laughs with him, jokes with him and puts his heart at ease by keeping conversation light and breezy.

She has spent night after night in his hospital room before he came home; sleeping whatever way they could; in chairs or crammed together with her 76 year old sister on a small, vinyl, half moon shaped uncomfortable sofa - in a freezing cold room eating cold food out of bags.

I have yet to hear her complain and I have yet to see her break down.

God has blessed her with His strength in her weakest moments.  Some may assume that her strength and stamina stems from adrenaline and I'm sure that plays a part but nothing but God could account for the peace and resolve bestowed on her in the wake of the worst situation any mother can imagine.

He has provided, like He did for me --family, friends, neighbors, professionals to love her, provide food and supplies, to sit with her for moral support, to help with her son's care,or to minister to his spiritual needs.  God's people being the hands and feet of Jesus to help however she needs.

Speaking of which, I have never seen a family come together like her family has done during the last few weeks.  Never.  It is amazing to see the love and dedication that they have shown.

Her sister had just driven 8 hours to Jacksonville, FL when she got the news.  She turned the car around without a minute of rest and drove 8 hours right back to be with her.  She stayed at the hospital with Kathie every night she did.  Her sister's friend offered to stay at the hospital one night and let them go home get a shower, a hot meal and sleep in a bed.  He did not even know Kathie or her son. Her oldest son has been with them nonstop helping his brother with bathroom duties, clothes changing and just attending to his needs any way he could and sitting there as support for his mother.  Her sister's children have every one been there.  Her nieces staying the night over the weekend so she could sleep and not worry about his needs or medicine for one night.  Her nephew coming every day and helping with his needs.  And they do not live next door or even close.  They live 50 or 60 miles away through Atlanta traffic.  They all have families.  They all have jobs.  What an absolutely unheard of blessing.  To me, that is what family should be.  But so few are.  It is refreshing and amazing to see.

We spent the day with them again today and it does not look like he will make it through the week. And while I am so sad for her still - I feel blessed to be able to be a part of ministering to her and having the unique opportunity to see God's strength in action and be a witness to the way her family has pulled together to be there for her like they have.  Everyone should be so blessed.

I am humbled and awed. What a gift.

I Need...

Desperately to talk to someone.

And yet again I find myself with no one to talk to about all these emotions that keep pounding at me.  So again, I turn here.

My friend's son's situation has brought so many of the emotions that I've thought were long past - front and center.  I cannot be with him more than a few minutes before I start to fall apart.  I cry at the drop of a hat and feel so very unstable again.

Cancer has been the one thing that I have told myself could have been worse than what we had.  And now faced with watching cancer slowly, horrifically take a life I'm seeing firsthand the horrific side of watching your child suffer, be in pain, face the fear of dying and having that horror drag out - facing the loss over and over as you have the emotional highs and lows of terminal illness.  Grieving that loss many times over and still I know that that does not make the final grieving after death one ounce easier.  I'm not crazy enough to believe that for one minute.

But being the hopeless analytical that I am I've turned every side of this scenario over and over comparing it to what we had to deal with and I now also see that she may look at what she has and be glad she did not face what we did...

She has something we did not have.  She has time.  Precious, valuable, priceless time.

She can make up for all of the little things that she feels she did wrong by caring for his every need now.  She has time --to adjust to the possibility of the loss and make sure to say all of the things that keep me up nights.  She has time --to hug him and kiss him and cherish every nuance of his face. She has time --to listen to him, memorize his voice and hang on every word because she has the luxury of "knowing" everyday could be her last time.  She has time to watch while he sleeps and study his face so that she never forgets.  She has time --to bond with him like she hasn't had the chance to do in years while he was grown and living in another state.  She has time --to mother him once again and love him and make sure he knows how much.

Her family also has this time.  Her oldest son can be there for his brother; talk to him, physically do things for him to make him comfortable.  He can read to him, feed him, listen to him.  And in doing so he can salve any guilt feelings that he may have had from years of being estranged and later instead of drowning in guilt and shame like my oldest son, going over and over every harsh word that passed between them and turning bitter and biting at everyone he comes in contact with, her son will rest in knowing that he was there for him when he needed him.  And I pray that that keeps her son from running off the rails in his grief later.

His "people" have come out of the woodwork to be there for him and for her.  People that his chosen lifestyle has kept at bay for years.  He has that comfort.  They have that time.  He can die knowing everyone he ever cared about has been there for him.  If he ever questioned their love - he doesn't have to question it now.  He can rest knowing "He was loved."  He will not die alone.

And her friends and family, all the way to her husband's ex-wife have rallied to her side to help her deal with this sorrow and bear this sad horrific responsibility. I am so glad that she has this.  This is going to be the hardest thing she has ever had to face and I love her and I am so thankful she will have the comfort and support that she needs and is not having to bear it alone.

I know how much it hurts when you do not.

My conclusion?  There is no good way to do this.  There is no one way better than another to lose a child.  There are only bad ways.

I pray for her --peace that passes all understanding and for God's strength when hers in depleted.  I pray for everyone that can to come along side her for comfort and support.  I pray that our friendship survives this.  It was a miracle we survived one loss but it's a double hit so I have cause for concern.  I pray that I can be there for him without falling apart and I pray I can be there for her from here on out.

Here Comes Another Wave...

Just like Brian said in the email I kept getting over and over five years after it was sent...five years after he died...

My best friend forever since we were five years old got a call from her youngest son last Thursday.  He was in the E.R. with severe back pain.  He thought he'd slipped a disk.  After his blood work an MRI and CT Scan his slipped disk turned out to be stage 4 metastatic cancer.  Lungs, pancreas and liver involved. I have known him all of his life --I have known of him before he had life. I was there when he was born.  He's 49 years old.  The same age my oldest son turned today.  They played together as children.

The doctors have said it is likely he will never leave the hospital.

Needless to say they are all in shock.  He is in denial and shock.  I am devastated for them.  All of them.  I have cried until I was sick.  Terribly sad for him and the life that he had planned that will now be left unfinished.  Devastated for my friend because I know what she does not know.  I know what is coming for her for many, many months and even years to come.

I know the sadness, the regrets, the guilt, the sleepless, endless nights; I know how this will change every part of her life and even her personality.  How it will change and even possibly destroy what's left of her small and dwindling family. I know the many facets of hurt that will hit her one right after the other.  How strangers and even people she loves will say the wrong things and hurt her and how friends that she thought would be there for her --will turn away and even family that can't handle the "grief-sodden" person that she will become and will grow weary of the sadness and try to hurry her past it and if she doesn't comply --eventually drop off the radar.

I know how she will call into question every belief she ever had about goodness and fairness in the world and even at times, doubt God's goodness and possibly grow weak in her faith.

I dread to the point of panic her having to face the decisions that she will eventually be faced with.  Decisions I was not faced with like making the choice for life support or not, hospice or home care, continued feeding or withholding nourishment and God-forbid, removal of life support.  Then there are the decisions I did have to make: Burial or cremation; scattering ashes or keeping them in an urn, vaults, caskets, memorial stones, memorial service or funeral, what to say, who to call on, music, preacher, graveside service.  These are all horrible, horrible decisions that a parent should NEVER have to make for their child.

I want to protect her from having to watch her child suffer to the point that "death", the most feared word a mother can imagine --will be the lesser of the two evils.  And cringe because I know I cannot.

I fear myself - saying the wrong thing and causing the pain so many have unknowingly caused me.  I pray I never do that.

I fear losing her after 61 years as friends as close as sisters.  Sounds ridiculous --but I know it can happen because I lost the closest friend I'd ever had after a 38-year friendship. I've lost my other two children because of it so yes, it can happen, and I know that.

