Poetic License

Forgiveness and Gratitude

noreply@blogger.com (RiverPoet) — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 20:20:00 +0000

It is an amazing life I have lead. Every day that I wake up, I find something new for which to be grateful. Despite the pain of my life, which only serves to make the sweet that much sweeter, I have been so blessed.

I have been blessed with two beautiful children, one of whom is now in the afterlife, watching over me. My son is a grown man, living on his own, enjoying the company of friends, working hard, and working at getting to exactly the college degree he wants. He is wise, intelligent, and sensitive. Just seeing how he has blossomed has been a tremendous blessing. How did we survive that? How did we get past the pain of losing Stephanie? It's a miracle. We're still alive, still breathing. And I am grateful.

No longer wanting to die and be with her, I am actually beginning to enjoy my life again. Yesterday, I truly realized all of this.

My sister, who had been in an abusive relationship for the last few years, is now living with me. Together we get through out day, through our growth and our pain. We work together to clean the house, to fix things that are broken, to clean up the yard. It's amazing to me. I no longer want to stop breathing. I have a new sense of life and purpose. I no longer feel so lonely and distraught.

As part of Christmas presents, I bought train tickets for my nephew and his girlfriend to come up to Raleigh (to my son's house) and then ride up with him to see us. So the last week has been joyous and a little stressful :-) I don't really like to cook, but I made a big pan of lasagna that was a big hit with the kids. Yesterday, my sister and I got up and made a big pan of Southern-style cornbread dressing and two pumpkin pies. We all went over to my friends' house at 3 and joined her, her wife, and more of their friends. A dozen of us ate until we were in pain, laughed, shared some holiday joy, and listened as Zan read "Big Bob and the Winter Holiday Potato" - unquestionably one of the funniest holiday traditions I've ever been a part of.

When we were getting ready to leave, they found out it was Brad's (my nephew) birthday. They sang a really funny song - the Viking Birthday Dirge (if you're into the SCA, you know it). We were all laughing and singing it as we left. Three of us fell into a deep sleep after we got home. Wow, was a it a great day!

It's been three years since I had a holiday with Stephanie, and the last Thanksgiving we had together - which, of course, we didn't know would be the last - she drank her way through dinner. I didn't know it was the last of the holidays and celebrations I had with her, but I knew that that year I HAD to spend all those moments with the kids. It was like a drive inside me to be sure they were at the house, no matter what.

If I could go back in time, I would still have done what I did - which is to encourage her to get sober and ask her not to come back to the table until she could stop drinking. I'm glad that when she died, she died sober. At least she had a few good months in which she was able to think clearly and feel alive.

This life is full of blessings, and rather than struggling to want to be alive and get out of bed each day, I am embracing life again.

I hope that you all had a blessed holiday with your families. Love them, hug them often, tell them how you feel. Today may be the last time you have the opportunity. Take nothing for granted.

Peace - D

noreply@blogger.com (RiverPoet) — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 18:01:00 +0000

Let's not forget the mothers (and fathers) grieving the tenth anniversary of their child's death today. Never forget!

http://waythrough.org

The new site

noreply@blogger.com (RiverPoet) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 15:16:00 +0000

Please come visit me at my new blog, The Way Through, and read about inspiring parents who turned grief on its head!

Like this story about the mother who fought for and got a mandatory bicycle helmet law on the books in Florida after her daughter was killed when she was hit by a car. Change came from tragedy, and now we all wear our helmets!

D

(I'd love it if you'd Follow me there!)

[Note: The words "The Way Through" and "this story" will both get you there. Also, since the new blog is WordPress, there isn't a Follow button. My bad. Instead, subscribe by selecting "Entries RSS" in the "Meta" section, lower part of the right-hand navigation pane. See you there!]

Welcome to my Post-Traumatic GROWTH!

noreply@blogger.com (RiverPoet) — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 04:21:00 +0000

Hey everybody -

I love each and every one of you on this site, but I am going to be putting a great deal of energy (in my spare time) into a new venture - The Way Through. This will become a legal foundation that serves the purpose of bringing positive messages to bereaved parents and to model (through other bereaved parents) the idea that we can continue living and can give back to the world in our child's memory. So many times we hear about the good that parents do in the wake of a tragedy, but too many of the resources that I have personally found have only served to feed the depression I felt instead of giving me hope. I want to offer hope!

Since my Stephanie died, I have always wondered, in the back of my mind, whether there would be some way I could honor her in the future. She never finished college nor had a great track record in any given field, so a scholarship (unless it could be a full scholarship for a student with mental illness but good grades) did not seem to be right. A foundation also didn't seem to fit, until this idea percolated in me.

I invite you to both visit the site and pass it on to anyone you know who could use help or who could offer a positive story about their own grief experience - preferably parental grief, because that is my focus.

The Facebook page is "The Way Through" - you can just search for it. The link to the blogsite is above. I'm hoping it will evolve into more than a blogsite, but I'm still working on finding an artist and web designer who will do some pro bono work.

I will post here when I can, but you know? I want to give back now to the universe and to my higher power, who has given me so much.

Please keep in touch :-)

Peace - D

A Curious Thing Indeed

noreply@blogger.com (RiverPoet) — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 03:25:00 +0000

A funny thing is happening to my face. I'm not sure when it started, but I suspect it was right around the time when Stephanie died. Everything seemed to change in me right then.

