2020 - Christmas has been Hijacked! Along with pretty much everything else

In church this morning the preacher was talking about what an awful year this has been for everyone and how this Christmas is going to be the worst Christmas he personally has ever known and he assumed most people felt the same.  

We are in a second wave and huge surge in the first worldwide pandemic that has been seen since 1918.  At best it has hijacked our peace, our family time, our vacation plans, our holidays, our weddings, our honeymoons, our graduations, and birthday celebrations, our educations and the education of our children and grandchildren.  And at worst it has hijacked our health, our businesses our jobs and the ability to support our families, our sanity, our mental and emotional health and the ultimate -- precious members of our families and then the funerals to honor and pay respects to those precious members, 

We have seen our fair and equitable election process be made a total sham of leaving the country in a horribly divided embarrassing mess and the highest office in our once great land has been made a mockery of. The election process and in turn the presidency of the United States have literally been hijacked.

The president elect apparently has dementia and cannot even complete an intelligent  sentence.  And I'm not making fun.  It is sad that he has been put on display in this kind of condition for people to attack him for something he cannot help.  It is disgusting to see and I feel terribly sorry for him but all sympathy aside he is not fit for the office of President and it is my sincere believe that he will never be allowed to serve that in that capacity and I do not believe that it was ever intended that he would. Human decency, it seems, has been hijacked as well. 

Real Journalism has certainly been hijacked taken over by social media and tech moguls. We are now being spoon-fed political propaganda and everything that does not agree with their agenda - censored. The first amendment to our bill of rights - our Freedom of Speech - has been hijacked.

Truth has certainly been hijacked.  There is no truth not even in the face of a worldwide pandemic - we can't even trust what we are told about the health crisis affecting the entire world because the truth has become relative depending on which political party you hear it from.

We have racial unrest and violence in almost every major city that has been bought and paid for and carefully choreographed. They have killed, maimed and destroyed and it has all been sanctioned by the local Governments. 

Cities have been taken over.  Our Historical Statues and Monuments, pieces of our history, beautiful expressions of art, owned and paid for by the American Tax Payer have been destroyed; again fully sanctioned by the local Governments. 

Police have lost all power and are not allowed to even defend themselves from violent protesters.  Again sanctioned by the local Governments. Law and order and democracy gone.  Yep. Hijacked.

All culminating to be "globally" yes, the worst year I've ever known in my 67 years but "personally" well that's a different story.  2014 still has that prize and so far though this has been no picnic, Christmas 2014 still holds the record at my house.. 

The thing about this Christmas vs. 2014 Christmas is that 2014 kind of ruined every Christmas from now on.  Hoping to God that 2020 will not have that same power and effect.  

The world has looked upside down and wrong to all of us for six years and it just kind of feels like to me like the rest of world has just now caught up.

Another Life Lesson

Every single month on the 23rd I never fail to notice and remember - like 4:00am I still wake up almost every morning at 4:00am. 


Not a single month goes by that I am not jerked back in time by the tragedy that now defines my life.  I look back over this blog and remember when it had been three months and I thought I should be showing progress.  I laugh at that now.  By three months I wasn't even yet looking at it clearly and I truly cannot believe it has now been three years.


I'm glad in the beginning that I did not know that I would still be where I am three years down the road.  I don't think I could have stood knowing that and doubt I would have made it.  At three months I was able to be thankful today I am just in dull, nothingness.

The past three years have changed me in ways I can't understand or explain very well.  I just know it has.  I am not the "me" I was before.  My life is now divided in two parts - "before" and "after" and they do not at all resemble each other.  It has changed all of us. One thing that is different is my perspective on what I spend my time on now.  Life is too short to fight.  Life is too short to spend my time arguing, playing head games, defending myself over something I didn't do. Life is too short to spend time stressing over my illusion of the perfect family, home or Christmas.  Life is too short to spend time begging for people to love me.  "Before" I wasted years of my life trying to hold on to relationships with people that clearly did not want a relationship with me.  Love isn't supposed to be this hard.  It just isn't.


I think I've mentioned before that I was very co-dependent.  I was a perpetual "hanger-on-er"  If someone was important to me I would never let go.  I'd hang on like a tenacious bulldog on the leg of an intruder.  I'd take disrespect, abuse, betrayal.  I'd adjust my schedule, cancel my plans, disregard my preferences and change my life to suit everyone else - just so I could hold on to something or someone that I cared about.  Someone that obviously, I was not all that important to; someone that could have casually walked away and never looked back. 


