The Never-Ending Sadness

I have absolutely got to get better than this.  It is going on three years now and the depression is alive and well.  There has yet to be a day that I don't think of them most of the day.  The pain is not as sharp and it doesn't feel like I am drowning to the point of being unable to breathe but I cannot seem to care about anything still. 


I wrote this short poem in 1986.


Still I cry.
Someday I will stop.
Unable to feel,
Joy or pain.


And that about sums it up.  I am terrified that that will be my truth and my future.  When I do stop crying and no longer feel pain it will be because all "feeling" has ceased. 


There are days now when I don't cry.  Whole chunks of time that I go without crying but it still doesn't feel like living either.  There is no enjoyment of the things I used to love.  Nothing to look forward to.  Nothing that makes my heart glad.


We always planned to travel once we retired and did some before we retired.  I have no desire to travel.  When we do go somewhere all I can think of is getting back home.  I don't enjoy anything about being on vacation anymore.  I try.  And I go because Donald wants to and it isn't fair to him but I really never want to go and just want to get back home.  I planned a week of vacation back in May.  I decided to take Donald to Charlotte to the AllStar Race and the NASCAR hall of fame and Hendrick Motor Sports Complex.  Figured I may as well do a vacation for him since I wasn't going to enjoy it anyway.  I had planned afterward to maybe go to Asheville and to the Gem mines as I always loved rocks and thought I might enjoy that.  We went to the race, to NASCAR museum and to Hendrick MS and turned right around and came straight home.  Three days.  Basically a long weekend and we were home by Monday evening and the rest of the week was spent in the house doing nothing.  A week's vacation wasted.


I had a moment of enthusiasm a couple of months ago when I decided we'd create a memory garden for the three of them.  We had no graves to go to.  We had no stone with a record of their lives.  We never saw them and we were not even able to attend the memorial service for Kara or Paxton and it had about drove me crazy.  So a memory garden sounded like a good workable solution to the feeling of incompleteness.  Then --it got complicated.  I lost interest when it wouldn't get finished.  I do think it helped Donald to do it though.  He seemed to be going at it like a madman working tirelessly laying stone retainer walls, hauling in fill dirt, top soil and sand.  He was really dedicated to it - for a while.  But like I said it got complicated.  More complicated than it needed to be and now it sits.  He had surgery.  It rained for a month.  Flooded the garden and washed the sand under the fence and there is no sunshine for the flowers.  And I'm not sure it will ever get finished.  So instead of making me feel better, it now makes me feel worse. It feels like I quit on them and it looks sad and neglected now.


"This" is why I stopped writing for almost a year.  Well that and the fact that I've lost interest in writing too.  I don't even recognize the person that I am today.  I'm 30 pounds heavier and cannot seem to get up off the sofa.  I feel like I'm committing suicide the slow way - eating myself into a heart attack.


It just sounds like a pity-party and all I do is whine.  I'm sick of it myself and I know everyone else surely is.  I am going backwards and I don't know how to stop it.  I don't think of dying every minute like I did - but I still think about it a lot and since that had gotten better and now it is back - that is disturbing.


I have no one to talk to about all of this.  And I finally decided that perhaps the blog was keeping me alive.  Maybe it was my friend, my solace, my confidant.  Maybe it was helping me more than I ever realized.  Maybe I can just sit down and write something.  Not something edifying.  Not something inspirational.  Not something helpful to anyone.  Just something.

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.

A Year Later...

So I look around and it has been a year and four days since my last post.  Unbelievable.  In a way I wish I had not lost this year of recording the days, the emotions, the lessons, the failures and the progress. I felt like I would remember them forever but like remembering every little cute thing your baby did growing up --it fades so.

I wish I had not dropped a year. There were things I learned and things I will need to remember and reflect on but I needed a break from the clarity and lessons and pressure and I needed to just "feel".  I didn't know that at the time but I did.  I needed to feel. I didn't need to write about it, or glean lessons from it or try and analyze it to death - I just needed to feel it.  To mourn it, to cry, to process it.  I still do. Mainly because I still didn't - except on ambush occasions I ran from it.  I was afraid of it. Afraid it would kill me afraid I would go to the darkness and never return.