You see I'd been developing exactly three lines on my face that roughly looked like this |_| right between the eyebrows. I thought it was due to the pain, but I also used to go about mumbling, "I hate my life."

It isn't that I hated my husband or my children. I didn't hate my animals or my house. I didn't hate my job or my friends. I just hated my life, overall. I felt that I would never be well or happy or anywhere close to even satisfied. Quite often I would be in pain just going to bed at night, knowing that I was an utter disappointment to my husband, that I was an utter failure as a wife. Trying so hard for so many years to be in a heterosexual marriage to my best friend, raising our children, was not letting me feel fulfilled or successful at life. When I looked in the mirror, I saw these lines deepening, and I thought, "This is what they mean when they say that at 40, you have the face you deserve."

As many of you know, I left that life six short weeks after my daughter passed away. I lost my mind, in a way, but I found myself. Despite the way things worked out, my love for Denise was pure and beautiful. I was finally able to be who I truly was. I lost many "friends," my church group, and some family members. I went through a few bitter months with my ex-husband, after which we worked things out and are better friends than ever. We work hard together to make sure that things are good for our son, who lost his only sibling that fateful day.

We are all more fulfilled now. The ex gets to see what life is like with a straight woman (and he's very happy, thank you). My son gets probably a better mother than he had before when I was so terribly unhappy. And I get to feel right about myself. I'm not in a relationship right now, which is fine by me, but I am living my life out loud. Sometimes I get lonely, sure, but overall I am happy. I can't remember the last time I mumbled, "I hate my life."

The strange thing is that I'm so unconcerned with my face that I hadn't noticed that the lines were gone. It wasn't until I watched an episode of "Gene Simmons Family Jewels," in which his girlfriend and her sister go get plastic surgery and take a friend for Botox, that I took a good look at my face. I can't even make those lines appear there anymore. Maybe the real wrinkle cure is happiness.

Certainly my face (and neck, Nora Ephron!) are showing the passing of the years, but the deep furrows are gone. If someone would dare say to me (and they have, in passive-aggressive ways) that God can heal me and make me straight, I would say to them, "God made me this way, and He is pleased that I am breathing in the satisfaction and happiness of an authentic life."

And look at my face. Despite the fact that I lost my little girl, I finally have a life I can be happy about in other ways. Certainly she must be smiling down at me, glad to finally know what happiness looks like on me.

Peace - D

[image is of Kate Gosselin ... maybe she needs to find some happiness?]

No Fair

noreply@blogger.com (RiverPoet) — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 20:24:00 +0000

I keep having dreams.... dreams about these little boys that I miss so damn much. It really sucks when you get drawn into a relationship and fall for the KIDS, and then those kids get ripped away from you. It really hurts. Funny, I don't miss Kim, but I sure as hell miss the kids.

Lots of nostalgia going on in me right now, or at least in my subconscious. I dream about the boys, and it's like I'm right there, tucking them in, getting them ice cream, trying to get Justin to eat veggies. And sometimes I dream about Denise. It's forgiveness happening, when it comes to her. I don't hate her. I just hate that things happened the way they did.

I'm taking my time and learning a lot about me. I have a lot of outside activities that I'm involved in, and that keeps me busy. It's good. I've made new friends and found new ways to be happy with myself. I'm not ready to be in a relationship again right now. Everyone I'm with always tries to keep me fenced in, and I don't want that. I have more to give to my partner when I have the freedom to be fully myself. Someday maybe someone will cross my path who fits that very simple requirement -- or at least it seems simple to me.

Meanwhile, I guess I will just keep dreaming and somehow finding peace in that.

D

Thoughts on God

noreply@blogger.com (RiverPoet) — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 15:21:00 +0000

About a month ago, I became an ordained minister. The reason I did this is almost entirely because a friend was thinking of having me marry her and her fiancee, but they ended up getting the minister they *really* wanted instead. I got my ordination online through the Universal Life Monastery, which is a non-denominational, Christian church. I can now legally officiate at weddings, funerals, baptisms, etc. It will be useful as I embark on my life's journey toward helping people in the dying and bereavement processes of their lives.

This sort of reminds me of the memoir Here if You Need Me, by Kate Braestrup, a chaplain for the forestry service. I've read so many such books in my lifetime that it should have always been obvious to me that I wanted to help those people who need comfort and a good listener. Braestrup starts her memoir at a campsite, sitting with two parents whose little girl has disappeared into the woods. It's a beautiful book.

This has made me start thinking a lot about what I think of God.

I'll focus on two things. (1) Does God intervene and produce challenges and obstacles to some people but not to others? (2) Is it true that God won't give us more than we can handle?

God's Intervention

Recently, Tom Zuba, a grief expert and bereaved father, asked: "Does the God you believe in intervene in some lives...changing outcomes, and not other lives? If so, how does your God choose?"

My response (brief, on Facebook) was: "The God I believe in doesn't play us like pawns. He gives us free will and allows us each to follow a path of our choosing, along which we will lean the lessons we need. One thing is for certain, none of us will ever escape learning the lesson of loss."