I have now learned that loving someone does not mean I have to hold on forever or be abused or disrespected or hurt.  I have come to see that I can love someone with all my heart and still let go.  I've been hurt by this unfathomable loss to a degree I never knew was possible and no matter how much or how hard I held on - they were still gone and there was nothing I could do about it; nothing I could do to hold on; nothing I could do to avoid the pain of losing them. 


The lesson I learned in that was:  while I could not avoid that pain - there were other hurts that were well within my control to avoid.  I couldn't stop the hurt of losing my son or my daughter in law or the baby that I adored with all my heart but I did not have to remain in hurtful, toxic relationships volunteering for hurt and humiliation that was in my power to stop.  It does not have to mean I no longer love them just as I still love my children that I lost --And though I could do nothing about the hurt I live with from that I can absolutely mitigate the unnecessary pain of a toxic, hurtful relationship and I should --because life is just hard enough.

August

Birthdays, I think, are the hardest.  Yesterday would have been Kara's 33rd.  At least half of this month of August has been so difficult and I feel like I have really taken a major leap backwards and birthdays have played a large part in that.


The 16th - the date that I gave Kara her early birthday present because I had been unable to come home much with my sister sick and was afraid I would miss her birthday.  I never-ever give anyone their birthday or Christmas presents early.  Guess we now know why I was lead to make an exception this year.


The 18th - the date of the last video that Kara's made of Paxton and sent to me.  She also sent one to her mom.  Mine was of Paxton saying:  "Hey Nana, I love you."  Nancy's said: "Hey Me-ma, I love you."


The 22nd - Kara's mom's birthday and the last time she ever heard her daughter's voice and just hours before their deaths.  Her birthday will never be a happy occasion of celebration again.


The 23rd - the actual day they died but forever noted incorrectly because they were not found until the 24th. 


The 24th - the day that changed all of our lives forever.  The worst day in all of our lives up to that day.  The day that changed what we would have as a future but it also because of what the police said happened even made us question our past.  If that was true then nothing else we had ever known was true.  That day made us all question everything we knew, everything we believed in and everything we could ever hope for.


The 25th - Brian's oldest son's birthday.  It was his twenty third and it was the one that would change every birthday from now on because "this" would dominate.  "This" would mar.  "This" would be all he would ever think about for every birthday now forever.


The 31st - Kara's birthday.  It would have been her 30th.  A birthday she was looking forward to and dreading but would never see.  And now forever for her family they can never think of her birthday that the anniversary of her death does not loom over it.


I pray for peace for all of us as August is once again in the rear-view mirror thank goodness.

Christmas...yet again.

As hard as it is to believe here we are back in December and chose again not to celebrate Christmas  and again this year two days from Christmas Day --sitting at a funeral.  Last year it was two days before Christmas - funeral. My aunt passed away.  This year - two days after Christmas - funeral.  Another aunt passed away.  Last year right after my aunt passed away my youngest sister lost her brother in law unexpectedly.  This year right before my aunt passed away my other sister lost a sister in law unexpectedly.  Both were in their mid 50's.  Last year we had Christmas dinner in the Waffle House and I thought that was bad.  This year we were in the middle of nowhere in South Georgia and there wasn't even a Waffle House.  We ate day-old fried chicken from a gas station! 


Seriously, this has got to stop.  That is about more weird than I can handle.


Tomorrow is New Year's eve.  And keeping with tradition, we are heading to my best friend's house to spend the night.  Again, glad to see the year come to a close but not nearly as glad as last year and I'm not sure why because it did not change a thing. 


Christmas came and went.  We ran away from home as usual.  We went down to South Georgia to see Brian's oldest son.  I didn't want him to be alone on Christmas and it brought me closer to his dad to be with him.  Then we left there and went straight to where the funeral would be held.  Maybe this is God's way of getting me to gather with family for Christmas?  Last year it was my mother's family.  This year it was my father's.  Scares me a little wondering what's coming next Christmas.


On a different subject - I've been thinking about something lately.  Since I remember very little about Brian's Memorial Service and everything about not being at Kara and Paxton's service seemed so wrong.  The three of them separated and even in separate states just seemed so terrible to me.  I've been considering having another private Memorial Service for the three of them - maybe on the second anniversary. 


I want both families to come together and have a service for them as a family.  It is asking and expecting a lot I know and it may not be received very well but I'm just considering it - for closure - for comfort - for having them and us together - for letting go?  It's still in the thinking stages.  And it may not work out any better than the birthday dinner we planned last year for Brian's birthday - who knows?  But that is just a thought that has been steeping lately. 


