Grace

We are coming up on Paxton's birthday again.  He would be eleven years old and that is absolutely impossible to believe.  In my head and in my heart, he will always be a toddler - maybe in his dragon costume growling as he ran down the hall or prancing in a diaper and a t-shirt wearing green plastic beads and rocking his mama's red high heels. Or perhaps in his Papa's old gardening hat with green nail polish.  Or sitting in front of my spice cabinet with little dusty brown feet, after pouring out a huge canister of cinnamon looking guilty and smelling just like apple pie!  He was my funny, silly, baby and I cannot picture him as an eleven-year-old child. 

This year for the first time ever I celebrated Paxton's birthday.  And it was awesome!

I had the best, sweetest day yesterday.  Kara's mom and I had a girl's day.  We meet from time to time, but it has been a while since we've seen each other. We were talking yesterday about the "beauty from ashes" and how we kept waiting for the beauty part.  But getting to know her has been a most humbling experience and definitely one good thing that has come as a result of this tragedy. I keep thinking how surprised Kara would be.  I can't help but think it would make her happy.

We had lunch and saw a funny movie and she brought cake for us to share and celebrate Paxton's birthday together!  It was the sweetest gesture and I absolutely loved it.  We talked about the kids; she reminded me of a funny story about Brian that I had totally forgotten.  We caught up on each other's lives, had a great lunch and ate cake in memory of our sweet funny baby.  She will never know what that meant to me or what her friendship means to me.  It very nearly made me cry.  Not the cake, not the memory of him - but her sweet gesture is what almost made me cry. That was so kind of her but that was not the kindest thing she did yesterday that almost made me cry in front of her.  

What made me sit in tears last night when I got alone was just thinking about the fact that she brought Christmas gifts to my great-grandchildren; the babies that belong to Brian's two oldest children.  What an incredibly sweet and gracious thing to do.  That did make me cry - like all evening.  There is no way I can ever express all that meant to me.  

After all of the unkind things totally disinterested strangers have said and the friends and family that have turned away from us the one person that I would have expected to turn away from us is the one person that has shown us the most love and grace.  What a true example of God's love!  

What would Jesus do?  Exactly as she has done.  

I planned all evening that I'd write a tribute post to her today.  I wanted to be well-rested and have plenty of time to give it the thought it deserved although I knew exactly what I wanted to say, now that I've sat down to do it as usual lately, my mind is blank and my words are muddled, and I know I can't do her justice. 

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.

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.

Some days...

Today is one of those days when just walking by my computer sets the tone for my day.  The screensaver picture is one I took of Paxton up at our barn sitting on a log.  They are all precious.

I would sometimes just follow him around with the camera and let him be "him"; running, playing, climbing, throwing leaves up in the air --whatever he found to do while I snapped away.  The hundreds and hundreds of pictures of him that I took in the few short years that we had him can attest to that.  I've never done that.  I realize now what a gift that was that I did as they now are all I have.

Some days it is still so hard; so painful and so raw.  Other days - I'm visibly better.   Some days these memories are treasures that make me smile and I could just sit and flip through hundreds of them at a sitting.  Today, they are treasures that do just the opposite.  I want to turn away quickly because they hurt with a fresh, deep, agonizing, physically painful hurt.  Just walking by them made me burst into tears. 

Best to do on days like this? Focus on helping others.  It helps me.  It helps "me" way more than it helps them. I find I desperately need to stay busy and keep my mind occupied and off of the sadness which at any given moment without warning can totally ambush me and sidetrack my entire day.  And I still need my time to cry but at least most of the time I am able to control when and where I cry --so that is an improvement.

I am so glad I naively did not realize I could still be "here" over four years later.  In many ways, as impossible as it seems, it is actually worse.  I do wonder when it will stop getting worse.  That news alone would have been more than I could have overcome in the beginning.  

One day at a time.  One step at a time.  One ambush at a time.

Today is not a good day but tomorrow will be better.

Dear Brian

June 19, 2017

Dear Brian,

I just got through reading your Journal to Paxton yet again.  It breaks my heart just as much two years and ten months later as it did that first week when we found it.  Still what a Divine Gift that was.