I really believe that. I think that there is no "grand plan" but that our little choices and moves along the way brings us in contact with exactly what we know - deep down inside - we need to learn in order to grow. Don't ask me to explain the cosmology of that, but it feels true to me. Every step, every choice, every decision I've made in my life has brought me to this moment. If God were up there in his heaven, moving us around and making mischief with our lives, don't you think that would negate the idea of free will? I'd be interested to hear what you think.

Well-Defined Plate

"I know that God won't give me more than I can handle. I just wish he didn't trust me so much." - Mother Teresa

That has always been one of my favorite quotes, to the point where I bought a plaque with that quote emblazoned on it. But is it true that (even assuming I'm wrong about the first point) God won't heap our plate with more than will fit on it? It certainly seems like some people I know have way more than their fair share of troubles, and others have a fairly smooth and stable life. It doesn't seem, then, that God is paying attention to how much is piled on us. My belief is that we simply encounter what we encounter on the path of our choosing. We have the free will, then, to either deal with the obstacles and troubles and keep living or we can choose to end it all - or to not cope at all. For example, if you watch any of the reality TV shows about hoarding, almost every one of those people has had some kind of setback or tragedy in their lives at which point they began to hold onto everything, protecting themselves from further tragedy by walling themselves in, seemingly protected from the world.

The healthiest way to deal with life's challenges, of course, is to face them head-on. That is extremely hard to do, but if we can summon the energy and master the coping skills we need to navigate the complex roadblocks of life, we grow as human beings. We can then pass on the things we've learned to our friends, family, and even the world at large.

Maybe it seems as though God doesn't give us more than we can handle because we do seem to get through these hardships and challenges. That doesn't, however, mean that He went easy on us. It just means that we choose to take the high road. We don't kill ourselves out of fear or frustration. If God, after all, chose to not give us more than we could handle, he would never have taken my Stephanie away from me. I handled that tragedy, not because it was within some kind of arbitrary limit for what I could handle, but because I had no choice. I had to go on living and breathing. I summoned the strength and learned the coping skills necessary to get through it.

Again, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Peace - D

Sweet Strawberry Summers

noreply@blogger.com (RiverPoet) — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 23:12:00 +0000

This time of year unleashes a lot of memories for me, particularly of the period of time in which we lived in Mount Airy, MD, in my dream house. (That house was sold in 2003, after Paul and I were both laid off work and had to take pay cuts in order to stay employed.) It was a big, open home with a wrap-around porch (complete with porch swing), an expansive corner lot, and a lot of love.

One of my fondest memories of those days is of going to local farmer's markets or buying local produce at the supermarket down the road. I'd bring home all these wonderful foods and spend the afternoon at the island in the kitchen, washing, peeling, chopping, and munching on the fresh delights. I'd pop strawberries into Sean's mouth or Stephanie's, nudging our Samoyed, Nikki, out of the way so that I could block her from snatching a green bean or a piece of watermelon. Usually we had been out working in the yard and were sun-bronzed and a little sleepy. We were enjoying our break from work and school. It was a happy time, though Stephanie was living with her struggles of bipolar disorder, hallucinations, and cutting. When we were in that kitchen, we were a family, just like any other family. We were laughing, joking, happy, and well-fed.

When I recently bought some fresh strawberries and cherries--far too many for one--I stood in my modest kitchen, washing, slicing, and remembering. The only thing that could take my memories away from me now would be Alzheimer's. I don't live in the past, but you know how it is. Sometimes a sight, a smell, a taste, will take you back to another time. It's a beautiful thing.

Tonight I popped slices of cucumbers into my own mouth and thought of my children. I wondered if Sean buys himself fresh fruit and veggies or if he is living on the bachelor staple of little single-serve, frozen veggies with his burgers, chicken strips, or soups. He's still trying to learn to budget his money for the month--a challenge for any 23-year-old but especially for one who gets a single paycheck a month. Hell, I still have trouble with that sometimes.

I still forget sometimes when I'm shopping that I am only buying for me. I will still buy large containers of strawberries (which I love), but I eat them pretty quickly so they don't go bad. Blueberries I freeze in reasonable portions so that I can thaw them and use them as I need to. I bought a bag of chips and some salsa but remembered, when I got home, that I don't eat those anymore -- especially alone. I have loaves of bread in the freezer. I don't really eat that either. It was on sale, though, so I'll take those down to Sean when I go visit him next weekend. I will eventually get used to shopping for one and will have less that risks going to waste.

The memories and the life I have today are good. But sometimes something reminds me of the pain.

The other day I was going through my garage, trying to pull together some things for a yard sale, and my hand landed on a slick, pasteboard envelope stamped "Important Papers". I stopped what I was doing. I opened it and slid out the contents. It was a sheaf of copies of Stephanie's death certificate; it was the first time I'd seen it. The edges of my vision started to swim. My heart raced. My stomach lurched. It is one thing to look at such a thing when you are prepared. It is quite another when you are humming and occupying yourself with pleasant busywork. The document looked so much like her birth certificate. Two different states; two very similar documents.