It has now been two and a half years. That seems unfathomable to me.  I am now able to give a third year perspective and there are things both easier and harder about the third year. I am able to laugh more, I am getting out more. But the few people that were still hanging in with me in this, the few friends and family that I had are now done.  They are tired of it and they no longer are willing to talk about it anymore. I'm sure they want to move on and I am holding on unable to let go.

I have not been able to write one word and so this is my trial run to see if I can. Not much substance I know but it's a start.  I really felt this helped me and I'm slipping backward and so I'm grasping at straws to try and move past this quicksand I'm in. So it has taken me a week to write just this. But it's a start...

Fairness...

I had a revelation the other night that I felt added some clarity to a subject many including me, struggle with.  Thought I'd share...

Many places in the bible make reference to the fact that we, as believers, will suffer for Christ.  Most take that to mean literally suffer at the hand of a non-believer for admitting we are Christians.  And while this is certainly the case in many third-world countries, thankfully, most of us in this country do not have to face persecution because of our beliefs –Or do we?

Have you ever found yourself wondering about the unfairness of the way the world seems to work? I know I have. When you see the highly over-compensated CEO of an unscrupulous company that has clawed his way to the top by stepping on others along the way; not caring who he hurt, what lies he had to tell or who he had to cheat to get there; seemingly unscathed by any hardship while the dedicated young Pastor loses his forty year old wife to a medical mistake and leaving their children without a mother; or the Christian woman that has given her life to serving the Lord suffers and loses her battle with breast cancer; or the Sunday school teacher loses his teenage son to a drunk driver? Makes you wonder how that is just doesn't it?

When the bible speaks of suffering for Christ, it doesn’t just mean facing a terrorist’s gun and being given the choice to deny Christ and live or admit you’re a Christian and die.  It also means suffering through all Satan and his world can throw at you because you’ve chosen to follow Christ.

His mission is to hit you with everything he’s got to cause you to stumble; he wants to cast doubt on your beliefs; destroy your faith and ruin your witness for the Lord.

"Take up your cross and follow me." should have been a hint that the Christian life would not be easy remembering where Jesus's cross lead Him.  Satan has placed a target on your head because he doesn’t already have you.

Could it be that Christian's pay the consequences of their sins here where Satan rules and reigns and have eternal life in Paradise while that unrepentant CEO may live in comfort untouched by tragedy here, but have eternity in Hell waiting for him? 

Why I needed to do this

I needed to write this. I was told to write out my feelings.  I needed to focus on something besides loss.  I needed the validation. I needed to"do" something. I could not do anything about much of any of this and I had to DO something.  I wasn't sure where all this would go but first and foremost I needed to tell Brian's story. The world had a one sided view of him that he did not deserve.  He could not defend himself and I needed to do that for him.

I needed to honor who he really was as a person and who he was before he was "this".

I needed to love him out loud.

I wanted to talk about all the things nobody wanted to hear. I needed to tell someone that there was another side to this story.  I needed someone to hear that there was no real investigation and that there was reason to have doubted what they claimed as true.  I needed for someone besides just me to know that there was in fact little reason to have believed what was told.  I wanted someone else to know what up to now, only we knew.

I wanted to have a place where I could remember them all.  A place where I could display sweet pictures and reminisce about the stories of my children and keep them with me a little while longer.

I wanted others to know what this has done to our lives.

I wanted it to help someone else if it could. I wanted to warn others that they cannot blindly trust what they read in the paper, watch online or hear on the 6:00 news.  Nor can you blindly trust law enforcement to always get it right and that what the crime shows on TV depict bears no resemblance to real life.  I wanted everyone to know that there are always two sides to every story.

I am not special.   I needed e everyone to know if it could happen to me,  it could happen to you. Bad things happen to everyone.

