Feelings, whoaaaaaa, Feeelings....

I've been avoiding this post.  I've been staring at Facebook, doing dishes, laundry, watching mindless TV... whatever it took to not have to post this.  Even now I'm not sure it will be successful.  If you haven't been keeping up, click here.   After I emailed a friend the story he replied with "I can only imagine how you and Don must have felt throughout the whole experience."  Felt?  I was much too busy doing to feel.  I had to watch over my daughter and make sure she was getting all the help she needed.  I had to make sure she was not in pain.  I had to make sure she was resting.  I had to inform everyone else about what was going on... there were Facebook posts to reply to and text messages and phone calls.  There was no time to feel.  I was in Mama Lion mode.  I had to have the brave face and not let on to Kayla just how scared I would have been if I had given myself time to think about it.  Even now I'm not sure I want to go there.  Or that I can go there.   Everyone asks me how I am and I smile and say I'm fine.  We are taking it day by day.  The meds are working.  The blood clot has dissolved.  All is well.  Really.  Every now and then when I'm telling the story I can feel the emotions creeping up but just as the eyes start to water, I push it back down.  I'd be silly to fall apart now... three months out from everything that happened.

The truth is, we almost lost her.  But my heart can't go there.  My brain knows it.  I know the severity of everything we dealt with.  I know blood transfusions aren't just normal everyday procedures.  I know she was severely malnourished and her vital organs could have been permanently damaged.  I know Dr. Cross said we were lucky we came to the hospital when we did.  I know Dr. Mike was trying to tell me with his eyes how quickly things could turn for the worse when we discovered the blood clot.  I know he was trying to speak the truth without speaking the whole truth when he told me to be prepared for her to end up in ICU if the blood thinners and the Ulcerative Colitis worked against each other as they feared.  I will never forget the look in his eyes.  I know my heart jumped when he said "St. Jude".  I know my heart broke when Kayla woke up from the scope and said "Are they sure its not cancer?".   I know things were serious.  I know things could potentially be serious again someday down the road if the meds don't work.  I know another piece of my heart broke when she said "I didn't know how badly I felt until I felt better.  Its been probably two years since I've felt this good".  That means half of her teenage years.  Half.  My brain knows that.

My heart knows it too.  I'm just not ready to go there.  I'm not sure I ever can.  As I watch her prance (as she calls it) through the kitchen with a smile and energy that I haven't seen in probably a year, I am hopeful for her future.  School starts soon and she's ready to go back.  I want her to thrive this year and take advantage of everything good that is coming her way... new classes, new friendships, new interests.  Its such a magical time in a kid's life and I want her to embrace her opportunities.  My heart wants to be happy for her, not sad.  My heart wants her to have more happiness than I could ever dream for her.  Maybe one day I'll have my meltdown.  Maybe one day the tears will come and I will feel refreshed and get in touch with my emotions.  I don't know.  I'm still waiting for the meltdown from when she had a febrile seizure at age 2.  For now I choose to be thankful and happy that today is a good day.  (Ok, its only 10am but so far.... )  I'm thankful and happy that Kayla prances with a smile.  I'm thankful and happy she has found a new love for the vacuum cleaner - cleaned her room twice in one week!  I'm thankful and happy that our biggest worry right now is that the cable is out.

The dishes are calling and the laundry is waiting to be folded.  I also must go take a Facebook quiz to find out what my Old Person Name should be.  Life goes on. 

Crying

I've always been a very relational, emotional person.  My friends say if I were a Care Bear I'd be Tenderheart Bear.  When I was little I could burst into tears at the drop of a hat.  I've been known to tear up at a Hallmark commercial, a sappy TV show, or a sad song on the radio.  I cried the day I heard Marvin Gaye died.  I was a teenager and wasn't really a huge Marvin Gaye fan but hearing that his dad shot him brought me to blubbering ugly cry tears.  Crying has just been a part of my life.

Which brings me to a problem I'm having.   I can't cry.  I'm on a couple of different medications and maybe they are the culprits.   I don't know.  What I do know is that for the last few months, no matter what the situation, I just can't cry.  I'm not saying its a bad thing necessarily but its awkward when you are in a room full of women who just heard some really sad or inspiring story and the tears are rolling down their faces while you sit there with eyes dry as the desert.

I've had a rough couple of years and did plenty of crying during that time.  I had to be strong for my girls and tried very hard not to cry in front of them.  Things have leveled out and most days are good and maybe its silly to complain about not crying.   However my preschooler graduates this week.  The other moms are already talking about what an emotional mess they are while I sit here feeling pretty level headed.  It would be nice to work up a tear or two for the ceremony.  She's been at the same school since she was a baby.  I worked there for two years.  We have no excuse to go back after Friday.  Its the end of an era.   I feel all of it.  I'm sad that her days there are ending.  Its been a wonderful journey.   But nope, not a single tear working up as I sit here and type it all out.   Its crazy.  

I had the opposite problem 6 months ago.  I couldn't laugh out loud.  The girls would say something funny and say "laugh Mama! that was funny!" and I'd think I AM laughing.   But there was no smile on my face and no sound coming out of my mouth.  I was laughing on the inside but I couldn't get it to come out.   I laugh all the time now.  I have no problem finding the joy in life.  Its like I've gone from one extreme to the other.  