The line containing the findings said, "Oxycodone and Zolpidem intoxication," but the cause of death said, "Undetermined." This should have reassured me, again, that it was an accident, but I needed to talk to her dad. I called him and asked if he had been protecting me, if this meant she did it on purpose. He talked me down, reassuring me that nothing had changed. There were still many, many pills in the bottles at her bedside. There was just a little too much in her bloodstream. I think if she had wanted to end her life, she would have made sure to take a larger amount, and I think she would have left a note. The only thing that changed, then, is that whereas Paul had told me it was OxyContin and Ambien, it was actually Percocet and Ambien. I wonder how many people take these together and never have a problem. I wonder how many die in their sleep. I met a woman in Compassionate Friends whose 30-something son died after his doctor prescribed Vicodin for his back pain right after he'd been put on Ambien for insomnia. One of each and he died in his sleep--the very first time he took them together. He left a wife and child behind.

One site says:
Zolpidem combined with alcohol, opiates, or other CNS depressants may be even more likely to lead to fatal overdoses.

Because two drugs overwhelmed my daughter's system and stopped her breathing, I will never again be able to pop a sweet strawberry into her mouth, slice cucumbers for her to munch on during a hot summer day, or laugh with her in a lively kitchen. Because of this terrible accident, my family has been reduced. Now it is reduced even more. My son lives five hours away and I'm alone here. I do alright most days, but a bit of the melancholy sets in when I think of the good old days when we were all a family.

Eating alone is very utilitarian for me. Often I just eat because I need to, not because I particularly want to. Eating alone isn't nearly as much fun as sharing a meal with my son. And yet I've put on some weight. It isn't from overconsumption. I haven't lost control. In 2007, I started this blog after a weight loss of 60 lbs. Now I have 20 I need to lose, so I may go back to the very stringent diet I was on then. Exercise hasn't helped. Medication is the culprit. It has slowed my BMR, so I have to jar it a bit to get it back on track. I don't like gaining weight, but I'm not sure anyone does, really. You may think it's silly of me to worry about such things, but maybe it's a good sign. If I'm worrying about the silly things, then life must be getting somewhat back to normal, I dare say.

Next weekend, when I visit my son, I'll be sure to enjoy a little culinary delight, weight or no weight. I don't often get to enjoy his company during a meal anymore. It isn't like the old days in that kitchen, with two boisterous kids, a sneaky dog, and a big, beautiful home. But I will always have those memories. They sustain me.

Peace - D

Still Here

noreply@blogger.com (RiverPoet) — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 11:35:00 +0000

Before Stephanie died, I was a blog hog - always on here, always writing, always commenting. Forgive me for not being around. Life took a sharp turn that day--April 3, 2009--and threw me through the windshield. There are so many things in my life that are sitting idle, unfinished, but I'm doing the best I can.

Lately I've been back at the meetings - Al-Anon, and an open AA meeting here and there. I'm trying to continue on my path toward getting better. Relationships? None. I'm talking to a couple of different women, but mainly I hang out with my friends and do some fun things. When I'm not with friends, I try to keep myself occupied with walks, jigsaw puzzles, and reading. I'm really enjoying reading again. But I have to get my act together and do what I need to do to be back in school on day one of the fall semester. That is imperative.

What is so apparent, from the meetings, is that I still have a very long way to go toward accepting Stephanie's death. I'm not talking about the obvious, the reality of it. I'm talking about really accepting it and integrating it into who I am now, my new normal. When I begin to tell my story, I don't get very far before I become choked up and the tears start pouring down my face. My friend, Linda, keeps encouraging me to keep going to the meetings and keep telling my story. "It's powerful," she says,"and it's a safe place for you to deal with those feelings." I can't help being a little embarrassed each time, though, because I feel like I ought to be able to get a grip by now. I ought to be able to tell my story without losing it.

But when you think about it, I guess two years is just the blink of an eye when you're talking about the loss of a child. A woman who runs a grief group on Facebook beats herself up for not being a little further along at only 28 weeks. I hate to tell her, but it's going to take a whole lot longer than that to get over a child's death. I gave birth to that beautiful child. I held her in my body and then in my arms. I wanted so much for her, but she isn't here. She will never be here again except in my heart and my memories. Sometimes I think Alzheimer's would be a blessing. I would forget she ever died. I would wait for her, thinking her next visit was just hours or days away. For now, though, I am here with my thoughts, my memories, my neverending love for her.

I was listening to a show on TV the other day while working (so I don't know all the details) that was narrated by Morgan Freeman (was it "Through the Wormhole"? I think so). The show was about immortality and life after death. One of the things they talked about was that what we carry around inside ourselves about the people we have loved and lost is part of life after death. A piece of them lives on in us. So I am carrying Stephanie around in me, memories of her, thoughts of her, the memory of her voice, her face. She lives on.

Working on the memoir, which I think is incredibly important, has been difficult because I'm still so entrenched in this process. I realize that I'm also still grieving the loss of so many other things -- my marriage, my son's presence here (he lives in Raleigh now), my sense of purpose in a family. I'm not so much grieving the loss of the relationships with Denise and with Kim. I've put away the anger I had toward Denise and have just tried to think of the good times we had, and I've put it to bed. With Kim, I still have anger, but I'm so relieved that I got out. So glad. That was a huge improvement, to realize within 3 months that it was an unhealthy relationship and to get out of it. I realize that in both instances, I went in way too fast. I didn't give myself time to really get to know either one of them before I packed up the U-Haul. Neither of those relationships was good for me. Neither was healthy or affirming. They both drained me, but at least with Denise there were some good times. Not so much with Kim.