As I worked my way through the horror, I hoped parts of it could be edifying to someone else that was grieving.  Maybe someone else could gain insight or find something I said comforting or useful.

I hoped it would make people think about what they say to others that are grieving. I hoped it would make them see what helped and what hurt.

 I wanted it to make you thankful for your family and true friends and make you live every day with the reality that it could be your last or it could be the last time you ever hear your son's voice, or the last time you ever get to kiss your baby goodnight or the last Christmas you will ever enjoy. You never know when that last time will come. You always think there will be a tomorrow. I thought there would be a tomorrow.  I wanted you to love the people in your life. Put down the phone, get off of Facebook and be present with the people in front of you while you still can.

I wanted to be honest about the struggle with my faith so others would know they were not alone.  I also wanted them to see my faith and know how God has been there for me.  I wanted to be able at some point to let them see my faith stand strong and prevail over doubt in the end.

I wanted to record the miracles I experienced and know about the unusual and unexplainable things that have happened.

I had hoped it might make a difference to someone --and to me. I prayed it would give me a "reason" a purpose --hope.

Maybe it has done some of that.  I know it hasn't done all.

For what it's worth, that was what I hoped and now I think maybe it's just time to say "Goodnight Gracie."

The Second Year

It is so hard for me to believe that in so many ways the second year really is more difficult than the first.  I know I've read that for some it could be.  I just could not see how that was possible.  And it isn't in all ways but in many ways, it definitely is and I'd like to talk about that.


While the crying and the melt downs in public places is better; the grim realization has set in that this is forever and in many ways this year is actually worse.  I am much more depressed.  The shock has worn off now completely and I now see that long after I'd thought it was gone, it had still been lingering, protecting, pushing me forward.  Long after I thought I was facing this full on and that I was at least in "mid-recovery", I was steeped in deep denial; glossing over it, covering it up with "busy" and pretending.  Busy has come to a screeching halt and now I can't muster enough strength or energy or wherewithal to be busy no matter how hard I try - which by the way is not very hard.  I just don't care anymore.  If I could just sit and eat dinner on a TV tray in front of the television, read an hour, sit in a tub of hot water and then lay in bed and play solitaire on my Kindle till I get sleepy - I'd be good.  That would be my perfect evening.  Oh wait, that is my every evening.  But sooooooo not like my evenings "before".  Never been a big TV fan.  Maybe an hour in the evening to wind down was about my max.  It just always seemed like a major time suck and I always had far too much to do to justify very much TV for all of the housework, cooking, laundry, family time, pets, church, writing and I could never find time to stay ahead of it all. And all of those still exist but suddenly they are all so terribly unimportant.  I can sit for hours and binge-watch ten year old episodes of Alias without feeling a twinge of guilt at the pile of laundry I tripped over to get to the television. Dishes in the sink - fine.  Bathrooms need cleaning - so what.  Floors looking like you need to run the mower and grass catcher - I'm good.  Nothing seems important me anymore.  Everything except family seems like petty annoyances.  I have zero desire to actually "do" anything.  I can barely find enough energy to function on a low level and get by from day to day. 


In the beginning I couldn't think about these things and I was in the middle of caretaking and doing what I could for the living - postponing grief as it turns out .  Just getting from one day to the next the best I could.  This year that is no longer the case but you still have to have a reason to get up and I have no reason.  No hope.  No purpose.  I don't want to "do" anything anymore.  I think I need that puppy now or a donkey or something.  (Latest book - Flash) Whatever - but I need a reason to go on.


The second year is harder too simply because it is the second year and I thought if I could make it through the horror of the first - I would have "made it."  I would be better.  I would want life again.  I would be able to see good in things again.  I would have energy and hope and faith again.  I would be out of the danger zone.

Not so much.

Last year when I first started this blog it had been "Four Weeks" - the blog was a life vest to a drowning man.  Now...well I am floating adrift.  I don't need a life vest but I'm still in the water.  I'm not drowning but this is not living either.