December was a rough month as bad as I hate to admit it - we kind of went backward a bit.  It was an entire setback month.  Today I talked to my cousin that I'm very close to.  She lost her youngest daughter at four years old. That was in 1977.  We've almost never spoken of it because it very nearly destroyed her.  But today we did.  And I asked her "How long? How long before you actually wanted to live again?"  I know everyone is different and I know everyone grieves at a different pace but no one will even give me an idea of what to expect and I really, really need to know.  "Three years."  She said, "Maybe three years or maybe a little longer."  That gave me a measure of hope ---for about two minutes right before she added: "But I'm better now."  Now!  Now? Dear God.  Did you get that part about it being thirty nine years ago? 


We are in serious trouble.

Today...

I keep trying to write but for some reason I am having a really hard time; me - the person that can sit down to write a thank you note and ramble on for ten pages.  I cannot think of anything useful or edifying to say.  I never had any plans when I started this blog for how it should go, what it was going to be about, where it was headed or when it would end.  I just needed an outlet so I jumped in and wrote whatever was on my heart that day.  I needed to be able to express the torrent of thoughts that bombarded me daily: the questions, the memories, the insecurities, the inconsistencies, the anger, sadness and confusion as well as the doubts, the lessons, the insights, the epiphanies and the other boggy, mud-covered steps I’ve taken through this process.  But eventually something would have to change.  Either there is growth and progress as I healed in which case it would eventually just ride off into the sunset or it would have to morph into something completely different but you cannot just keep going with a continuous rant about the same old stuff.  And I am certainly not healed and the journey has not ended. Not by any stretch of the imagination but instead it seems to be going in a circle and I really don’t know how much can you write about a journey where the scenery never changes?  

This has been on my heart for several weeks and I actually took the blog down from public view for a week or so.  I had a little feedback from people closest to me asking what happened or blaming themselves and so I put it back up but I suspected even as I did that – that it probably wasn’t for long.  I didn’t want to take it down again without at least letting everyone know what was going on.  I owe you that. 

It is beginning to sound like I am in a phone system loop.  Push one if you would like to hear about my unabated anger, Push two if you want to hear about my latest crying fit, push three if you would like to hear about about my faltering faith, push four if you’d like to repeat this menu…

Better instead of bitter - that's what I'm shooting for and in checking my inner feelings against those of others that have experienced profound loss I do see a few things that I feel that are different from a lot of them.  I am not now nor have I ever been angry at Brian.  I do not see other people that still have their sons or grandchildren and feel jealousy or anger at them and wonder “Why my son and not yours?” That has truly never crossed my mind.  I would not want any human being to suffer this loss. And I can look at it and say instead "Why not mine?" I'm nobody special.

I can see people enjoy their small children or grandchildren and it does not bother me or make me sad. What does bother me however is a child crying over something preventable; a parent that does not seem to appreciate the child they have or a parent doing exactly what I would have done prior to this – taking something away from their child because of rules or to make a point and making that child cry.  That will make me cry in a New York minute and I do have an almost uncontrollable urge to tell them to please just give the baby whatever it wants, just let it be happy and love it while you can.  You could be sitting where I’m sitting.

So here is a progress report – I am functioning. Better.  I laugh but I also still cry – randomly and without warning. I am able to shop and pass the toy department and baby department without the trip ending in a puddle of tears and me running out of the store.  They are still the first thing on my mind when I wake up and the last thing on my mind before I go to sleep when I can sleep but there are more times in between that I don’t dwell on them obsessively. Strangely enough, it is getting more difficult to look at their pictures and videos??? I don't get that.  I still have most of their stuff in my building.  "Most" being the key word here.  I still have Brian’s Pepsi in my fridge and Paxton’s booster seat is still attached to my dining room chair and I am still breaking my nails on child safety latches on my kitchen cabinets.

I am beginning to go out in social situations although still few and far between.  I still prefer to be with family or close friends on a one on one basis.  I still have problems with crowds or large social functions.  But I am pushing myself.  I have tickets to a Mercy Me concert next week with my daughter, one of my two best friends and her sister.  It will be a crowd.  It is a social situation and it is not one on one or just family so that’s a baby step. 

I am planning to have Thanksgiving Dinner this year on Thanksgiving Day and try slowly to stop “pretending” (sneaky denial.)  I am still not planning to celebrate Christmas – I’m just not ready for that and I don’t have a “new normal” version to work with yet.  But again, it’s a start. 