I'm taking the time now to work on me and to find out what I want in life. It's only just now that I'm realizing that I do have a life. I am living my life the way I want to and doing the things I want to do. I'm looking out for number one while still nurturing friendships and my recovery process. I don't think any of that is bad. In fact, it's the healthiest thing I've done in -- I don't know how long!

So if you don't see me around much, don't worry. I'm doing right by me and I'm getting stronger every day. I still miss my daughter enough to tear up and dance on the edge of full-out sobbing when I talk about her, but I know that she will always be with me. Life after death. It happens inside all of us she touched. Now I just have to continue learning how to have my own life. Someday I will be just a memory inside my son, perhaps inside my ex-husband, inside my siblings, and inside every friend I've made. We will all live on. It's comforting.

I wish you peace, D

A Graduation and a Gift

noreply@blogger.com (RiverPoet) — Sun, 22 May 2011 20:27:00 +0000

Mandi looked so young, so vibrant, so awake with possibilities yesterday. When she walked across that stage, I was as proud of her as if she'd been my own daughter. In fact, I often called her my Colorado daughter, and she called me her Maryland mommy. Of course I had complicated emotions wrapped around that central feeling of pride. It occurred to me that I would never see Stephanie cross any stage to accept any diploma -- ever. And I never had.

Stephanie dropped out of high school and opted for a GED instead of a high school diploma. She went to a community college to be trained as a surgical technician. Before she finished that program, she decided to move to Baltimore and pursue a pre-med program at a four-year university. She certainly had the intelligence and the aptitude to be a physician, but she was her own worst enemy. She would fall into depression or agoraphobia. Her anxiety levels would skyrocket and result in her cutting or attempting suicide. She would sometimes end up in a psychiatric ward, going back on the medications that she often chose to just quit. By the time she was 25, I wasn't sure she would ever complete a college degree, but I still had hope. All hope died along with her, of course, on April 3, 2009.

Mandi and I will always have a bond, because she was a part of my life at that moment, when everything changed. She sat next to me in my first class of my first semester in the master's of thanatology program. I'd been drawn to a friendship with her for several reasons. She was quirky and friendly, and she had that goth-rocker look that Stephanie often went for. What we didn't expect was that we would develop a bond over something deeper than a shared class or similarities. We would bond over unexpected, tragic deaths.

Mandi and I were in that class in March when her life took a turn. One night I showed up for class and found her seat empty. At that time, we had not yet exchanged phone numbers, so I assumed she was out sick. Classes were on Tuesday and Thursday nights. She was also absent from the next class meeting.

When she returned the following week, i learned that she had lost her cousin Jake, a young man whom she described as being like a brother to her, to a train accident. His car had been struck by a train car that was being illegally moved at night, without the proper lights and safety signals engaged. His family gathered around him before the decision was made to discontinue life support on March 4, 2009. His parents honored his wish to be an organ donor. (His mother, Judy, has since become an activist for organ donation. She's an incredible woman.)

Our friendship deepened as I offered her support and a shoulder to lean on in her grief. We were both aiming to become grief counselors, so it simply made sense for us to talk freely and openly about her experience of grief in order to both process it and to learn from it, certainly more so than if we had been in - say - a biochemistry program.

So when Stephanie died a month later, the first person I could think to call was ... Mandi. I had recently added her phone numbers to the contacts in my cell phone, so as soon as the detective and deputy left to go retrieve Sean from work, I called Mandi.

For the first few minutes, I just cried. She knew it was me, but she had no idea what had happened. I kept trying to speak, and finally what came out was, "Stephanie's dead!" Mandi got me through those first few minutes, and she got me through telling the news for the first time. I will always be grateful to her for hanging on the phone with me through those awful moments. It further bonded us in a powerful way.

After graduation I finally met her parents. They were lovely people. Down to earth and sweet, just like their daughter. I handed Mandi an envelope. A card and gift card for a bookstore were tucked inside. I hoped she would get herself a good fat novel with it, something non-academic after her many years of hard work, research, and term papers.

I tried to talk to her parents about how Mandi had been there for me when Stephanie died, how she had been the person I had called. I could feel my throat closing up and my eyes welling up with tears. Oh no, I thought, you can't do this here. This is Mandi's day and you WILL NOT detract from it by losing it.

I composed myself and prepared to leave, saying I had to go let my dogs out.

"Oh, wait!" Mandi said. She placed a little gold box in my hand. "This is from my Aunt Judy. You'll love it."

Judy is Jake's mother, and we have become friends through Mandi (and through Facebook). The gift box was tasteful. The kind of box you see in movies, tied with a gold, silk ribbon. A little card with my name on it was taped to the top. I promised Mandi I would open it as soon as I got home, because between the heat, the sun, and my emotions, I was about to collapse.

When I came home, I untied the ribbon and opened the box. It held a silver necklace with a pendant and two charms. On one side of the pendant, it says, "Love Life," and on the other side, it says, "Be Brave." One charm is flowers, and the other is a butterfly. How incredibly appropriate. I was and am so touched by her incredible kindness and generosity. She is one of two incredible women in my life who have both lost sons, while I've lost a daughter. We each began our grieving process in 2009. Such a sad thing bonds us. Such a sad thing is the biggest reason for my friendship with Mandi. But we were all meant to know each other and to be of comfort to each other in the darkest of days.