I wish I could shield her from all that is ahead, but I cannot; no more than anyone could shield me from it.  I hope, I PRAY that I can be there for her.  Be there as someone that truly understands what she is going through.  I pray that I have learned something from all of this in order to be there for my friend like so many were for me when I went through it.  I pray that after the dozens of books I've read on the subject that I can say the right things and that I can minister to her in the way she needs.

We both see now why I was strategically placed "here" 17 miles from her instead of the 80 we had been.  We were never looking here.  We had no intentions of moving here.  We only looked at this one house and it was certainly not the house of our dreams and yet, here we are.

It was not for the reasons that I assumed - so that my son would come.  He doesn't.  It was not because it was an ideal location.  It certainly wasn't to help my daughter and I bond.  And we could never figure out - Why God would have chosen to put us here of all places.

I guess now I know.  God help me to carry forward the comfort that I have been given.

Empathy

Things have been very tense between my daughter and myself for over a year.  For the first time in over 50 years, I have not laid eyes on her in fourteen months.  I have had little choice but to just leave her alone and let her deal with whatever issues that she has on her own.  I apparently was only making things worse.

Today in confiding to a friend my deep pain over the deterioration of my family and the losses that continue to pile higher I sat trying to explain to her how this could even happen between two people that used to be so close and instead of whining and relating my hurt over all of it I found myself explaining it "from my daughter's point of view".  A view I had been too hurt and too devastated to see.  What I realized was that while I was drowning in the overwhelming sorrow of losing my child, grandchild and daughter in law she too had a huge parade of losses.

My friend asked about her friends and her support system outside of her immediately family.

"She pretty much has none." I answered.  "She doesn't make friends easily and her one and only real friend since she married let her down over and over, used her and then totally abandoned her after the loss of Brian."

Then she asked if she and my other son were close.

"No." I answered.  "They never have been.  She was always very close to Brian --but of course she lost him."

"So she has had no friends?" my friend asked.

"Well, yes, she and Kara were very close --but she lost Kara too."

"But you guys were close at one time?"

"Yes, until I moved."

And that's when it hit me.  She had lost almost everyone outside her immediate family that she cared about and then I left her too.

I felt awful.

I have prayed to be able to see her side of this, for me to have God's heart for understanding her and to be able to put myself and my hurt aside and walk in her shoes and feel what she feels.  Today I did just that.  And my heart broke for her.

It's not like I intended to be selfish and just abandon her or my son and not acknowledge their pain I have just been so all consumed with just trying to survive this until I couldn't see past my own pain I guess.  I of course knew we all had loss.  My son has had much the same.  He lost his half-brother because he abandoned him much like my daughter's friend did - after Brian died.  He has also lost a good friend to death that he has known for many years.  He too was close only to Brian and he lost him.  They were both always close to my brother and they now have no relationship with him either.  All of our lives have been impacted in ways we never could have imagined.  All of us lost our entire support systems outside of our spouses.  On top of the catastrophic loss we suffered on August 23rd 2014 we have all also lost friends, co-workers, relatives --and sadly, each other.

I know nothing can bring back Brian and his family but I do pray that God will see fit to restore the relationship I once had with my other two children.  It is heartbreak on top of devastating heartbreak and I just don't know how much more loss I can survive and stay sane.

The Fifth Anniversary...

Has come and gone and I'm glad August is in the rear view mirror.  I spent a solid month dreading it because milestones are always hard.  Problem is it isn't just the "day" of the anniversary it is more like the entire month.  I start getting weepy and depressed as July marches toward the end of summer.  And I stay that way until after Labor Day.  But as I've  mentioned August is a month full of significant days so I guess that's reasonable.

This was a milestone I was dreading mostly because it "has" been five years and I am still where I am at FIVE DANG YEARS later!  That alone is depressing.  And in some ways --not all ways but some, I'm worse than I was say three years out.  That I don't understand.  But I'm going to use this five year mark as a goal. The end of this "continuing to get worse" phase.  I am going to get better.  I am.

Still waiting for that "Beauty From Ashes" to show up.  I do get a little discouraged when I read about all that others have gleaned from the journey through loss and grief --even catastrophic loss.  And when I see the beauty from ashes in other people's stories or when I see that God has restored things to others in the wake of their loss because I know that is not possible in my case.  I am not, at 66 years old going to get another son.  I will never have another opportunity to be that close to another baby in my life. My daughter in law is not miraculously going to be replaced by a better, newer model.  So what exactly could "restoration" even look like for me?

I want to be positive.  I really do.  I want to believe things will get better but I can't see beauty from ashes and I can't see anything being "restored" in my life.  Five solid years out I watch and wait expectantly and still the losses continue to pile up.

I'm trying to stay busy.  I am trying to make new friends and create a solid social life albeit the landscape has changed drastically. Seems now I gravitate to those that have had and therefore understand --catastrophic loss. I am still reading non-stop; still searching for that one story that has the positive, happy ending that can give me the secret formula to overcoming this pain and heartache and the magic potion that will help me learn to not just live through this but enjoy living again in spite of this and tell me what steps to take in order to mitigate the steady stream of collateral losses.

I'm trying to do things - things I used to enjoy - looking for a spark that might ignite even a small flame of interest in something again.  I'm making the effort - which is a step forward I know since it was a long time before I cared to even try.

It was a huge step for me to attempt yet again to see a counselor.  Since that first year when I called about twenty with not so much as a single response and the one I did manage to wrangle up could not handle this and decided to just help me deal with the scheduling issues surrounding my sister's care and how to work in "grieving from the tragic loss of three members of my family" between a three hour commute in heavy Atlanta traffic daily to go for 6 to 12 hours a day 5 -days a week in the bone marrow clinic, juggling visits to an endocrinologist, gastroenterologist, pulmonologist in between along with regular trips to the hospital radiology department, dermatologist and respiratory therapist offices for testing or treatments, keeping up with a conglomeration of 28 medications, making sure the house was as germ-free and bacteria-free as possible, planning and preparing meals according to specific guidelines and doing laundry for four people on top of a full time job that I was then having to do at night after everything else was taken care of.  Granted I needed help for that.  But sadly got no help for the elephant or rather Mastadon in the room.

I think I've had maybe as much as five sessions with her and I got a letter about two weeks ago saying she was resigning.  Resigning.

Was it something that I said?

Small Snippets

I dreamed about the baby last night--something I always wish I could do.  Then when I do I'm sad and weepy for days afterwards. But I also remember how sweet and precious it was to get to be with him for even that little while.  And still it's worth it to me. 

It wasn't much of a dream really only spanned probably less than two minutes time but enough to bring to life those overwhelming feelings of deep, deep love like I felt in the dream I had before he was even conceived.  He was younger in the dream maybe 18 months old and was standing in a baby bed.  Music was playing and he was "singing" along loudly.  No words.  But like he really used to do - just baby jibber-jabber but in perfect tune and with the correct inflections.  He was amazing in that.  He loved sounds, voice pitches, conversation inflections and music of all types and though he didn't hardly even talk at almost three he was never shy and always very vocal. 

In the dream he was singing along with the music and then he quit and I was trying to encourage him to keep singing because it was so sweet and I was pantomiming the words to to him to try and get him to start singing again and he watched me a minute and instead of singing with the music like he had been doing he laughed and started pantomiming back at me.  It was so funny and so just exactly like something he would do.  And that was all that I remember of the dream.  I've been so afraid of forgetting --not him, but the little details of who he was.  It felt good to know that I had not forgotten his essence, his quirky little personality traits that were so uniquely him.  And good to realize that my heart remembered that deep, deep love I felt for him.  It was so good to see him and be with him even for that little while and feel that love even if I will pay for it for days with the overwhelming sadness that will provoke. 

It has made today very hard but still it was such a gift.  I don't dream of any of them often - not often enough but even less of him and I hate that but I guess in God's infinite wisdom, He knows it would keep me deep in the darkness, living in the past with less motivation to move forward. 