My faith – here, we are still on shaky ground.  I’ve done everything I know to do to hold it together. One corner falls down and I run get a book or two and put under it.  It holds it for a little while and then the other side begins to lean – I go grab some Christian music and a few podcasts from Charles Stanley and carefully prop it up on that side.  We’re good for a week or two and the other side starts crumbling again.  I borrow some faith from my sister to use to fill the cracks, nail another sermon from church to that side and grab a chapter or two from the bible and glue them along the sides.  And I’ve managed to hold it together long enough to go search for more material. It is not a plumb, square or sound structure. And it is just as shabby as it sounds and I hate that but I’m doing all I know to do.  Truthfully, some days I want to take a bulldozer and just mow down what’s left of it and push the whole mess off a cliff.  And actually that may be what it takes. Maybe I will have to let God rebuild it from the ground up because my shoddy patch job trying to put it back together with the scraps I’ve got is just not working all that well.

To me, that is still the scariest part; the saddest part and believe it or not, the worst part of all of this. 

And how much longer I will keep the blog going is still up in the air but for what it’s worth that is where we are today.

New Normal

It has been ten months now.  I wish I could say I'm completely resolved to again trust God & pray as before.  I am better.  I am beginning to pray a little from time to time though I can't say that I am actually sure who this version of God is yet.  And quite frankly I'm not real sure what I can pray for anymore.  But I'm trying to make a conscious decision to trust and have faith.  I am trying to find my way back from the darkness.  Some days --too many days-- it still overtakes me.  I am now closing in on that magical "one year" mark.  I remember reading over and over that "The first year is the hardest."  Leading me to believe it would be better after that first anniversary.  Ten months in I realize I can stop looking for that.  No miracle is going to suddenly take place and magically erase all the pain and emptiness that has become my constant companion.


In the beginning that is all I could think of --getting to the place where that would happen - muddling, struggling, hanging on by my teeth and toenails just to survive it and make it to that magical first year mark; which of course I knew would be very difficult in and of itself but after that very difficult day - I'd be all better.  We could finally move.  We could sell the house.  I could make major decisions again.  I could sleep.  I would stop eating myself to death.  I could stop sobbing at random.  I could be in crowds or attend social events again.  I could go through the kids things finally.  I would be healed.  By then, I would have learned to live with this horrific loss.  I would be able to trust, pray and find comfort in my faith again.  I could rekindle my shaky relationship with God.  I could enjoy family functions, holidays and vacations again. I would find purpose in all this pain, realize that something good has come from it and be able to thank God in it - not for it - but in it.  And all of my friends would come back - sounds kind of like a country song in reverse doesn't it?


And at one time, I actually believed all of this.


I now know better.  And I know that I am at least five months of "sitting in the bone marrow clinic" behind in the process.  And I know that since I pretended my way through most of the first year I have postponed any first year progress I might have made but besides all of that I have come to the realization that "this" will never be over.  There is no magical point in time that is going to make me not want Brian back again; no appointed date that will make me okay with never seeing any of them again.  There is no set time when I will not ache for that baby and want him back in my life and back in my lap again; no day ever when it won't matter to me what really happened. 


There will likely come, as there are now, days that I will be able to get through without dwelling on it, outwardly grieving for them or crying for them whenever I'm alone.  But I now realize that those days are fluid.  They are not here as permanent fixtures but only as much-needed reprieves.


The misery will return.  You adjust to the reality of the truth.  You do integrate the loss into your world.  You get up and you function inside the misery.  Sometimes giving in to it and sometimes not but you do not wake up one day and it is just gone.  There will not suddenly come a day when you are fine and you function just like before.  You are not the same person.  This is not the same life.  It can --I believe, I hope, I pray-- be good again but if so it will be a long, long time coming. 


I can no more be "healed" and have the same life I had before anymore that I can go back to being a five-year old again.  That ship has sailed.  I cannot go back to the innocence of childhood and I cannot go back to the innocence of life before this catastrophic loss.  I am not that person anymore.  Just as I am not that five-year old anymore.  My view of the world, my faith, my version of God, my trust, everything not only in my world but inside of me --has been forever altered. 


Whatever I next grow to believe and whoever I am when this shakes out - will absolutely not be who I was a year ago.  I may be better and I hope and pray that I am but nothing is going to magically restore me.  It may be new but it will never be normal.

We are getting really good at pretending...

We pretended Thanksgiving was not on Thursday this year and held a “family get-together” on Saturday instead that was definitely not Thanksgiving.  