As I read back over it the words you leave to Paxton are like knives to my heart as you say things like you are writing these things down so that Paxton can come back and read at any time the things that you had to share with him; the musings and life advice. With every line I read I hear a man that adores his wife and child; plans on the baby growing up someday and reading this and knowing how much he mattered to his parents.  I hear a man that sounds as if he plans to continue writing this for years to come.  Every line stabs at me as I read how much Kara wanted a baby, what a good mother she was, how happy you all were, how hard you worked on your house, how proud you were of it, how smart Paxton was and how you wanted to give him a general idea of what life was like when he was born, what he was like at each stage of his growth and a record of each of his little milestones.  You wanted to tell him how you met his mother, how much you loved his mother and how much the two of you loved and wanted him. 

As I read it in retrospect I want to scream – “He will never read these words.  He will never know your love or your intention.  He will never need your advice.  He is two and a half – and he will never be three!”  I want to protest and stop time where you are on these pages and never let August 23^rd 2014 come.  Just to see the year 2014 written out makes me turn literally sick.  As I read the dates you mention in these pages my heart pays careful attention. It is November 2011 as you begin you are 38 years old – I pause and count up the time you have left on that date.  You go back in time now to the date you and Kara met – February 6, 2009 my heart lightens as I remember how happy you were at finding her and I remember exactly when you broke the news to me and your dad that you had asked her to marry you only days later.  I remember distinctly looking straight at her and asking “Are you crazy?”  You were not amused.  But you looked at me and said: “I know what you’re thinking and yes, she knows I’m in debt and that Alex has been in trouble and I know how crazy this sounds Mom, but I let her get away one time and I am just not going to make that mistake again.”  You mention your wedding date July 11, 2009 and my mind flits back to the events of that day.  I typed up your vows that you were to read to each other.  Hers were silly and falling right in line with the goof- ball you had portrayed to her.  Yours would melt my heart.  I thought that day – how yours and hers were going to be so vastly different and how yours would surprise her – but they would not surprise me.  I knew how serious you really were about this and what this marriage meant to you.  And while it was true that you certainly had a silly side and were constantly joking and cutting up – I knew what she did not, that most of the time it was a smoke screen to hide years of hurt and heartache not only from those you were with but from yourself.  It was a light-hearted attempt to detract from the tragic life of hurt that had plagued you for years. Intended to make you laugh and forget.

January 26, 2013 – I read and quickly calculate that you have one year and seven months to live.  You mention to Paxton that he was born on December 10, 2011 – I go back…to the hospital the night of his birth, Kara is in labor, you are a basket case.  You cover it trying to fidget with the medical items in the room like a 12-year old boy and you pace.  They take her down for an emergency C-section and I quickly assess the panic that crosses your face for just a split second before you hug Kara and tell her everything will be okay. 

You tell Paxton then that you moved into your new house in February of 2012 and I remember the pride and excitement you both had at having a home that you made your own with the blood, sweat and tears of weeks of intense hard work as you both side by side patched a thousand holes, hung doors, replaced plumbing fixtures, painted over bright red enamel paint that spanned the 20-foot cathedral ceiling, I remembered feeling so proud of both of you but maybe especially Kara – at her age – digging in and working night and day beside you to lay custom tile in the kitchen, put in new countertops, hang and stain new cabinets.  She was learning as she went and never complained but actually seemed to enjoy it and she actually saw the beauty in the two of you doing this together.  I was amazed.

Your next entry is December 2, 2013 – My breath catches and my heart skips a beat as you inch closer and closer to the date. You mention Paxton is about to turn two.  It is 8 days from his birthday – his last birthday.  You say it is creeping up on Christmas –the last Christmas; the last Christmas you will ever see; the last Christmas I will ever enjoy.  December 2013 was our last Christmas with our complete family; my last Christmas with the baby; Kara’s last Christmas and the last Christmas her family will ever enjoy.  Then I remember two events from that Christmas – the baby yelling out “NANA, I MISSED YOU!” when I never heard him put two words together.  And then I remember what I said when everyone left that day.  As the last one got in their car to go, I turned to your dad and I said, “I will never do this again.”  I had my feelings really hurt because I had worked for weeks to decorate and plan, cook, shop and wrap for Christmas and everyone stayed about 45 minutes and ran out the door saying you all had plans to go to a movie – I was devastated - movies play 364 other days out of the year.  Christmas comes once a year.  Jamie and Marie had driven over 400 miles and spent 45 minutes with us.  And after weeks and weeks of planning and days of working - I was alone on Christmas day hurt and angry.  And I said, “I know you think I don’t mean this – but I’m serious I will never do this again.”  And prophetically, I never will.