 I only had him for two years and eight months.  It is so hard to believe that a child could carve such a deep rut in my heart after such a short time so that even after five years I look at his pictures and still cry.  I find it hard to believe that after only Two and a half years with him that the thoughts of him still dominate so much of my every day or that the pain of losing him could still be this raw.

Fifty eight years I had lived without ever knowing him and I've now been without him five more; twice as long as I had him.  Two and a half years short years is such a small percentage of 66 years and logically I don't even see how 2 and 1/2 years could impact my life in such a way.

I love and miss you my little man.  Always. Always.
  

This Says it All...

I was sent this yesterday by my dear friend; another mother that lost her child. The one other person that had the same tragic loss that I have. She lost her precious child and her "only" grandchild.

Today is her birthday. I know better than to say the trite "Happy Birthday" for I'm sure there will never be another truly happy birthday for her because tomorrow is the day she lost her child and grandchild. Like me, today, five years ago was the last time she would ever hear her daughter's voice. As she so aptly put it when she sent this: "This says it all. And we are not crazy!" So I am posting it here for her and all the mother's that sadly may need to hear this.

*********************************************************************************

I am a mother. I am a bereaved mother. My child died, and this is my reluctant path. It is not a path of my choice, but it is a path I must walk mindfully and with intention. It is a journey through the darkest night of my soul and it will take time to wind through the places that scare me.

Every cell in my body aches and longs to be with my beloved child. On days when grief is loud, I may be impatient, distracted, frustrated, and unfocused. I may get angry more easily, or I may seem hopeless. I will shed many, many, many tears. I won’t smile as often as my old self. Smiling hurts now. Most everything hurts some days, even breathing.

But please, just sit beside me.
Say nothing.
Do not offer a cure.
Or a pill, or a word, or a potion.
Witness my suffering and don't turn away from me.
Please be gentle with me.
And I will try to be gentle with me too.

I will not ever "get over" my child's death so please don’t urge me down that path.

Even on days when grief is quiescent, when it isn't standing loudly in the foreground, even on days when I am even able to smile again, the pain is just beneath the surface.

There are days when I still feel paralyzed. My chest feels the sinking weight of my child's absence and, sometimes, I feel as if I will explode from the grief.

Losing my child affects me in so many ways: as a woman, a mother, a human being. It affects every aspect of me: spiritually, physically, mentally, and emotionally. There are days when I barely recognize myself in the mirror anymore.

Grief is as personal to me as my fingerprint. Don't tell me how I should or shouldn’t be grieving or that I should or shouldn’t “feel better by now.” Don't tell me what's right or wrong. I'm doing it my way, in my time. If I am to survive this, I must do what is best for me.

My understanding of life will change and a different meaning of life will slowly evolve. What I knew to be true or absolute or real or fair about the world has been challenged so I'm finding my way, moment-to-moment in this new place. Things that once seemed important to me are barely thoughts any longer. I notice life's suffering more- hungry children, the homeless and the destitute, a mother’s harsh voice toward her young child- or an elderly person struggling with the door. There are so many things about the world which I now struggle to understand: Why do children die? There are some questions, I've learned, which are simply unanswerable.

So please don’t tell me that “ God has a plan ” for me. This, my friend, is between me and my God. Those platitudes slip far too easily from the mouths of those who tuck their own child into a safe, warm bed at night: Can you begin to imagine your own child, flesh of your flesh, lying lifeless in a casket, when “goodbye” means you’ll never see them on this Earth again? Grieving mothers- and fathers- and grandparents- and siblings won’t wake up one day with everything ’okay’ and life back to normal. I have a new normal now.

As time passes, I may gain gifts, and treasures, and insights but anything gained was too high a cost when compared to what was lost. Perhaps, one day, when I am very, very old, I will say that time has truly helped to heal my broken heart. But always remember that not a second of any minute of any hour of any day passes when I am not aware of the presence of my child's absence, no matter how many years lurk over my shoulder, don’t forget that I have another one, another child, whose absence, like the sky, is spread over everything as C.S. Lewis said.

My child may have died; but my love - and my motherhood - never will.

By: Dr. Joanne Cacciatore

The Emotions of Grief

Last week my counselor suggested that I write a post on the emotions of grief that she believes I do not acknowledge.  I kind of thought I acknowledged all of them and feel like I am more than fully aware of all of the emotions of it.  I may not talk about some as much as others but believe me I am well aware of them.  The ones she thinks I should acknowledge and "feel" are:

Sadness and Fear

I have blatantly acknowledged that I've experienced:

• Anger
• Confusion
• Depression
• Betrayal
• Guilt
• Shame
• Helplessness
• Isolation
• Loneliness
• Apathy
• Numbness
• Disbelief
• Thankfulness
• Shock
• Uselessness
• Weakness
• Uncertainty

I am sure I have made myself clear on sadness as well albeit not to the true magnitude that I feel - because you can't really convey that easily and I won't let myself wallow in that mud for fear it will turn out to be "quicksand" and I will not be able to pull myself back out of it. So out of self-preservation I allow myself to experience the overwhelming sadness of this only in short bursts. Then I find a distraction and turn away from it.

So we'll go with fear.  I do admit I have not thought much about fear in a while but it is absolutely a crippling and very real part of this.

So what could you have to fear in this?  I can tell you first of all that it is NOT fear of you yourself dying.  But it is just about everything else.

But when you have been rudely awakened from your magical thinking that things as horrific as this --cannot really happen to you which opens you up to any and all possibilities.  Nothing is off limits.  The worst of the worst has already happened and so you feel very vulnerable and believe me that scares the living shit out of you.

And you have lost all belief that you and your family are being watched over and taken care of - and that too, makes you extremely fearful.  If you've lived your entire life believing that a good and merciful God watches over you and your family and that prayers for your children's safety really matter - a tragedy on this scale - can rock your world in ways I cannot begin to describe.  So you have a spiritual fear that if "that" wasn't true - what else that you have always believed is not true?  It's kind of like waking up on Christmas morning when you are a child and finding out your parents are Santa Claus. Suddenly you find that something you had believed all your life is not true. All of the magic in life suddenly fades and you feel sad and insecure and betrayed.  All of the colors of your world turn to gray as you realize that you've been duped your entire life and worse still by the people you love and trust the most in this world. Your first thoughts are "What else have they lied to me about?  Am I even theirs?  Do they really love me?  Will they someday just go to work and never come back home?  Is anything good --real?"  Of course unlike Santa I still know there is a God and this is no comparison as far as the magnitude but the feelings of confusion, disillusionment and insecurity are pretty much the same.

Then there is the mind-numbing "terror" of losing someone else you love.  So much so until it keeps you up at night and makes a raving lunatic out of you and some part of every single day - miserable.

For instance your son or daughter in law are suddenly plagued with some weird health symptoms - and you automatically jump to worst case scenario and are wringing your hands and pacing the floor;  calling until you drive them both nuts.  Asking questions, looking up symptoms on the internet, searching your past history for anything that sounds like what they are experiencing. hounding them to go see a doctor, and calling for test results and consulting your friend that is a nurse living in a total but as yet unreasonable panic.

Or perhaps your daughter and son in law stop to help a stranded motorist in a parking lot late at night after leaving a restaurant and you find yourself in a panic-stricken screaming fit because now they won't answer their phones.  When they finally do you are screaming at them to stop taking risks with their lives;.angry and yelling about your son in law putting their lives in danger.  The same son in law that you dearly love and have always admired for his selfless, kind and compassionate ways.

Or maybe your sister doesn't answer her phone when you call because she's in the shower - and your mind goes instantly to "laying in the floor unconscious alone and in a diabetic coma."

Or your husband breaks out in a rash or has another bout of skin cancer suddenly you are hysterical imagining the worst and obsessing about the stitches, infections, possible incompetence, not getting all of the cancer cells or the lab reading the biopsy wrong and on and on.