Then we pretended for some reason -- perhaps a new law went into effect - one that I don't remember ever voting for, like day-light savings time or mandatory insurance -- that required that Christmas be canceled this year.  Maybe it will be on schedule for next year who knows? Congress is still out on that right now.  But for 2014 Christmas was eliminated from the calendar.

I also pretended Paxton was just out of town for his third birthday.  Maybe off to Florida enjoying Disney or Legoland and that is why we did not buy the gifts we'd wanted to give him or have cake and watch him blow out candles or gather around him and sing “Haddy Dirtday” to him. 

Then I had the brilliant idea to actually let Brian’s birthday take place this year.  I decided we would remember him by baking his favorite cake then we would all get together and go out for pizza.  We'd reminisce about him tell funny "Brian stories" laugh and celebrate his life.

That did not work out quite like I’d planned.  

I cried for three solid weeks afterward.

Turns out pretending was working way better for me so I opted to go back to pretending.   And so Easter this year was just another Sunday.  For the first time in twenty years we did not attend Sunrise Service or the fellowship breakfast afterward.  I did not go and help out with the Easter-Egg hunt on Saturday (although I did stuff 180 plastic eggs so as not to be a complete slacker.)  I did not buy a new springy pastel Easter dress but instead rummaged through my closet and dragged out a regular black and tan dress. I raked a comb through my hair, dabbed on some mascara and managed to show up for Sunday-School.  I didn’t even hear the sermon preached during the regular service but chose to keep the nursery instead.  I saw none of my children or grandchildren nor did I, in fact, see any family at all other than my husband that lives there.  The two of us ate lunch out and came back to the rental house early and watched TV till time to go to bed.

I’m going to Memphis to Graceland for Mother’s Day.  I'm pretending to be on vacation...

2014 is finally gone!

But before it left...


We actually did go to my best friend's house for our traditional New Year's celebration.  We stayed in and had a nice visit and a great dinner. However, the holiday was overshadowed when upon arriving I found out that she had received a phone call from her doctor that day and her mammogram and subsequent sonogram came back showing several cysts and one tumor.  She has been referred to a surgeon for a biopsy/lumpectomy and has a breast cancer scare looming over her head.


My little granddaughter ended up in the hospital from dehydration.


My grandson brought home a stray kitten that he found on his job.  The poor little thing was about starved to death and appeared to be a little sickly.  My daughter thought rescuing a little kitten might give her something to feel good about so she agreed to the addition to her household. 


She took the kitten to the vet thinking a checkup, a little food and some vitamins would quickly get him on his way back to good health. A hundred and thirty dollars later she finds out that the kitten has "cat herpes" that has blinded him in one eye and also showing signs of it being in the other eye. She was told it was non-curable, would flare up periodically, and cause him to be sick the rest of his life. It was also highly contagious to any other cat, pose a danger of infection to anyone that had sensitive eyes (which she does) and could be dangerous to anyone with a compromised immune system. 


She had now exposed herself to eye infection, exposed her family cat to an incurable disease and also exposed every cat in her neighborhood.  So she had to turn right around after thinking about it and pay seventy dollars more to have it put to sleep and disposed of!  And the rescued little kitten that she was hoping would make her feel better after losing her brother, sister in law and nephew - lost his life to the tune of two hundred dollars at Christmas!


Unbelievable.


It's going to get better.  I know it is.

Christmas – ugh.

As suggested, we chose to change our Christmas tradition this year…we chose not to celebrate at all. 

First time in my entire life although there have been many times I have wanted to just let it slide – I never had the guts.  Fear of disappointing others has kept me from it.  This year everyone was kind of disappointed already so we just let it go. 

No tree.  No decorations.  No children.  No grandchildren.  No extended family.  No Christmas dinner.  No Christmas --period.

I just could not put up a Christmas tree and pull out all of the little handmade Christmas ornaments that the three kids have made over the years reminding me that there are now only two.  I could not pull out of the little wooden toy ornaments that I have been decorating our trees with for most of their lives.  I could not unpack the kids Christmas stockings with Brian’s baby nickname on it –B-B. (The name he called himself when he was little trying to say “Baby”)  The little handprints that Kara made for us with Paxton’s tiny baby hand or his stocking that said Baby’s First Christmas.  The red satin balls that we laugh about every time we pull them out because we are always reminded of the year Brian was five and he was helping decorate the tree and all we had were those red satin balls and he walked around and around the tree and finally in exasperation put it back in the box exclaiming loudly “I can’t find any place for this one!” and picked up another one identical to it and put it immediately on the branch right in front of him.  He was such a goof.