In addition to being an activist for organ donation, Judy also started the "Take Jake Project," in which people take Jake's photograph all over the world and send back pictures to the project. It helps raise awareness for organ donation, and it is a neat thing for Jake's family. Recently, Jake's photograph went into space on the Shuttle Discovery, on its final mission. You can hear about it at the link below and see my friend Judy on the news story:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xhenzm_take-jake-project-goes-for-space-shuttle-ride_news

I'm awfully proud of the work she does, and I'm even more proud to call her a friend. What a special gift that is!

The pockets of emotions I hit during yesterday's events were like pockets of gas in a mine. The deeper you drill and the further you go, the more likely it is that you'll hit one of those pockets, risking an explosion. Several times during the ceremony, I felt my throat tightening. I felt like I needed to run from my seat beneath the tent. It was in the way I felt, seeing Mandi march across the stage. It was in the way I felt, watching children playing among the shade trees -- one little girl so like Stephanie at that age -- gangly, bespectacled, and a little bossy. it was in the way I felt, knowing that I have many more difficult days ahead before I can walk across the same stage to receive my master's. I should have been crossing the stage with them, but Stephanie died and I became unhinged. Yesterday, it was all I could do to stay in my seat and wait for the end so that I could give Mandi my congratulations and the card. She need not know how close I came to losing it, to weeping openly during the whole thing.

You never know when those pockets are going to explode. As a bereaved parent, you can only know that the pockets are there. You can deal with them, but they will always be lurking, ready to take you by surprise. Fortunately, time teaches you control. You will be able to get a hold on yourself before you "lose it" and appear foolish. You will be able to navigate the pain and place the emphasis where it belongs. You will become tempered by time and practice.

Yesterday a lovely young woman graduated with her master's degree, her sights set on being the person people come to in their grief. I know she will be a huge success because she was already there for me in my grief, two years ago. I wish her nothing but the best, and I plan to follow in her footsteps - soon.

Peace - D

All My Ex's

noreply@blogger.com (RiverPoet) — Mon, 16 May 2011 18:30:00 +0000

Not all my ex's live in Texas (but a few of them do), but I included that song at the bottom of this post. I had a gay male friend who had a mad crush on George Strait and once sat next to him on a plane. He couldn't stop talking about that flight :-) Nick - wherever you are, I miss ya, buddy!

It's a day of thinking about the ones who have passed through my life.

Today would have been my two year anniversary with Denise. It was a day on which I'd hoped we would get married, but that didn't work out. We had a year and a half of ups and downs, of good times and bad. She saw the worst of my grief, and it didn't scare her off. Had she gotten some help for the possessiveness and fear she had, we might have made it. But she didn't, and we didn't. Here I am.

She was the first long-term relationship after Paul. Paul is still my best friend, and he is still part of my life. He has been a tremendous help to me through all of my rough times, and I'll always be grateful. No one has ever stood by me like he has. No matter what ever happened between us, he has shown up when I need a hand getting out of a situation, moving furniture, or picking up the pieces. He has been a rock in my life, always there, always steady. Too bad I'm gay.

Susan was the next brief glimmer in my life. She turned out to have many, many issues that had escaped my observation because she lived an hour away. I never got to see her antics up close. As it turns out, she was still with her ex while she was trying to start something up with me. When I found that out, I exited stage left and exited the friendship as well as the relationship. It was brief and scary enough to destroy it all.

And then Kim came along and got me immediately involved in her life and with her kids. There was no slowing down with her, and I should have realized that was a huge red flag. But I was enjoying the ride, too, so I let it happen. The thing is, I really miss the boys. Last night I traveled in my dream to her house and looked in on them. It's the only way I can see them without getting into trouble. I had them on my mind all day yesterday, so last night I had to go see them. She has sent me hate e-mail telling me not to try and contact them (it's the one way she knows she can hurt me). Oh, how she underestimates me! I don't have to physically go there in order to check on them. I watched them sleeping last night, watched their sweet faces in their dreams. It was good. I miss them, but I know that I left an impression on them. I know they will remember me.

Now I am on my own, enjoying my own company and spending time with friends as often as I feel like. It's good. It's healing. And all my ex's? I wish them well ... mostly.

D

Old Normal; New Normal

noreply@blogger.com (RiverPoet) — Sun, 15 May 2011 22:07:00 +0000

Change. It finds us where we are, whether we want it or not. We may not even realize it, but we adapt when change comes. We may tell ourselves that we can't change, that we are stuck, but we are not stuck. We have changed, like it or not.

Some bereaved parents describe their lives in terms that reference the day their lives forever changed (e.g., before Stephanie, after Stephanie), meaning before our child died and after. That reference point will always be there and will always be painful.

My son Sean, my only living child, was up here for a visit this weekend. His visit came right between Mother's Day and my birthday, so we celebrated both together. During this visit, it seemed as though Stephanie scattered reminders all around us, all weekend. We were in Cracker Barrel and came across a stained glass coloring book full of butterflies. We laughed while we were waiting for our breakfast, giggling over a shared joke that she would have gotten. Paul and Sean watched a trailer for a zombie movie the evening before, and they were in agreement that Stephanie would have laughed her butt off at the humor tucked into the subtext of the movie. I wore the turtle necklace Stephanie gave me - almost all weekend. Little reminders just kept popping up, including a book I came across and finally opened up.