Or irrational fears of dates on a calendar.  Like August 23 and 24th.  I superstitiously will not "do" anything or go anywhere out of the ordinary on those dates.  I don't even like to see then written down.  I've NEVER been superstitious.  What's up with that?

I even fear my 18-year old dog dying.  (Really?) It's not because I think she should live forever and not because I can't face the fact that dogs have shorter life spans than people.  I've lost many pets over my lifetime but it is because she was Brian's dog.  He rescued her from the pound and raised her from a pup.  And ten years ago he gave her to me when he and Kara married and moved to where they had no fence.  She was the last thing that I have that he gave to me to take care of and love.  It will be yet another loss related to his family.

How do these fears affect the quality of my life?  I can't sleep.  I stress eat.  I cannot focus on anything except trying to think of ways to keep all the balls in the air and keep everyone safe - which of course is totally out of my control and that morphs right into "Helpless" which is yet another reason for more fear.  Fear of the realization that I am totally powerless to stop anything further from devastating what's left of my life and family.

And maybe she's right.  I haven't really fully acknowledged all of the faces of fear that I live with everyday that contribute to the misery that comes with this grief and actually, I haven't scratched the surface still because it seems to change everyday.

August

August 1.  The fifth August.

The month I dread all year long.  Other months bother me as well - March and December are always hard.

But August is the month that life as we knew it completely fell apart.  And every August still brings some of those exact same feelings  as from "that August" flooding back to cripple me.

August was the last time I ever saw them --my very last visit two weeks prior.  The last time I would ever hug and kiss Kara and Paxton and the last lost opportunity to hug Brian.  He was never comfortable with open shows of affection and that one day, I opted to give him a break and let him off without a hug.  Of course having no idea it would have been my last opportunity ever.

August was when I gave Kara her last birthday present - early something I never, ever do.  But that day I did.  I didn't know why I did but I did.  It would have been her 30th, she never lived to see it.

August is the month of her mother's birthday.  The day before they all died.  The last time she ever got to hear her daughter's beautiful voice.  She would never have another good birthday because every birthday from then on would bring back horrific memories.

August is the month of Brian's oldest son's birthday.  The next day after they were found.  He will never forget that birthday. And he will never have another birthday with his dad which was always a big day around their house his entire life.  He will never have another birthday that isn't tainted remembering his birthday 2014.

August - the month that marked the worst days of my life.  The 23rd, the day I was awakened at 4:00 am and burst into tears for no known reason.  The 23rd the day they actually died.  The 24th the day that is on their death certificates incorrectly marking the days of their lives.  Also the day I tried all morning with a pit of dread and fear in my stomach to reach them to no avail.  The 24th the day they were all found shot to death in the home I helped them purchase and forever I will wonder if I hadn't done that - could the outcome have been different?  The house that once was a great source of pride for both of them - a testament to his unbelievable talents as well as her love, hard work and determination --now a horrific murder scene, a memorial to wasted lives and devastating loss, sold to the highest bidder on the courthouse steps.

The rest of August after that a blur of questions, anger, grief, devastation, learning new words as they applied to my child and grandchild like cremation, autopsy, memorial service, urns, toxicology report, death certificate and then calls to people and places that have never touched my life before that day like the County Sheriff Department's Homicide Investigator,  the County Coroner's office, The GBI, The State Crime Lab.

The last day of August - Kara's birthday.

August - three birthdays and one horrific death day

No, August is not my favorite month.  It is a month I tiptoe through just trying to survive it without further collateral damage and hoping and praying that I will get to the other side of it as quickly as possible.

This is my 100th post on a blog I started four weeks after that first August five years ago that changed every part of my life forever.

Five years has given me a perspective that I had not had before and has brought things to mind that time and distance have caused me to connect like the dream I had about the train trestle when I was maybe 9 or 10 years old.  And there are other things like that.

One day I thought about a word I used to describe accurately the person I am today --"Broken". Broken in every sense of the word.  My spirit is broken.  My family is broken.  My life as it relates to hopes, dreams, aspirations --broken.  My relationships --all --broken.  And one day I walked into a restaurant and a country music song was playing.  A song by Larry Gatlin and The Gatlin Brothers.  I laughed out loud and thought of Brian as a three year old.  It was his very favorite song.  Anytime we were in the car and it came on the radio he would get wide-eyed and squeal with delight and scream out:

"Mama!, Broken Lady song -- Broken Lady song!"

I used to laugh knowing how literal small children think and I could see that from his three year old perspective he was picturing an actual lady broken into a million pieces like a glass figurine.

That day as I thought of that it stopped me dead in my tracks as I remembered the many, many times I had made reference to myself as being a broken person and suddenly it seemed like an accurate prophetic depiction from a three-year old and realized that what he pictured wasn't really that far off.

Lost

Fifty nine months and 6 days ago life as I knew it ceased to be.

At sixty-one I did not feel I had any time to lose.  At that point the average life expectancy for a woman was seventy-eight years old.  Since I was still working and not able to retire until 65 four years of that would be spent commuting in ridiculous traffic for threes hours a day and working on my job nine.  So from 65 to 78 I had maybe 7 good years and that is best case scenario.  At that point in your life, you really have no time to waste.  And here I sit here wondering how many days have gone by that I have no recollection of?  How many hours have I now spent sitting and staring into space; doing nothing and watching the hours of my life drift by?  Five years I have been existing like someone already dead that just hasn't fallen over yet.

These were the years we had worked and waited for.  We were going to travel and finally after 40 years of working and raising a family, get to enjoy a little of our lives before they were gone.  And here I sit day after day without the energy, stamina or desire to "do" anything.  I am wasting what time I've got left - living in a state of limbo - not dead - not living.  Just waiting.  I realize I'm doing this and I hate it but I cannot seem to find what it takes to pull out of this.  I seem to have lost my zest for life.  I've always been a goal-oriented person.  I make lists. I set five year goals, one year goals, monthly and daily goals. But now I have no goals.  Waking up that is my big goal.  What do you do when you have no direction? What do you live for if you have no dreams, no goals, no desires and no hope.

We do enjoy days together from time to time.  We talk a lot.  Unfortunately, "this" is mostly what we talk about.  We laugh and joke and I am certainly thankful for that.  But life isn't the same --not just in my family but in my head, in my spirit and in my heart.

I feel I am drifting aimlessly.  Sailing without navigation, without so much as a map and worse still without a destination.

I want to live life again.  I do.  I just can't seem to find my way out of this.  Writing used to be my life and now I try to write and I get lost and ramble.

How do you find your way back? Can you find your way back?  If so, pray tell how?

This is the result of being a survivor?

About as I always imagined.

Survivors - I always wondered at those people that build bomb shelters and stockpiled weapons, food and supplies - what would they have to live for in a world decimated by a nuclear bomb?  Why on earth would they want to survive?  Me --I've always said I hoped I'd go out with the first blast.

Now I really know how true that is.

Thankful

For the sake of trying to get in a better place I need to think back over the past few years and be able to see ways that God has shown up for me and ways that I have been blessed.  Sadly, it seems to get more difficult everyday.  Not that He isn't showing up, it is just the frame of mind I'm in makes it difficult to recognize sometimes.  But there are things.  Things like moving us to this area.  This was not the house of my dreams and not at all what I was looking for or in an area I ever thought about living - but it was exactly what we needed and where we needed to be.  It's low maintenance with lots of storage and lots of privacy, a great place for the dogs and God knew that I needed to find my next door neighbor. He also knew that she needed to find me.  We needed each other.  She lost a son to a drug overdose 10 years ago.  She never talked about it and was somewhat stuck in her grief.  She had some of the same issues surrounding her son's death in that she could not openly discuss it and felt that she was deserted by friends and family over it and was expected to just get over it and move on.  It had been eating her up for 9 years when we finally started to talk.  Here she has found a safe place and I too, have found a safe place in her. 