So there ya go.  If you see me out in some situation that is obviously emotional to all involved, please don't think me cold hearted or unfeeling.   The emotions are there. They are just still bottled up.   I've prayed to God to let something touch me enough to bring tears... happy or sad.  I'm glad I've found my joy.  But a balance would be nice. .  My heart is teary eyed.   My body just isn't cooperating.

Of Love and Loss

(I've recently had a pretty bad bout of writer's block and apologize to my readers (all three of you!) for my absence. However, this post has been writing itself in my head for several days now and is about to come flooding out.  For the sake of keeping my readers and being respectful of your time I may break this post into a series.) 

Loss is a part of being human.  We lose friends, we lose jobs, we lose pets, we lose our memories.   We lose people to cancer, to angry words, to old age, to moves, to divorce, to just growing up, graduating high school, and moving into adult life.   With loss comes grief.  It doesn't matter what kind of loss you have, there will be a grieving process. 

I've been thinking about this subject a lot lately for a lot of different reasons.   Its almost summertime which means my oldest daughter will be going to California for several weeks.  Her travels always make me a bit melancholy in the sense that I "lose" two months of day to day life with her.  I usually fly with her on one end of the trip and its still hard sometimes to be around the family I lost in the divorce.   My ex mother in law does a wonderful job in trying to make me feel like I still fit in and I truly believe she still loves me "as another daughter" and always will.  I'm just the estranged daughter who can only talk about the weather and recent movies we both enjoyed before things get uncomfortable. 

My brother is about to move across the ocean to another country and although I know I'll see him again it won't be the same.  Text messages don't reach "across the pond".  We'll email and we'll Skype but London just seems so very far away and I'm sad about it.

I've been having very vivid dreams always involving a man who was my boss for most of my formative years.  I left the job in 2004 and I'm not sure why I'm having trouble with it now but there's Ed, every night in some form or fashion.  Sometimes he is my boss still, sometimes he's just in the dream hanging out and contributing witty banter.   Maybe its because most of my closer co-workers are on Facebook so we are still in contact but with Ed I only get a phone call or email once or twice a year.  I miss him.   That might sound strange since he was my superior but ultimately he became family.   He saw me through a new marriage, a house purchase, a new baby, a divorce, and eventually a wedding.  I saw his kids grow from toddlers to teenagers.  We have history and I miss him.

A very dear friend of mine recently moved to Singapore.  I'm not sure I'll ever see her again and that pains me.  Singapore has never been high on my travel list and I doubt she'll ever make it back to TN.

Most of the time when we think about loss, we think of death.   My first dealing with death that I remember was when my fraternal grandmother passed away.  I remember being woken up in the middle of the night and told that she had died and that my dad was going to Chicago for the funeral.   I had met her a couple of times but due to distance we weren't close.  My next experience was with my step-grandfather, Coach.   We got that phone call while watching the Miss USA Pagent... or was it Miss Universe?   What I remember from the funeral is the limousine.  I was about 10 and it was my first time to ride in one.    My maternal grandma passed away in 1993.  I was 22.  I saw her two days before she died and knew the time was near however promised her we'd "do lunch" just as soon as she felt better.   Her funeral was at a beautiful old Catholic Church in Downtown Memphis.   I remember the stairs, the incense, and singing "On Eagle's Wings".   I remember the coat my mom wore that day.  Most of all I remember seeing her in the casket in a sweater my mom had given to her.  I remember looking at her hands and thinking how much they resembled my mom's.

The next family loss hit me harder.  My dear grandpa, my Gramps, my telephone buddy, my travel partner, my friend.   He passed away in January 2004.   I remember every detail of the phone call at 3am, the next morning, the visit to the funeral home to plan the service and my insistence that yes, he really did want Vince Gill and Elvis to be played.  I remember the shock on my mom's face, the arrival of relatives, the laughter at the funeral home during the viewing (laughter?), the military funeral with full honors - the folding of the flag and presentation to my mom, his oldest child.  I remember the food afterwards that my new friends from my very new church family had been kind enough to deliver along with paper plates and plastic forks.   I still think about him every day.   I wish he could see my red headed baby.   I wish he could see my beautiful young "Karo" as he called her.  I wish he'd had the chance to get to know my husband better.  I wish he could give me his thoughts on Lady Gaga!  Its been 6 years and I'm still grieving my Gramps.   I smile when I think of him but there are days when I still tear up too.  There is no time limit on grief.   It is a process and everyone deals with it in their own way.

I think where I'm going here is that each loss is different and each person touched me in their own way.  My fraternal grandma left me with a lot of costume jewelry and a few personal handwritten letters I will always cherish.  Coach left me with a respect for sports, the handicapped (he lost both legs to cancer and was wheelchair bound) and a reminder that cigarettes kill.  My grandma left me with a love for poetry, a wonderful memory of making gingerbread houses, and a healthy fear of the alcoholism gene. And my Gramps left me with too much to post here.   The common denominator between all of them though was that they all loved me.  They all shared in my life and shaped who I am today and who I will become tomorrow.

Loss is one of the most difficult things we humans endure.   However when you look at the big picture, the reason that loss is so painful is because love is almost always involved.  It literally breaks our hearts when we lose people we love.  So how do we endure that heartache?   We take the love those people filled our hearts with and we pass it on to others.   That's what this life is about.  Its all about love.   The loss helps us appreciate the love.   The human body dies.   It will happen to everyone at some point.   Love though... love never dies.