June 22, 2014 – your last entry.   I realize I am sitting here “accidently” rereading this and writing “this” exactly three days shy of three years since that last entry.  Countdown.  Two months and one day.  You tell Paxton some of the funny stuff he does and what he is like at this age, you mention things you do together and talk about his new puppy.  Then you cut to the chase – you talk to him about God, you tell him again how great his mother is, you relay life lessons about women, marriage and patience.  You tell how much he means to you, and you talk sweetly of your special time with him and how much you value that time.  I realize as I read from an almost three-year perspective that though you thought you were writing this for him – you were in fact under God’s instruction – writing this for all of us. 

I am both sad and extremely thankful.

For Better or For Worse...

Well we actually went on our vacation.  We drove 1,400 miles in six days.  We figured if God could create the world in six days we should at least drive past most of it.  

We did come home a day early but that really was doing pretty good since I was wanting to come home on day two.  It was okay – not great but better than I expected.  I had one minor set back as soon as we arrived on Sunday (Mother’s Day).  Something triggered it – I can’t imagine what -- but it was short-lived because I felt guilty for ruining my husband’s vacation so I stuffed it.  I can sense that he is losing patience with the never-ending snot-fest.  I know men don’t grieve the same and not that this is a bad thing but I feel like his life has resumed and his philosophy is: “Yeah, I’m sad but there is nothing I can do about it.” Huh? I kind of took that to mean since there is nothing he (or I) can “do” about it – all this crying and stuff is a waste of time. 

They really are from Mars.

Don’t get me wrong, he has been kind and supportive and patient but it is getting real clear he is tiring of all this and he feels he has been patient long enough and he wants his life back.  He is blatantly ready for things to get back to normal -- more specifically --his wife.  I definitely feel that and after 38 years I know him well enough to finish his sentences.  What I have prayed would not happen that “this” would come between us --appears to be leaning in that direction.  “This” has just about destroyed every relationship in my life and now I can feel the heat of its evil eye on my marriage. I’ve read the warnings and I knew it was a real threat.  I have tried to shield us from it and prepare for the possibility but it’s aiming for us and when I least expected it – when I thought we were past the danger zone.  It sneaks up and rears its ugly head in the timing factor.  He is tiring of all of the sadness and depression.  It is pulling him down.  He has invested all he has to invest and it still hasn't gone away...he wants his wife --and his life back.  He’s over all the crying and sadness and lethargy and depression and anger and theories and he wants to live normal again.  Oh I don’t blame him –I really don’t but I can’t give him what I don’t have.

I can’t make the sadness go away.  I wish I could and I wish I could tell him “Okay in three more months I will be better.”  But I can’t tell him that and I can’t tell him in fact, that it will ever get better.  And I think he is sensing that too.  I try and cry where he can’t hear me but I don’t want to pretend anymore that I’m not sad.  What he doesn’t understand is that though he has had almost nine months to get past it I have not.  I spent the first five in the Bone Marrow Transplant unit for six to eight hours a day during the first and what should have been the worst of my grief time, in a 3X4 space with a curtain around it; all that separated my sister and I from about forty desperately sick cancer patients along with a small army of physician’s assistants, nurses, nurses aides and doctors. 

There was no privacy and your every whisper was in earshot of at least ten people.  Ten terribly sick people, pale, bloated from steroids, no hair, vomiting, fevered, a tangle of I.V. lines hanging from them like Christmas tree lights and all of them fighting desperately for their lives.  I could certainly not sit “there” and cry.  Besides I was expected to listen to the nurses and the doctors instructions, read and understand treatment plans, listen for the warning signs of viruses, graft vs host disease or any host of other possible issues I needed to watch out for.  I had to carry armloads of stuff from waiting room to treatment room to radiology, to the different medical offices and down two elevators and to the car nine miles away.  But the heaviest thing I carried was my grief.  It was with me night and day but couldn’t be released except in small doses in the bottom of my closet late at night.  How do you sit in that environment with all that everyone there was going through –and cry and feel sorry for yourself?  You don’t.  You just don’t.  That said - had I not been sitting there and had I been allowed to collapse in the bottom of the closet like I wanted to -- I don't think I would be here now. So even though it postponed a lot of my grief-work it was for the best because I am stronger now in many ways.  But still it isn’t nine months to me.  It is fresh, raw and stifling as I am finally able to feel the sadness that was strangling me, grieve what was lost, cry for my baby and my son and my daughter in law; and do what I’ve wanted to do for months.