Our church.  It still seems impossible for me to believe that at this age I could settle in that quickly and become so close to the people so fast.  We love the church and I look forward to going every week.  We now go on Wednesday's too and we enjoy a special relationship with the preacher and his wife.  I never thought we could ever fit in at another church after being where we were for 23 years.  I was on committees.  I had a regular job at the church.  We had keys to the church.  Here, I participate in the ladies ministry - my husband is on committees and is doing the job that our deacons handled at the other church and he has keys to the church. It is amazing to me how my husband is taking such an active role here.  It is like - this is where he always belonged.  He has come out of his shell and clearly this church is home to him.

I have more people here that I did there after 23 years.  When I moved here I thought I had only my best friend.  But I also have two granddaughters and their families, three cousins, my oldest and dearest friend and two new close friends and my sister is 37 miles closer than she was.  And my husband that never talked to anyone - now knows all the neighbors by name and walks over and talks to them??? 

We have doctors close and I have actually found a Physician's Assistant that I really like.  A good dermatologists, a really good Mohs surgeon and general surgeon, and one of the best hospitals and level one trauma center, and number one heart center is 13 miles from us.  A second newer hospital 9 miles away.  I found a counselor that is helping me after almost five years.  Now all we need is a new dentist that we really like and we have everything we need. There is shopping, doctors, hospitals, library, restaurants, post office, antique shops, a huge recreational lake and a college are all within 15 miles of us with no traffic.  As difficult as it was to wait for God to show us the right place - He absolutely did.  It was not what we were looking for and it was not where we were looking to be - but when the time got right, He brought us straight to it.  That is definitely something to be thankful for. 









          

What Grief Looks Like Today

I'm sure that almost five years in most people would think I would be well on my way out of the dark and while I am not in total darkness most of the time the shadows certainly still loom.

The thing is that I had been distracted for the most of that five years and while I have not tried to bury my grief in alcohol, drugs or the usual culprits I have, as I said once before, attempted with no success to "Type A" it into submission.

By nature I am a very logical, analytical person.  I'm a problem solver. A fixer. I assess the problem. Carefully consider my options. Gather my resources.  Attack.  So I set about to survive this the only way I knew how.  I have systematically gone through my bag of tricks, the things that have worked for me in the past with lesser trials --what else could I do?  I have no point of reference for such an enormous tragedy.  It's not like I can look back and say "Oh yeah, the last time this happened I did this or oh yes, when this happened to my friend Trina, she got through it by doing  that."

Nope.  Flying by the seat of my pants here.

So I have approached it striking at it with everything within my reach.  If I haven't gone through this before and no one I know has gone through this before so then we take the circle wider.  Surely somebody has gone through this before?  Right?  Not that I can find.  I know they have but nobody is talking about it.  That's because it is a taboo subject.  Because they are shamed into silence.  Because the last thing on earth you want to do is publicize it and draw attention to yourself.  Therefore there is no support out there that I can find for families of tragedies and the aftermath of this nature.  No websites.  No Blogs.  No How-to YouTube videos to instruct you on how you live through this and salvage what's left of your life and sanity. So logically --again I regroup.  What resources can I use that may be "close" to this? And the best I could come up with is grabbing a little here and a little there and piecing them into a weird mosaic of self-help.

I have read books - piles and piles of books searching, learning, taking notes looking desperately for that one magic book that is going to help me to dig out of this.  If I just keep reading surely I will find one that can: give me hope, give me inspiration, tell me how others have made it through, show me how to recover my faith in prayer, my trust in law enforcement, find my confidence in my abilities or fix my family.

We had shame and judgment from a murder accusation so I find a book about a mother whose son goes to prison for shooting someone.  How did she cope?  How did she maintain her sense of self?  How did she face the public?  How did she fight for her son? Does she tell people and if so, how?

We had a media circus and circumstances with the investigation that made us lose faith in our justice system so I find a book about a couple that lost their precious child and then were promptly thrown into defense mode when they were the first and only suspects.  How did they survive it?  How did they walk around in public when they were so well recognized from the media circus that was created from their tragic circumstances?  How were they ever able to even grieve their child when their lives and family and freedom were on the line from day one?  How did they ever trust law enforcement again?  How did they ever find their faith?

We had the death of multiples, that resulted in other families losing loved ones.  As a result we bore undeserved guilt so I find another about a mother whose son was a famed school shooter.  She was hated. Stalked. Not allowed to grieve her son.  Thrown in to a nightmare of a life.  How did she cope?  How did she find beauty from the ashes?  How did she survive?

Then I start breaking it down into the individual parts; books on surviving a tragedy;  books on losing a child; books on grief in general; books on Complicated Grief, books on Disenfranchised Grief. (I had never even heard that term before I was living it.) Then I moved onto faith.  I found a book about faith in the face of tragedy, Finding Hope in horrible circumstances, How to let God fight your battles and on and on.

What I have learned is that there are others that have it worse than me and that you cannot fix an illogical circumstance with logic.  You cannot stop grieving your family by reading a book or a hundred books.  Grief is not dealt with by systematically checking things off of a list.

I have been in survival mode for so long until I forgot how to come out.  "Breathe.  Put one foot in front of the other.  Do the next thing.  Keep busy."  And part of my survival tactic was to not look this full in the face and feel what I feel.  I ran desperately from my feelings because the pain was unbearable and I was afraid if I let myself fully absorb all of this I would sink to a place I could not come back from.

What does grief feel like today?  It feels like sadness. Fear. Shame. Guilt. Sorrow.  Remorse.  Frustration.  Hopelessness. Deep, deep emptiness. Pure physical pain. Confusion. Crazy. Anger. Betrayal. Lethargy. Mistrust. Insecurity.  And did I mention crazy? 

Sadness for the huge loss of my youngest son, the life of the party, the practical joker, the loving and loyal dad whose love and many talents are now wasted.  Sadness for the loss of the baby that I finally let myself relax and love with abandon.  How I miss those tiny hands and feet and how I long to bury my face in his soft baby hair and smell that sweet baby smell, to hold him, rock him, roll fire trucks with him and hear him laugh hysterically when we play hide and seek behind the sofa pillows and I finally "find" him, watch him run a million miles down my driveway pushing his toy. And how sad I feel at the waste of the life and talent and beauty and blatant honesty that was my daughter in law - she loved life so much and it was cut short before she had a chance to even live it. And sadness and deep guilt for her parents; the only other people in the world that know our same loss.

Fear of literally everything now.  I went from fearing nothing in the beginning when I didn't have enough sense to care --to fearing everything as my world is now so shaky, unpredictable, temporary, unstable and small. 

Insecure as my innocence in believing such as this could never happen to us has been forever shattered and I now live knowing my world can be rocked beyond belief with one phone call.  All of my life I'd believed God would surely protect my family like I prayed. I know now that is not true. You can pray till the cows come home and the worst of the worst can still happen.

Shame, Guilt & Remorse because I chose not to see them; guilt that I couldn't have fought harder for the truth because I felt I had to put the living above the dead; shame because my logical mind thought of that; guilt because there is another family has this same god-awful pain and loss and they believe my son caused it...

Anger at myself first and foremost for not having the strength it took to see them or keep up the fight for the truth; anger at the Sheriff's Department, anger at the Deputy Coroner, anger at the media, anger at everyone that had ever hurt Brian, anger at the general public that did not think I should love and grieve my son.  Anger at God and then add that to the top of the list of things I'm angry at myself about.

This is what it feels like today.  And still it is soooooo much better than it was.

The Many Faces of Catastrophic Grief

It will soon be five years since the catastrophic triple loss our family suffered.  We are all so different until I no longer recognize us as a family.  As a matter of fact, one could hardly call us a family anymore.  We are now three separate small families still just putting one foot in front of the other and still struggling to survive this however we can.