Last year I had "coping skills" - this year now I'm contemplating drugs in order to make it.  What a hypocrite.  I thought if you just kept pushing on and forcing yourself to function, ignored the pain, pretended the holidays were not holidays, kept the kids alive and with me through happy stories, funny memories, pictures and videos.  If I read all the books, attended the right meetings, listened to the preaching, listened to the right music, talked to a counselor, wrote out my feelings and managed to cling to life by tooth and toenail and just make it past that magic one year mark - I would be "out of the woods".  The reality has hit me like a brick that not only is it not true that I will be okay after the first year but in fact that I will never be okay again.

Losing them did not change the number of chairs at my Thanksgiving dinner table or how many gifts I would buy at Christmas or how I spent my Sunday afternoons.  Losing them --changed everything.  Absolutely everything.  Not everything for a year or two years or five years but forever.

I don't even recognize this life.  I had goals, hopes, dreams and a strong abiding faith.  My whole life, those were the things that kept me going.  I truly do not understand how this can make me no longer be me?  I am not me.  God is not God.  Everything is just wrong.  And these are the things that I did not know last year.  I guess I couldn't face it or didn't realize it or God knew I couldn't withstand the full impact of all of that yet.  I guess it was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other and remember to breath.  And yeah the first year was horrific and yet in many ways the second is still kind of worse as you come to the cold realization that the horror is never going to end.

Not The Same...

Well it was a good thing I had that experience with my co-worker about the loss of her dog last week as I had time to think of a calmer and more appropriate response because believe it or not, within four days a second co-worker actually finished that sentence to me...  

Believe me, I understand completely that people love their dogs.  I love my dog.  I love all dogs.  All animals period.  I cried for days over a little wild bird that drowned in our lake as well as a possum that was hit on the road.  I have dragged home and/or rescued more animals than most people would ever have in a lifetime and not just your run of the mill stray dog either.  Pregnant cats --and I spent weeks taming the wild kittens, had the females spayed, found homes for all but one (and I still have her!)  And I have had ferrets, skunks, raccoons, birds, rabbits, rats, mice, guinea pigs, chickens, ducks, geese, hamsters, turtles, frogs and even snakes and I will patiently chase a lizard for an hour that has gotten trapped on my screened porch just so I can free him and also do the same for a cricket lost in my house.  Suffice it to say I love animals.   

And I know people have a tendency to make that comparison and say that losing their dog is as bad as losing a child - and apparently they say it a lot more than I ever realized.  And don't get me wrong, love your dog.  Please love your dog.  I love my dog but make no mistake that losing a dog is absolutely NOT the same as losing a child!  It is NOT "just as bad".  It is NOT in any way to be compared.  Trust me you do not have any idea what you are saying or how you are rubbing salt into a horrific wound that already will never heal when you say that to someone that has lost a child and for the record, you do not have any idea who that may be.   

I have learned since losing my children - that there were a lot of people that I thought I knew fairly well that I never knew had lost a child.  Friends, in-laws, neighbors, co-workers and business acquaintances - people that you come into contact with every single day in all walks of life.  It might be that when you say losing your dog is the same as losing a child in casual conversation to the realtor that is helping you find a house - that she watched her 12-year old daughter suffer and then lose her horrific battle with cancer.  Or that when you say it to the counselor in the student center of your college - that she lost her handsome and talented 21-year old son to a drug overdose. Or to the person that delivers your mail as she still struggles with guilt and still blames herself over her 16-year old son's suicide.  Or that your librarian lost her beautiful brown-eyed four-year old daughter to a freak accident in her own front yard.  Or that the sweet lady that takes care of your child in the daycare everyday lost her beautiful daughter and her only grandchild to murder... Not the same.  I promise you.  It is so not. 

And this time I did respond.  I did not run away in tears or get mad and lash out.  I simply looked her straight in the eyes and quietly said, "It's really not.  It really is not the same."