I had just finished reading Jodi Picoult's Sing Me Home, about a lesbian couple who have to fight for the right to use frozen embryos from one partner's previous heterosexual marriage. I then finished reading Bringing Adam Home, about the way the Adam Walsh case was finally solved. It was a hard book to read, especially because I know all too well what it's like to be the parent who has the nightmares over and over, who wakes up in a sweat, thinking about what death must have been like for my child. I could commiserate with John and Reve Walsh and their decades long battle with grief. It brought tears to my eyes, made me nauseated, and made me angry by turns. It was an important book, but it was a difficult read. It was after I finished the book about Adam that I picked up this hardback I had purchased ages ago (before the iPad that I now do all my reading on) and had come across again during the move. It was another Jodi Picoult book called Handle with Care.

I thought, Okay. I'll clear my palate with this one.

It's another book about a parent and child, and for the life of me, I can't remember what prompted me to buy it. Chances are good that it was an impulse purchase during one of my frequent trips to Borders.

The receipt that fell out of the book confirmed that. I had purchased it, along with a magazine and a bookmark, at Borders the Saturday before Stephanie died. Six days before she died, to be precise. The bookmark that fell out was a Christian bookmark with a 2009 calendar on one side and the following verse on the front, superimposed over a photograph of a waterfall:

"He alone is my rock and my salvation;
he is my fortress,
I shall never be shaken." - Psalms 62:2

The fact that I had selected a Christian bookmark emphasized the fact that I was not yet angry at God. I was not yet rejected by my church. I was not yet disillusioned with my faith, feeling let down by God and all his representatives on earth. Shaken, I was. I was shaken to my core when Stephanie died. Whether God was my rock or not, I was shaken almost to pieces.

With these two reminders -- the bookmark and the dated receipt -- in my lap last night, I was overwhelmed with my feelings of then and now, before Stephanie and after Stephanie, 2009 versus 2011. Two years of tears and anguish separate the reality of my life when I purchased that book and the reality of my life now. But what I've realized this weekend is that I'm okay. I've experienced so much healing and forgiveness lately that I find I am no longer begging God to let me die. I am no longer thinking that I can't go on, that I must find a way to die. I now have some healing in my soul.

When I think about Stephanie, I think about her laughter, her smile, her generous nature. I reach up to touch the jade turtle that hangs from my neck and I can almost feel her soft hand putting it in mine. I laugh with Sean and I can almost hear her laughing with us. I watch a movie and I can feel her next to me, laughing or crying or reveling in it with me. I've finally stopped feeling the guilt and the "if only's" and the "why's" that have plagued me for the last two years. I no longer feel that it was my failures that caused her death. I know that it was simply time for her to go.

So I will begin to read this book, as I had planned to do two years ago before the rug of my life was pulled out from under me, before I lost one of the most precious people in my life. I will twirl the bookmark in my fingers as I read, remembering that 2009 was crudely ripped in half, right at the Easter holiday. Easter, when Christ died and rose again, will forever be tied to the date on which my daughter died and did not rise again, the date on which my life forever changed, on which it was rent along a new fault line -- before Stephanie and after Stephanie.

That Easter was the beginning of a new chapter for me and was the end of Stephanie's unrelenting pain. Whether I wanted it or not, change came to me. I had no choice but to adapt and accept the change.

Someday far in the future, it will be my time to go, too, and in the wake of my death, other lives will be affected. Friends, family, people I have yet to meet. But change is the way of things. Change is our only constant. And as the song (embedded below) says, "Everything ... everything ends...". The beauty of it is that when things end, other things begin. My daughter will always be with me. Little reminders will always seek me out, but I'm okay. She's okay, too. And Sean is more than okay. He is wonderful, and we have many, many more memories to make -- after Stephanie.

Peace - D

A Mother's Day Letter from Stephanie

noreply@blogger.com (RiverPoet) — Sun, 08 May 2011 21:32:00 +0000

One of the grief gurus on Facebook, Tom Zuba, put an exercise to do for Mother's Day on one of his posts yesterday. He said to write a letter addressed to ourselves, from our loved one who has passed on. I thought I would try it, if only to see what would spill out of my psyche while "channeling" Stephanie. Would it be blame? Guilt? Anger? I couldn't know for sure until I actually did it.

This afternoon, I sat down with a tablet and pen, and I let the words flow. Here is the result. Remember, this is not really from Stephanie ... or is it?

=================================

Mother's Day 5/8/11

Dear Mom,

I've been watching over you since the moment I died, because you always told me that if I died, you would want to die, too. I know that there have been many times since I left my body that you have prayed to be with me, that you have cried out in anger and frustration to find yourself stuck there without me. But Mom, this is your time to live.

I know that I was a handful. There was so much hurt in my life that you will never know about because I protected you from it. Sometimes the hurt was so bad inside that the only way to relieve it was to hurt myself on the outside -- by cutting myself, burning myself, or hooking myself to someone else. I know that you could never understand why I did those things, but I did. They made me feel better for a little while.

I know that you miss me, but I am all around you. Yep, that's me when you see the yellow butterflies! That's me putting thoughts in your head (or Sean's - ha! Shi'thead!) when you feel the need to blurt something out that only I would say.

That's me coming to you in dreams. I am part of you, and that part can never die. You have to trust me when I say that this life is not the end. Trust me when I say that I am always there. I see how you hurt, but I don't want you to hurt. I see how you look at my pictures. Remember me like that, smiling and happy, because that is the way I am now.