People kept talking about finding my "New Normal" well after almost five years I'm not sure I know what a "new normal" looks like unless it is a whole lot like "more loss".  I would hardly call it any kind of "normal".

My oldest son shoved me out of his life the day of the memorial service - four days after the deaths of my son, my daughter in law and my grand baby.  He caught me at the door as he was leaving for his home 400 miles away and hugged me and said,
"You know I can't do this anymore."
"Do what?"
"Come here.  I can't come here anymore.  I just can't.  He is everywhere here.  This is where we all came for holidays and he was always here.  I see him everywhere and I can't do this.  This will be my last time coming here."

I thought he was joking.  He wasn't. I thought surely to God, he cannot mean that.  He feels like that now but he will get better in time.  It's been almost five years.  He was true to his word.  He never went there again.  So we moved and he doesn't come here either.  He still cannot face it and he has shoved it under the rug and goes about his business as if it did not happen.  Except that his bottled up pain and anger do not stay in their neat little box.  Instead they come spewing out unchecked about anything and everything and it is most always directed at me.  I am his outlet for the rage.  He has cussed me, screamed at me, raged at me, refused to speak to me and even in a mad fit --blamed me.

I don't quite know what to do with this.

It is heart-breaking on many levels.  It is all I can do to hold it together and instead of us pulling together at the worst time in all of our lives - we are ripped apart.  I am suddenly the enemy without any understanding of why.  He absolutely hates me.  According to him I've ruined his life.  He had a terrible childhood and I've never done anything right.

As of this time last year my daughter has joined him in making me public enemy number one.  I cannot do or say anything right. She does not talk to me nor does she want to see me.  And she has turned into someone I barely recognize.

I understand their anger at this entire situation.  I do.  And I can't say that I don't see how this happens.  I too, am angry and I have cut all ties with most of my relationships outside of my family.

It changes you - more than you could ever imagine.  How can you maintain relationships that were based on you being one person when you are no longer that person?  You can't.  It does not just change the number of children or grandchildren you have.  It changes EVERYTHING.  You are not the same person at all.  You may as well have a different face and different name.  I don't recognize anything about this person I am nor do I recognize either of my children.

It changed my relationship with my family, my home, my church, my town and my job.

I had to leave.  If I were going to survive this. I could not live looking at the places where that baby played everyday.  I could not walk out into my backyard and remember twenty years of Holidays, Sunday cookouts with horseshoes, badminton, canoeing around the lake, fishing, swimming, picking blueberries, years and years of baby showers, weddings, prom pictures, birthday parties.  Every family memory I had for the last twenty years was there.  When we moved there my oldest grandchild was three.  She turned 30 today.  My grandchildren grew up there.  They never knew us to live any place else. Paxton made number 10 and he came home from the hospital there and stayed with us on the weekends from his first weekend.  He had just caught his first fish there and he ran a thousand miles up and down our quarter mile long driveway pushing a Fisher Price walking toy.

I had to move or I was not going to survive it.  I wasn't sure I could anyway but I knew for a fact I couldn't if I stayed there.  My son was right.  Brian was everywhere.  Paxton was more so.

My church - These were the people that gathered around us the day we found out.  They were loving and loyal and good to us and I love them still but I was having a huge faith crisis and I tried to talk to my pastor about it.  Granted that is a tough subject but I felt like he let me down.  Also, over the pulpit hangs a four foot tall beautiful polished wooden cross --that Brian made with his own hands.  And that baby had run up and down the pew we sat on since he could crawl.  I could not sit there and not see him playing with little cars.  People at the church "knew".  I couldn't look at them without thinking about it.  I could see one that crocheted him a gorgeous blanket when he was born.  Another that once told me he was the prettiest child she'd ever seen and he was too pretty to be a boy.  Still another that tried to keep him in nursery once - you could hear him screaming all through the sanctuary.  Then the nursery where I finally had to go keep him myself.  The Sunday School class where he sat in my lap for 2 years and eight months and ran hot wheels back and forth quietly.  No.  I had to go.

It changed my relationship with my town; a town I had dearly loved for over twenty years; the town I had once written a story about and had published in a magazine because I truly thought it was such a special place.  Suddenly I couldn't go anywhere without people staring and pointing and whispering.  No one would work for us.  And it was a big place with a lot of upkeep, we needed occasional help.  Contractors, Landscapers, yard maintenance people were all delighted to have the job --until someone in the neighborhood told them who we were.  And their whole demeanor would change instantly and when they left, they never came back.  They would not answer or return our calls.  We were literally shunned --in the town we had been well-respected in and called home for 23 years.

I was dying there.

I don't feel like I'm living here but I could literally feel myself "dying" there.

I know 100 miles away was extreme but I needed new.  I needed anonymous.  I needed a new church, a new preacher, a new church family and a fresh start. I needed to be where the "now me" could feel at home instead of like an alien where I once belonged.

And my job - I stayed and stuck it out as long as I could as long as I had to but I felt guilty all of the time because they never had the employee they hired.  I had been a loyal and dedicated worker that came to them highly recommended from another department.  And three months into the job my sister was diagnosed and six weeks later three of my children died.  I was a shell of a person.  I didn't care about anything.  I was no longer dedicated to my job.  That job was the last thing on my mind.  I had always been a quick-study and perfectly at ease with computers and on my last job trained everyone else because I knew how to do everything.  I was very good at what I did and I loved what I did.  Suddenly, I had no memory, no mind, no focus and no concentration.  I stayed confused and cried at the drop of a hat.  I actually got LOST going to work  on several occasions.  I've lived here 65 years and I'd worked in that same building 9 years with a  previous employer and 6 years with the current employer and I got lost going to work and had to call my husband crying hysterically to help me find my way to work!

I was certain I was losing my mind.  I could not retain anything and could not learn the system or remember the simplest things. I stuck it out three and half years because I felt like I owed my bosses because they were so good to me when my sister was sick but in thinking about it, I know it would have been kinder to them to have just quit and let them hire someone that had a half a brain.

And after having lost my children which was catastrophic alone and unfathomable when most people would expect that I would be well past any danger of not surviving this at almost five years out - I've lost my best friend of 40 years and in fact, all but one friend from before and she is on shaky ground most of the time, I've left my home of 23 years, lost my home town, my reputation, my standing in my community, my pride in my work, my confidence in my abilities, my job, my church, my faith and my mind.

And now my other two children as well.

So "this" is my New Normal?

Another Wave...

I have told you of several really weird and unexplainable things that happened early on like the incident with the pendulum on the clock, Siri asking if I wanted to ask her: "Where is Brian?" etc. All of that happened early on and there has been nothing odd or unexplainable since.

However, until a couple of months ago when another weird thing happened.  My phone battery had depleted while I was in the car without my charger and the phone went completely dead.  I had to wait till I got home to plug it in and let it charge a while before it would even boot up.  When it finally did and I picked it up to use it there was an email on the screen as if it had just come in.  I opened the email and it was from --Brian; from five years ago --on his birthday!  It said:

"He's saying: "Here comes another one." He's talking about a wave."

Well this didn't make sense out of context so I had to go back through five years and thousands of emails to find and read the email string that lead up to this to see that he is referring to a video he sent me of Paxton at the beach.  I'd sent him one saying that I couldn't understand what the baby was saying in the video and this email was his answer to that.  But it was just those words:

"He's saying: "Here comes another one." He's talking about a wave."

Well I have referred as have many others to grief coming in waves and I have also referred to this being like a shipwreck with me being overcome by the waves so this was unnerving to say the least.  Here comes another one?  Oh God, I hope and pray not --but let me tell you, it totally rattled me.  I tried to blow it off and try and get on with my day but the weirdness of the fact that out of literally thousands of emails that sit on my email account - an email from five years ago, from my son that died five months after that, on what turned out to be his very last birthday shows up on my phone screen as if it were brand new and unread - was strange enough but "this" being the actual message of that email?  Beyond weird.