I can’t help that I am not enthused over a vacation and that all I want to do is curl up in my pajamas and never get out of bed or scream to the top of my lungs or sit in the floor holding toys to me and sob till my eyes swell shut over the injustice, the unfairness – the horror of it all that I still find impossible to believe.  So I feel that it is progress that I don’t – I just cry usually somewhere alone quietly behind closed doors.  I get up every day and I go to my job; I do enough around here to get by maybe not very well but I cook some.  I do laundry.  I pay the bills.  Most days I’m still amazed I can do what little I do.  I planned, made reservations, packed and drove on this stupid vacation and I am really proud of myself when I can function even at half capacity so I really don’t understand why everyone isn’t proud that I am not in the closet floor.  So what if I’m sad some days or don’t want to do things right yet or that I am not the picture of efficiency.  I want to be normal again and I wish I could promise that next week or next month or even next year that it will all get better and I will stop crying and being sad and analyzing this.  I’d love to tell you that –but the truth is I don’t know.  I don’t know that things will ever be normal again.  Truthfully, I can’t imagine it.  And while I am not where you wish I were and not even where I wish I were – I’m not where I was.   So what I want to say is: Cut me some slack.  I’m holding on the best I know how.  Be patient and love me for better or worse – this is “worse” and I’m doing the best I can.

Brian's 42nd birthday

Well, I expected it to be hard and it certainly did not disappoint.  I decided I might not have enough time to get it all in --so I started crying yesterday.  And kept it up periodically all day today as well.  It was harder than Christmas, Thanksgiving and even Paxton's birthday although that was really tough too. 


I baked his favorite German Chocolate cake because the lady leading the meetings at GriefShare suggested we actually acknowledge or even celebrate his birthday.  It would make us feel closer and like he had not been forgotten.  So I had planned to have lunch with my daughter and son in law, talk about Brian and tell some funny stories about him or share our favorite memories, have his favorite cake and feel like we had honored his memory and acknowledged that he was still a part of our family and always would be.  I baked the cake...


I cried all through the cake baking wishing I had baked it last year but knowing I did not.  We went to lunch - I cried all the way there and all the way back and couldn't talk about him at all because I knew I would make a scene in the restaurant.  Then they showed me his daughter's post on Facebook and that made me cry. 


She posted a sweet note to him that sadly I knew was something that he had waited his entire life to hear. She told him how she wished he could see that baby and that she now finally realized how much he had loved the three of them.  She said she finally understood how deep a parent's love really was.  She said she loved him and she wished that she had told him.  He, like most parents, would have given all he had to hear her acknowledge that.


I had wanted to write something special for him today much like she did but for some reason - I can't.  All I can do is cry. 


Here we are almost seven months later.  We still have no idea what actually happened.  And though I have honestly "tried" to buy the story we have --I still can't.  You just had to know him like we all knew him.  He had a quick temper that is true but he has never been able to hurt anything in his entire life.  He had a temper but he could never hold a grudge.  He blew it off and was completely over it and remorseful in 10 minutes.  He was just loud.  But truly good-hearted.  He loved deeply and was loyal to a fault. 


It was his birthday six years ago and he had run back into Kara that week after six years had passed since they had first met - "Mom, I know you are going to think I am crazy but I let her get away one time, and I do not intend to do that again."


They had met when he was thirty years old and she was just 18 and right out of school.  He went out with her a few times and even brought her to church once then he abruptly broke it off.  He said she was just too young.  Even though he did not look but about nineteen himself - he had lived a lot more of life than she had and he was afraid.  He was afraid she would regret not living some of her life before she settled down.  He was afraid she would do like his first wife and wait until she was 25 and then decide she wanted to live all the life she had missed.  He had reservations about what his kids would think; what other people would think; what her parents would think; how she would relate to his kids considering her age. He could not handle it and so he broke it off and apparently always regretted it. 


He said he had looked for her everywhere he went.  He only dated two girls in between and he could never commit.  He said he had not been consciously waiting on her but he did admit he could never completely get her out of his mind.  When they ran into each other after six years he asked her to marry him two weeks later!  She was grown now and he no longer had the same worries and reservations about her and he was determined never to lose her again. That was the week of his 36th birthday.  They married the following July.  He felt like all that had been taken from him when his first wife left was being restored to him.  And he was happier than I had ever seen him.  He had never thought he could ever trust again and used to always say he would never marry again.  But not only did he know immediately that he wanted to marry Kara - trust was never an issue. 