So instead Donald and I sat alone in the house.  Ate a crappy lunch at the Waffle House and came home to a marathon of nauseatingly syrupy Shirley Temple movies.

And 2014 could not just go quietly without hitting us yet again.  On Friday December 19^th, my mother’s oldest sister and the aunt that I was always closest to --passed away at 92 years old. So on the 23^rd of December - four months to the day after the kids died I’m sitting at a funeral.  Saturday December 20^th, my sister’s 56-year old brother in law died unexpectedly – The actual cause of death is yet unknown.  Perfectly healthy 56 year old man woke up with unexplained stomach pain leading to the discovery of systemic sepsis from what they suspect was a perforated bowel and within 48 hours he was gone.

We have had a standing tradition to go and spend New Year’s Eve with my best friend Kathie and her husband.  We would eat dinner out and come back to her house to quietly ring in the New Year and go to bed and then we’d get up New Year’s Day and I would make homemade blueberry waffles for everyone for breakfast and then together we would cook a Traditional Southern New Year’s dinner. 

Her husband usually cooks pork tenderloin on the grill and she and I together do the rest. We enjoy a great dinner together clean up, pack up and head home.  This year, I had originally canceled our visit since I have not really been able to do social things. And I did not want to spoil anyone else’s holiday but she kept saying although she understood if I didn’t – if I felt like I could --even last minute – come on.  I do look forward to that all year long and though I did not want to promise since I didn’t know if I actually “could” I thought maybe if I knew she wasn’t going to a lot of trouble and expense planning it – I could leave it at “maybe” status.   

New Year’s was one holiday I actually wanted to celebrate and asked her if I could muster up what it took to come could we just make the two hour drive to the mountains and have New Year’s dinner at The Dillard House Restaurant.  She was on board and so that was the new plan…now after two more deaths in my family and still yet another week left in this stinking year – I’m terrified to leave home!

I did not really miss having Christmas but have had my usual relapse of the crying spells from being home.  Like I told Donald, it is not so much wondering how I will make it through Christmas but how we will make it through the rest of our lives…

I feel like I am sinking into a dark hole. Not a feeling I was expecting four months later.  I was expecting to have several really hard months each getting easier than the one before and then once I got past those and the first holidays and birthdays etc. I would be safely beyond the danger of depression.  That doesn’t appear to be the case.  Everyone seems to have moved on and begun to get on with their lives again as if nothing has happened and I am back to crying in the toy department.  Not only the toy department but baby clothes, children’s shoes, tools – even the word “tools” as it refers to computer tools on my job, I can’t even channel surf past carpentry or home improvement shows on TV or go by garlic bread sticks, eggnog or pumpkin pie in the grocery store.

I was in Walmart to pick up a few things including food for a pot of soup yesterday and could not see through the tears to get my shopping done.  I was crying down every single aisle; thinking to myself: “I cannot buy him those little shoes.  I can never again buy him these little cartoon pajamas.  I cannot buy him these cars or those trucks.  I cannot get him this new movie.  I can never read him this book or see him in that little hat.  I cannot buy him this cuddly teddy bear to sleep with…”

 I feel like I am losing my mind and I’m quite sure to the occasional shopper I look like it too.

Chchchchanges....

Everyone knows that your life can change in an instant with one phone call --two phone calls can leave your life unrecognizable. 

This past year has been a solid year of change and then I got the phone call that changed my life and then sixty days later what was left of my life was reduced to ashes.

I feel like I woke up one morning plopped square in the middle of someone else’s life. 

Almost every aspect of my life is so dramatically different I do not recognize any part of it.

December 2013 - I used to get up every morning at 5:30, get dressed and drive in yucky traffic to my job.  Monday thru Friday I put in eight hours and went home.  I lived for the weekend because on Saturday and Sunday I had Paxton.

We were looking forward to our big loud traditional family Christmas with a small grandchild again.  My floor was once again, after many years, littered with toys.  Diapers, booster seats and rocking chairs were scattered about and pacifiers and tiny little cartoon forks and spoons were in my silverware drawer.

Our biggest issue was that we did not know where we wanted to live in retirement and finding a suitable downsized retirement house consumed my every free moment.