Well I finally settled down about it and chalked it up to a freaky weird coincidence when two days later it happened again.  Same deal.  Email shows up on my phone screen like a brand new email.  I open it.  It is from Brian.  Same exact email now a second time.  The following week I get an error message on my screen that said:  "your text could not go through."  Well...I had not sent a text.  I opened the error message and it lead me to the actual text it was referring to... and it was the last text I ever sent to Kara; asking "Are you okay?"  She was not.  I had been texting both of them alternately all morning with no answer and that was my last text to her before I sent someone to the house to check on them.

But again "this" a few months shy of five years ago! And believe it or not - that too, actually happened a second time a week later.  And this past Monday - I got the email from Brian now a third time!  This has never happened with any other emails as long as I have had a smartphone. Never.  And now out of thousands of archived emails - this one email has come up on my screen as if it had just been received - three times! And I have also never had an error message come up like that and did not in fact even get that error message the day or days shortly after I sent it.  But I get it twice almost five years later and within days of the emails from Brian???

That is crazy and I really do not know what to make of it.

Mother's Day

Here we are yet another Mother's Day. My fourth since losing Brian.  It seems each year I have fewer and fewer children in my life. Brian was missing Mother's Day 2015.  By 2016 I'd lost my relationship with my oldest son too.  And by 2019 my relationship with my daughter is destroyed as well. So by the fourth Mother's Day after this loss I'd lost all three.  Not the same loss thank God but gone just the same.  So does that even qualify me a mother anymore?

Traumatic death and unresolved grief - the gift that keeps on giving.

It's been quite a year.

I retired after 35 years in commercial insurance and over 50 years of working a public job. And since I retired...

I watched my dear friend for over 55 years succumb to lung cancer while her daughter and I sat by her side in the hospice.

Shortly thereafter, my daughter quit speaking to me.

My sister almost died in December.  She went by ambulance to the hospital with a temperature of 105.  She spent the next two weeks in ICU totally unconscious on total life support.  Her organs began to shut down and her body temperature dropped to 73.
She was dying.

With literally thousands praying for her and a God-sent nursing staff on Christmas Eve she awoke from a coma and after two more weeks in the hospital she was released to a slow and arduous recovery that is still in process six months later.

The night after they had called all the family in not expecting her to live - my son calls me in a rant. He doesn't ask about my sister shows no sympathy and no concern but cusses me out and hasn't spoken to me since.

I spent a day in the ER --my second time ever in 65 years.

It took me four years to try and recover from the hurt and betrayal and attempt to reclaim the lost relationship with my best friend of 42 years...and one conversation for her to tear it down again.

After almost five years.  I finally have an appointment "this week" to see a counselor and I have finally given in two months ago to antidepressants.  I fought it for four and a half years but that is a long time to wake up and realize after all that time I was no better.  I still had no will to live and no interest in life. The depression was killing me and I was killing every relationship I ever had.  I was not sleeping.  I was eating myself to death and my blood pressure was out of control.

That said, things were not all bad.

The antidepressants have been a God-send.  I wish I had allowed myself to get help long ago.

Though I still lost my friend, because I had retired three weeks earlier I was able to go and be with her and her daughter when she died.  She did not die alone.  She was in a wonderful compassionate place with the two people she would have chosen to be with her.

Though my sister almost died - she didn't.  She shocked the doctors and the nurses and  against all odds came out of it and with apparently no damage to her vital organs which they did not believe possible.  She is now not only walking again but driving now.  Thank God for the miracle we witnessed with her.  I know she was a testimony to the power of prayer and the grace of God to a lot of the staff at the hospital too.

The antidepressants have helped me.  And I am finally getting sleep and by pure "accident" due to a recall of my BP Medicine I was put on an alternate that after 20 years finally has my BP under control and totally normal.

And though I don't have my other two children and nothing can replace them, my church family and my extended family and old friends and new have come along side me to pick up the slack and keep me from going this alone.

God is good after all.

Too many coincidences

I understand that I am a mother and that it is natural that I would want someone to blame for this.  But I assure you that I had more than one reason to feel there should have been a more thorough investigation.


Though I knew my son and I knew on day one that this was absolutely not possible as the months went by I had more and more reason to question the conclusion of the investigation.


As mentioned before the police entered through the only ground floor window that lead to a finished room in the basement.  The window was actually open though it appeared locked. It was just pulled down to appear that it was secured just as someone might do that was exiting the home and wanted everything to appear normal and secured.  Both doors securely locked and dead-bolted and yet the one and only ground floor window - virtually open?  The window hidden from view behind large shrubbery.  That is the same window the police entered the home through and yet the reason they gave us for saying Brian was the shooter?  No sign of forced entry...


It took me ten months to get the police report.  I was denied access to it on multiple occasions though it is my right by Georgia law.  The report however, showed very little.  They charged me nine dollars for 30 pages of what appeared to be about five copies of a few identical pages and on each almost all text was redacted - crossed through in bold black marker.  August 24, 2014, when the police left the home after their investigation a short list of what was taken from the scene was left on the coffee table in their home.  My son in law brought it to me when he retrieved their computers and cell phones from the house. The item on that list that jumped out at me was: two spent shell casings from a 9mm gun.  Two.  Three people shot but only two shell casings recovered.  That is a very loose end.


Days later the house was professionally cleaned by Serve-Pro and everything gone over with a fine toothed comb.  No third shell casing was ever found.  There was no carpet in the entire house only hard floors so nothing was going to be lost or camouflaged in carpet and still no third spent shell casing was ever found and I know this because I called the supervisor in charge at Serve-Pro and asked.


If no one was alive to leave the house - how did one get missing?  I repeatedly asked that question but never received an answer.  Ten months after the tragedy that took the lives of my children I was finally able to get a copy of the report.  It contained just a tiny bit more information than we already knew but the main piece of information it contained was that the missing shell casing was noted on that report and it was the shell casing to the bullet that killed Brian...


Not quite three months after my children died my 82 year old neighbor also a long time resident of Paulding County had a heart attack in his driveway.  As he fell he hit his head against the bumper of his truck and his poor wife found him when she returned from a ministry meeting later that morning.  When the police and emergency crew arrived the police on the scene actually asked her if she thought he had any reason to have harmed himself.  Suicide? By throwing himself down on the bumper of his truck?  His wife was livid.


Four months after my children were killed - in a county that covers 315 square miles and has a population of 142,763 an 18 year old boy was found shot to death in his car one mile from my son's home. A week later a twelve-year veteran of the sheriff's department and veteran of the military was found shot to death also apparently in the middle of the night along with his wife and twelve year old daughter and 21 year old son - also deemed murder/suicide.  This happened about eight miles from my son's home.  Three different instances of murder less than 10 miles apart, all within a four month period.  Just a coincidence or could it be that there is perhaps just a murderer on the loose in that area. 


Another common denominator - Young adult males all around the same age, all in the same geographical area, all could have known some of the same people.


About six weeks after the kids died I hear of an incident told to my daughter in law's mother.  I knew Kara was the one that insisted on buying a gun for protection but I had never known why.  She says she feared for their safety after an acquaintance of Brian's teenage son came to the door demanding that he send his son out.  The boy was angry and cussing and threatening the son. She said, Kara was terrified and called the police to come immediately. At that time Brian, 38 years old had never owned or shot a gun in his entire life.  He kept only a baseball bat as protection.  He grabbed the baseball bat as the boy tried to push his way in the door to come in after Brian's son.  He did not use it of course but held it to discourage the boy from coming in.  He told the boy that the police were on the way and he had better leave.  The boy turned to leave and as he got almost to his car he turned and screamed back at him "This is NOT over!  I will come back here and kill you and your whole damned family!"