She loved him and she made sure he knew it.  He never doubted her love for him even after all he'd been through. She admired him for his talents.  She trusted his judgment in everything and she always liked the fact that he was the head of the family and took care of the finances.  Unlike most girls her age - independence was something she cared very little about.  His taking care of those things was actually a measure of security to her and I believe with all my heart that she loved her life with him.  He also admired her.  He admired who she was as a person - her honesty and dedication to their marriage and their home.  He trusted her completely and always knew she was a good-hearted person.  He admired her as a mother and in five years of marriage he never once complained about anything to do with her.  He never to my knowledge ever said an unkind word about her to anyone.  He always bragged on her cooking and what a good housekeeper she was and thought she was absolutely the best mom ever to their son.  He would have given her anything she wanted that was in his power to provide.


There is just still no way that I can know who he was in his heart and believe he was in any way capable of this.  I know I'm his mother but it isn't just me - no one that ever knew him can believe it.  There was nothing he would not do for anyone. 


He was my heart and I don't know how I will ever live without him but still to me the hardest part of this is the legacy this leaves for him that I will never believe he deserves.


Brian, I love you with all my heart and I miss you more than I even thought possible and no matter what - I knew who you were and nothing will ever make me believe this. 


Forty -two years ago I became Brian's mom - and nothing will ever change that.

True human compassion, an equal opportunity emotion

Lately when I hear of a tragic event on the news such as the one that happened a few weeks back right here in the community where I live - where an older couple went missing after placing an ad on Craig's List to buy a classic car.  They were found murdered and their car in the bottom of a pond.  The husband, a Vietnam Veteran, active in his church and regularly serving his community.  They were loving parents and grandparents and both physically and financially supported a local homeless shelter. 


I, of course, like the rest of the TV- viewing public following that news story --was devastated at the horror of their tragic deaths.  I felt pity and sympathy and compassion for the couple's daughters and grandchildren and appalled and disgusted at the horror that the accused man could do such a thing to another human being and crushed by the loss of such pillars of the community.


However, I noticed something different in myself as of late, I am also now seeing another side of the story.  A side that leaves me also sympathetic to the families of the "accused".  Of course I am thinking of and praying for the victim's family as always but prior to our "now" sadly, I have to admit that I have never given much sympathy or compassion to the families of the accused.  Why not? 


I am ashamed to say that until I became one of them I really never gave them much thought.


I have done just like everyone else and shoved them under the rug of indignation and lumped them right into the same category as the accused or never thought of them at all.  But this time I as heard the accused man's father on TV say that "he had to have been set up, this was just not him.  He could never have done anything like this..."  I suddenly felt very sad for them and very ashamed at my previous lack of compassion.  I now knew what it was like to be in their shoes.  I remember saying very close to those same words about my child.  I recall the trauma and shock and debilitating disbelief at first and then later, the dark depression, personal devastation, shame and deep anguish of being treated as if we had no right to even love our family member.


Why was it so difficult for people to see that we too had lost a family member?  I recall wanting desperately to defend him and who he was at his core and who he had been for the previous 41 years.  I wanted to cry openly to friends, church members and co-workers telling them of my tragic loss but quickly realized they extended no sympathy to him and little to none for anyone connected to him.  They didn't want to hear what a great dad he was or how much we all loved him.  We either got looks of blatant disgust or they just quickly changed the subject or backed away from us the first opportunity they got and then avoided us like the plague.


At first I was oblivious to it but over the next few weeks, I came to realize they saw him only as a monster and they only saw us only as an extension of him.


I was a mother.  I had lost my youngest son, my daughter-in-law and my two year old grandchild. 


Under any circumstances that was a horrific tragedy and unfathomable loss.


For weeks I did not even made the connection that no one else even acknowledged that we too, were crushed by the loss of our son, brother, nephew and dad; that we were also victims of this horrific event; that my son was loved and missed by our entire family or that I was still his mother and devastated by the loss of my child.


We were treated differently by law enforcement.  We were treated with animosity and disrespect by the coroner in charge.  We were treated with anger and disgust by the various people in businesses that we had to deal with after their death whether attempting to take care of his business, get his bills paid or get his utilities turned off.


It was a side of this I wish I had never had cause to know but it is a side of it that has opened my eyes.  Though I am certain I would never have treated the accused's family with any animosity - I admit I would not have thought of them with  the same level of sympathy and or empathy that I would have the victim's family. So I have been just as guilty of the same judgmental insensitivity.


Never again. 


I now look at the accused's family with a whole new level of empathy.  And in some ways maybe because I now walk in their shoes, even more compassion simply because I know there are so many more levels of grief for them.  And because I now know that no one understands their loss or their love.  I now know the shame, stigma and the personal devastation they face along with that loss and yet and they have done nothing to deserve this either.   