I had three “best” friends – my first was my sister Joan; my best friend all of my life.  We talked on the phone almost every single day and made it a point to make time about every other month to see each other even though there was a 75 mile span of bad traffic between us. Then there was Kathie -- she’s always been like a sister to me.  And like with my sister, I’d had her almost all my life.  We are over 60 years old and have been best friends since we were five.  We started school, started dating, got married and raised children --together.  And then Sara, my newest best friend, “new” as in 37 years ago.  We met when my husband and I moved to his home town in South Georgia for a year and a half and she and I have been long-distance best friends ever since.  We talked on the phone weekly and sometimes depending on what was going on in our life - daily.  We visited several times a year.  And no decision was ever made in either of our lives that we did not run past the other.

I had two pets – (amazing that we were down to only two.)  I had inherited Brian’s 7-year old "pound puppy" when he and Kara married and I had a five year old rescue Siamese cat that I cuddled with every evening.  I went to bed around 9:00 after the cat and I read, prayed and had written in my prayer journal where I asked God repeatedly to watch over my children.

I took my breakfast on the go and packed a lunch to take to work.  When I got home I cooked dinner for two. 

The only thing I like brand new is a car so most of our furniture is antique or "antiques to be".  I lived with my husband of 38 years in an average ranch style house in a small farming town and worked in the city. 

I was a very active member of a small country Baptist church for the past 20 years.  Where I served on the building and grounds committee, the Lord’s Supper committee, the church bulletin committee.  I did all of the church invitations, newsletters and flyers.  I mailed out visitor cards and cards of encouragement, sympathy cards, get well cards and I worked in Bible School for many years. I cooked for every occasion; illness, surgery, death in the family.  I oversaw the complete renovation of the 100 year old sanctuary in 2008.

That was life last December…

December 2014 - I woke up at 3:00AM. Daylight savings time is over but my body, mind and spirit still know that it is 4:00 AM - the same time that I woke up and burst into tears on August 23.

My brother in law got up at 4:15 and left for work by 5:15AM.  My husband went downstairs to the kitchen to get coffee when he woke up as my brother in law left.  I got up at 6:30 and went down to get Joan’s medicine out and get her breakfast prepared and pack a lunch for both of us to take to the clinic.  We had an 8:45 appointment; not a time that anyone in their right mind would volunteer for in Atlanta traffic.  But we do not have the luxury of choosing.  Our days – week in and week out are dominated by the Bone Marrow Transplant Clinic.  We got to the clinic exactly on time 1 hour and 10 minutes to make the 12 mile trip. 

I dragged my computer, her notebook, her medicines and our lunch and two purses in and set up my computer on a TV tray and sat hunched over for four hours to work as she got three bags of I.V. meds, a skin biopsy, a pump refilled for another I.V. medicine, saw a nurse, P.A. and the doctor.  And that was our fifth appointment, third doctor in four days.

I come home to a four-bedroom two-story rental house in the city with all new leather furniture - so that unlike upholstered furniture, it can be wiped free of all germs and bacteria - and set my computer up and work in an upstairs bedroom set up as an office for the remainder of my eight hour workday.  Then I go down and cook dinner for four.  Clean up the kitchen, put on a load of laundry and feed the dog and the gray stray cat that lives outside.  At 7:00 my husband and I will go to the huge Church of God church down the street and attend a Grief-Share meeting with people that are becoming my friends through the common bond of loss.  We will come home about 8:30 or 9:00; take a quick shower and then go to bed as I will be up again at 3:00.

After 37 years one of my closest relationships did not survive this tragedy and the fallout from it.

Next Wednesday will be Paxtons third birthday. This year, no party is planned.  All that I have left of him are a few static photographs and the necklace given to me that holds a sprinkling of his ashes. The joy and laughter now gone from my home... and my life.

Our usual big loud Christmas will be missing my sister and her husband (she cannot be around crowds since her transplant), my youngest son, previously the life of the party, his young fun-loving wife and the baby that came running to me arms outstretched squealing "I missed you!" last Christmas.

I am not only uncharacteristically, unprepared for Christmas - but do not in fact, even want to celebrate Christmas at all. 

Saturday I will go to my real home in the country.  I will cry periodically from the minute I get there until I leave on Sunday to come back here.  I will have dinner with my daughter as I have become very clingy to the children I have left.  Unfortunately for her, she is the only one local. 

I will go to church on Sunday morning but have given up all of the duties that I had and I will sit there like a zombie unable to even pray.  I will listen until visions of Paxton running hot wheels cars up and down the pew come to mind and then I'll cry.  I’m not mad at God I’m justs not quite sure where we stand anymore.  I won’t go out to lunch with friends after church as we are seldom invited anymore and I don't really want to be in a social environment just yet.  And I won’t play hide and seek when I get back. 

And as for where will buy our retirement home…nobody cares.