They went right out and bought two guns and went to the local firing range to learn to shoot them. According to the police Brian sold his the year before.  Kara carried hers in her car.


They moved into the new house shortly thereafter and three years later on August 23 in the middle of the night Brian and his whole family are killed...


Two years prior to this Brian's 16-year old daughter ran away from home and was staying at her boyfriend's house.  Brian found out where she was and called the police to come and assist in getting his daughter out of the house and home.  They did.  At that time, the policemen on the scene warned the boy's mother that she was a minor child and she was interfering with custody and could get in serious trouble for allowing her to stay there.  They told the mother if it happened again - she could be arrested.  Less than a month later it happened again.  A second time Brian called for help to get his daughter home safe and a second time Paulding County came to his rescue.  He did not press charges, nor did he want the woman locked up but since she had been officially warned previously the police arrested the boy's mother.  The boy was furious cussing and screaming threats at Brian "and included his family" that night also.  This I did know about.  Paulding County would have also known about it.


The same day that they were all found dead - that same boy was arrested for the first time ever.  And he has been in and out of jail almost constantly since that day... 


This is on record.


Paulding County helped Brian get an emergency custody hearing before a judge when his son was put out of the car and left on the side of a deserted road at 16 by his mother.


At 14 his daughter also chose to come to live with him.  Paulding County DFACS came to their home on several occasions to do home welfare visits when he and Kara had called them so that he could get temporary custody in order to be able to enroll her in school.


They noted on the incident report from the day they were found that there had never been a call to that home for any sort of domestic violence and Brian had been a resident of Paulding County since he bought his first home there at 21 years old.  The only calls they had ever had were from him concerning the safety and protection of his children. 


He had never laid a hand on any woman ever.  He could hardly even put his children on restriction.  He had never been in any kind of trouble in his life and had nothing more serious than a minor traffic violation in 41 years.


In the officers own words - "The house was immaculate and nothing appeared to be out of place.  It looked as if they had all put on pajamas and just gone to bed."


Just saying that there appears to me to be at least cause for reasonable doubt.

So Many Things...

Still haunt me.  Here we are almost five years later and the ripple effects of this tragedy are still appearing.  The sum total of all of it are still today continuing to destroy my family and likely will as long as we all live.

The split second decision to deem this murder/suicide --made by the investigating officers of The Paulding County Sheriff's Department in the middle of a gruesome and horrific crime scene was decided based solely on the personal opinions of the officers on call that day.  Circumstantial evidence that would never fly under any other circumstances.  Loose ends that were never addressed.  Hard evidence that was ignored.  Forensic evidence that was never collected.  Not one ounce of proof was given to us.  Not one ounce of proof was ever found.  And no one cared.  They were the police.  We argued.  We begged.  We pestered.  To no avail.  They had the only say in it.  It was their job but they chose not to do it.  They assumed it wasn't important. He was dead.  He couldn't dispute it and they didn't have to follow standard protocol.  Brian wasn't important.  We, his family weren't important.  The fallout they left with that decision has ruined to the point of no return, our entire family.  "This" this horrific and unimaginable loss would have been alone, enough to destroy us but that along with this horrific, biased and blatant injustice - has pretty much finished us off.

I have given them the benefit of the doubt which is far beyond what they ever gave Brian.  I can imagine the horror that they all walked into that day.  I know it was awful.  It was mind-boggling.  It was devastating.  It was a scene that would have caused many of them nightmares for years to come. And I can absolutely understand how they could have come to that opinion early on.  Forty one year old man, beautiful, younger woman, two year old child all shot to death and the only one that was not in his bed was Brian.  I am not blind.  I can certainly see that the devastating scene would be enough to make you angry and make you want to jump to the obvious conclusion; call it like you see it and get out of there as quickly as possible.  I get it.  I do.

What I have a problem with is the fact that had he been alive, standing there holding the smoking gun things would have been far different.  He would have been read rights - because he would have rights.  He would have had the right to an attorney to defend him. He would have been allowed a trial by jury.  He would have had the chance to enter a plea and tell his side of the story.   They would have done a complete and thorough investigation albeit in the attempt to prove his guilt not his innocence.  But my point is they would have had to prove it; something they didn't feel necessary since he was also dead and couldn't defend himself.  They would have held interviews to get to know him and what he was like. They would have talked people on his job, long time friends, neighbors close by, they would have interviewed his family and come to know him through the people that knew him.

Had he been alive to deny it regardless of what they saw when they arrived - they would have had to follow up on the open ground floor window and check for shoe prints, finger prints, evidence of tampering with the lock.  They would have searched for any and all of the physical evidence on the scene, carefully logged it and sent it to the state crime lab for analysis.  They would have dusted for fingerprints. They would have checked his and her computers, phone records, email trails, text messages they would have searched extensively for hard evidence of a motive.  They would have made certain they had all of the spent shell casings and done a ballistics test on the gun and those shell casings.  Perhaps they would have had an expert to analyze the blood spatter, a forensic expert to check the gun powder residue or the blood on his clothes to see if it matched the victims blood.  Had they found drugs in the home - he would have had a toxicology test immediately and all drugs would have been carefully logged and become evidence in the case.

These are only fair.  These alone are the puzzle pieces that create the picture.  These are the protocol of our justice system.  If they were going to accuse him of a crime as serious as murder - they would have to have hard evidence --even if they walk in and find a suspect standing over the body and holding the gun.  It may be their educated opinion that he did it but that would not hold up in court.  While our justice system is not foolproof and it is certainly not perfect, in the vast majority of cases, it is fair and it works.  All I ever asked for; all I ever expected --was just the same investigation they would have given anyone - basically that they just do their jobs and not let our lives be totally destroyed based on their clearly and maybe even justifiably, biased opinions.

I am now and have always been aware of the fact that this - none of this - would ever make sense.  I understood fully that I may never know the why behind any of this and that I would likely never find "closure".  But I never asked the Sheriff's office to guarantee me "closure".   I only wanted Brian to have a fair trial even if their evidence had shown the exact same outcome.  No, it would not have brought them back, it would not have made losing my children any easier, it would not have brought me or my family a happy ending.  And I never thought it could. But it would have given us the truth to the best of their abilities.  Truth we could see.  Truth that would have provided some proof to us.  It would have given me the ability to sleep at night knowing I had done all I could in my power to see to it that he was given the benefit of the doubt in a fair and complete investigation.  I may have not spent the last four and a half years angry as I personally obsessed over all of the evidence that pointed to someone else being in that house that night.  Perhaps I would not have been constantly running everyone he ever knew past a "perk" test for motives and to see who fit the criteria and who did not; placing them all on my personal list of suspects, turning it over and over in my mind and grieving over all of the evidence that was right there and could have helped in a fair determination but knowing that it can now never prove or disprove anything because it was destroyed without ever having been considered.  I could have perhaps by now been able to find peace, sleep at night, enjoy holidays again, have hope and find the will to live.  Perhaps I would still have the security I once had in law enforcement and believe again in our justice system.  Perhaps my entire family would not have been totally destroyed by the lingering anger over the unfairness and injustice that plagues every one of us now and regrets we will all live with forever.

Had he lived and they needed to actually prove his guilt - things would have been very, very different and that is not right. When the truth was never pursued it was an insult and an injustice to all of them. Because he was not living he did not matter.  And because we were related to him, we did not matter so none of us were allowed to question or dispute their personal opinion. And because of that the memory and legacy of the best father I ever knew, along with the rest of our entire family was destroyed.  Of the irreparable damage that was inflicted on us August 24th 2014 only part of it was caused by the loss and our loss was multiplied ten times by the injustice caused by The County Sheriff's Department that day-- The very ones hired to "Protect and Serve".

If it could happen to anyone it could happen to everyone.