It has been a soul-bearing; moment of truth; eye-opening lesson in love and human compassion. 


We've all said it but do we believe it?  "There, but for the grace of God - go I."

Real strength and true love...

Well, it has been a long, hard road but Praise God, my sister is leukemia-free and her donor cells are 100% grafted.  She has been released to go back to her home and will now be allowed to drive herself to the clinic and no longer needs a full time caregiver.   This is of course what we have been striving for but I have to admit I am hesitant on several levels.   I’m going to worry; I’m going to miss her and I’m going to have to fully face the loss of my children without a major distraction to help bring me back from the darkness.

Caring for her and getting her back and forth to the clinic have kept me out of the bottom of the closet.  I can only hope and pray that once she is home, I will stay out. 

I have found myself at times feeling sorry for myself at having to sit in the clinic where I could not cry and scream and sob in the corner when I so desperately wanted to but instead had to sit there and fight back tears and try to pay attention when I could not even think.  I did not feel that I was up to the job but God knew He had to provide a distraction big enough to keep me from going over the edge to a place from which - I may not return.  Giving in to all of it at once would have been devastating and by having to stay “present” I found small snippets of time in which to give in to the grief and fall into that deep hole but all the while knowing because I had a responsibility to her – I had to crawl back out albeit sometimes kicking and screaming.

My sister is the true picture of real strength. She amazes me the way she has handled all that she has had on her. Because the same monsters that for two cents would take me down also haunt her. She lost her family members too.  And she has struggled with the same mystery surrounding this and the same trauma that I’ve had, and she has done so on top of leukemia treatment and a stem cell transplant and she has had to bear the sadness and grief of being with me everyday and watching me cry and grieve for my children.   

I don’t know how she has done it.  She has faced some of the scariest stuff a person could ever face physically, mentally and emotionally.  Hospitalizations, two different types of catheters placed next to her heart for administering chemo, blood, platelets, various medication and fluids.  She was taking about eighteen different scary life-threatening medications, four different types of chemotherapy in mega-doses (nuclear waste in a bag I’m sure.)  It made me real comfortable when the nurses put on gloves and masks and sometimes "lead" aprons to administer it and then casually ran it straight into her veins...  She has had full body irradiation and all along the way being told about all the scary possible side effects of all this treatment: cataracts, blindness, other cancers, liver failure, kidney failure, heart failure, neuropathy, neurological issues, irreversible & fatal lung damage and much, much more.  And best case scenario --the least of what she would deal with would be extreme nausea, vomiting, dizziness, the loss of her hair, shakiness, weakness, rashes, mouth sores, loss of appetite, diarrhea, stomach cramps and a raging case of hemorrhoids!  And she had all of the above.

She immediately lost her independence.   She could not touch or be around her beloved pets.  She could not get the spiritual support she so desperately needed because she was not allowed to go to church.  She could not even enjoy the simple pleasures of going out to eat.  She couldn’t celebrate Christmas with her family or even visit with her grandchildren and she has had to leave her home of twenty years for almost eight months now and  be a captive audience to my grief.

She has faced Graft vs. Host Disease of the skin (also another of their best-case scenario issues) which has caused an itchy red skin rash all over her body, then she's had to be exposed to radiation with UVA light treatments for it which have burned her and caused her face and lips to peel while exposing her to melanoma and basal cell carcinoma.  She has had three different potentially deadly viruses, two life-threatening seizures, an emergency admission to the hospital when her platelets would not come up making her at high risk of a stroke or internal bleeding.  She has been sent from doctor to doctor to doctor.  And had to endure multiple extremely painful bone marrow biopsies with very little anesthesia, along with many other torturous tests and treatments.  And from day one –she lost all say when it came to her lifestyle or her body.  When they called with the diagnosis they gave her about 12-hours to get to the hospital and they told her, “Be there at 8:00am and be prepared to stay six weeks.”  Six weeks!

Many times the tears she thought were grief were an overwhelming  combination of the loss of my children and watching all she was facing daily along with the constant fear of losing her.

Two weeks ago as she sat with me over lunch while I was fighting back tears as I mentioned something about my children again and she suddenly blurted out: “I’m glad I got leukemia.” To which I responded: “You are crazy!”  She said, “No, really, I mean it.  I’m glad.  It really hasn’t been all that bad and if not for the leukemia, I would not have been able to be here with you every day through this when you needed me.”  


Now "that" is true love beyond measure.  That is my sister.

I thank God for her and all the great people I still have in my life.