The holiday season approaches…

Well Thanksgiving came and went and thank God, it wasn’t as bad as I had anticipated.  On the actual day of Thanksgiving – we did not do our traditional family dinner.  Donald and I sat alone in the house all day and ate a leftover hamburger!  Now for the die-hard traditionalist --that is a first.  But two of my grandsons had other plans and would not be able to come so as opposed to having any additional empty chairs – we opted to move our traditional Thanksgiving dinner to Saturday.  My daughter came to help on Friday and we spent the entire day together which was good I think for both of us.  Saturday – I had some free time before everyone arrived and I got the crying out of the way.  It served as a pressure release and I was able to do dinner without a melt-down as I was able to put the sadness on the back burner.  She and I had talked about the loss of the kids and the situation a lot on Friday while we were alone and it kind of got it behind us and although all of us thought about them, everyone seemed to do all right.  I am still very relieved it is over.  I had dreaded it for weeks.

I was home for the four day holiday weekend and it has not been easy but it was okay for the most part. I’ve had my moments but I am learning that that is to be expected as apparently ‘this’ is my new normal; periodically crying, uncontrollably –at random unexpected times and in random unexpected places--maybe forever?  But other than thinking I am losing it --I'm good.

This has truly been the worst year of my entire life.  And one of the things that I was “thankful” for during our Thanksgiving meal was that 2014 is nearly over! 

It has been one nightmare after the other.  January – we got caught up in the ice storm that paralyzed the city as the four million people that usually jam our roads every day during our 3:00 - 7:00 rush "hour" --all tried to leave the city at the same time --in ice.  They jammed the entire city with thousands of stranded cars --some stranded for days and most didn't get home that night.  My husband and I spent the night in our car in a grocery store parking lot in a scary section of town (with about 100 other cars and two school buses!) in 18 degree weather with no food, water or bathroom.

We came home to find our neighbors two 90 lb dogs attacked our little 30 lb 10 year old dog and she was bitten multiple times and in shock and terrific pain.

In February my 44 year old son in law had a heart attack.  He was all right thank God but required testing, treatment and several days in the hospital. (they had no insurance…)

My mother's best friend, Rachel a part of my life as long as I can remember, passed away fifteen years to the day at the exact same time as my mother.

In March I had a car wreck – my first in over 35 years a miracle in itself considering I typically drive about 100 miles a day in a city of 4,000,000 of some of the worst drivers in some of the worst traffic in the U.S. 

There was a shake up in my department at work and my boss was removed from his position and was no longer my boss after 6 years.   So I decided to take another position in a completely different department.  It was a good move for me but still a very emotional, sad and stressful transition.

April, we moved into a rental house that has had one issue right behind the next - the traffic is a nightmare, the roof was leaking, large dead trees falling in the yard and this was the third such move in 6 years. 

May, my unmarried, 18 year old granddaughter happily announced that she was pregnant.   

June, my sister was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia.  

July, she and her husband moved in with us, I became her full time caregiver requiring we spend four to six hours a day in the bone marrow transplant clinic for a yet undetermined amount of time on an emotional roller coaster during what promises to be a long and arduous recovery from a stem cell transplant.

Several of the neighborhood dogs attacked and killed my daughter’s little Pomeranian that had been a huge part of our family for many years.

August, during a really scary complication with my sister, my brother in law accidently let my timid little Siamese cat out and she has never been seen again. 

Then just weeks before my sister’s transplant the unimaginable happened that made the rest of the year seem like a day at the park.  I lost my son, my daughter in law and the baby boy I adored in a violent, and most devastating triple tragedy leaving us all the misery of never knowing the truth about what happened because of a  botched  investigation that left my son to forever bear the blame. 

September, as icing on the proverbial cake, one of my very best friends and I parted ways after 37 years of being almost as close as sisters.

October, Joan had the dreaded Bone Marrow/Stem Cell transplant and 100 straight days of almost daily clinic visits for 4 to 6 hours a day.  Attempting to keep her in a germ-free, bacteria-free, fungus-free environment because she has no immune system.

November, Graft vs. Host disease, two diabetic seizures, three potentially deadly viruses, four different medical offices  --and a partridge in a pear tree.


December, Paxton's third birthday and the first Christmas in my adult life that I will not have my children with me and I will not, in fact, celebrate Christmas at all.   

That hits every major stressor on the scale and the worst one -- three times. 

I will be so glad to see 2014 in the rear-view mirror.   

New Years Eve will be one holiday I am looking forward to celebrating!