Remember, in the kitchen, that January when I hugged you and told you I loved you? Remember that. Remember when Sean and I would play Rock Band and we'd get too loud, and I would say "Sorry Mom!" into the microphone? Remember that. I gave you moments like that to keep with you always.

I didn't mean to die and leave you behind, but I can't say that I'm sorry that my pain has ended. Mom, I was always in pain - hurting in my body and in my spirit. I don't hurt anymore. Now I am peaceful, wrapped in love and gentleness. I see you keeping your promises to me, taking care of my babies. Gizmo and Lily can still see me because they have the eyes to do so. You have to see me in your dreams.

There is so much I want to tell you, but you will see when you get here -- which will be a long time from now. You have many things left to do. My time was done, but you have work to do. I will be there with you every step of the way.

I miss you, Mom, and I love you. Remember I am always as close as your thoughts. I am forever a part of you. I will not abandon you.

Your loving daughter,

Stephanie

Approaching Normal

noreply@blogger.com (RiverPoet) — Fri, 06 May 2011 00:08:00 +0000

Tomorrow I'll be returning to work half-time for the first time since April 14. I'm a little nervous, but I'm looking forward to interacting with my friends and co-workers again and earning a better paycheck than I'm getting on short term disability. Mostly I'm looking forward to feeling normal again.

I also have to get a little blood drawn to see if this is diabetes or still pre diabetes that is plaguing me. Let's hope it's still pre!

Wish me luck! D

Hospitals and Hell: Part II

noreply@blogger.com (RiverPoet) — Tue, 03 May 2011 20:50:00 +0000

For part one, see Hospitals and Hell: Part I.

This is the second part of my story of my inpatient stay in a psychiatric hospital subsequent to my breakdown following the two-year anniversary of Stephanie's death. It's been a strange journey, one in which I've discovered much about myself and much about others -- some good, some bad. I hope you'll read...

============================================
My first morning on the ward was surreal and frightening. I awoke before dawn, having only gotten a few hours of sleep, to the sound of someone ranting on and on in a trembling voice. This ranting woman was alternately preaching, slipping into idioms, and railing at the staff about how they were treating the white people so much better than they were treating her and the other black people on the ward. It is worth noting that the two night staffers on the ward were both black women. Every now and then one of them would ask her to keep it down, but mostly they did nothing.

I lay in my bed, listening to it all, my hands shaking. Turning to the wall, I dissolved into tears. I was all alone. My partner had told me to say goodbye to her and to the boys. Two more children had been ripped from me, and a sense of hopelessness had descended. At that moment, I truly wished I had not gone to the hospital, that I had just ended it when I had a chance. All I could see stretching out before me were years of endless loneliness and an empty home. When she did that to me the morning before, she took all hope away from me. It didn't occur to me at the time that she couldn't possibly have been in love with me and done such a thing. At the time I thought I somehow deserved to be treated that way. That I had somehow earned it.

I wondered who would read to the boys. I wondered who would help Tom plant the vegetable plants we'd started.

I've never been so afraid.

That first morning was a blur. I got my morning medication, and in it, they had a Haldol for me. I refused it. I said, "I've never taken Haldol. Why do you have that in my meds?"

"It's for if you're really upset," the nurse said.

I couldn't argue that I wasn't "really upset," but I didn't want to be zombified. I took my thyroid medication and shuffled into the line of people waiting to go to breakfast. I didn't have a comb or any slippers. I was disheveled, wearing disposable scrubs and socks, and it was in this get-up that I went to my first meal in the facility. (It wasn't until later that I learned that they would give me disposable slippers, too - on request.) One of the other women in line, an overweight woman with several teeth missing, leaned over to me and said, "You'll love their breakfast here. It's fantastic!"

Instead, I found the eggs and sausage to be inedible. I munched on dry raisin toast instead, washed down with decaf coffee and apple juice. My appetite was gone anyway. Nothing would have been appealing to me. In fact, for weeks I'd had no appetite. I ate sporadically, if at all, and I slept little.

"Do they have real coffee?" I asked.

Everyone at the table shook their heads. "The only way you'll get caffeine is if someone from the outside brings it to you."

So it was contraband. Patients weren't allowed caffeine or nicotine. Almost everyone had a little plastic "puffer" that was supposed to help curb the cigarette cravings. They frantically sucked on the little pipettes and chewed them nervously. Though I don't smoke, I began to crave one of the puffers, wishing I had something to calm my nerves besides the occasional Xanax.

By the time we returned to the ward, the ranting patient had been given a shot of something to calm her down, so she was back in bed. Two more schizophrenic patients were on the ward, and they seemed to receive the lion's share of care. The other female wore the same outfit day in and day out, and she often soiled herself. She was very racist against those of us on the ward who were white, but I once made her laugh because I lost my balance on the pilates ball in the gym. We both laughed over that. I felt sorry for her, but I was also a little afraid of her. She had a dead quality to her gaze that seemed dangerous.

The male schizophrenic patient, from what I learned later, had started out his stay by dropping his pants in the common area and jacking off in front of the women there. Now he was subdued and polite.

When we returned from breakfast, the shift had changed, and two new staffers were watching us from their seats against the wall. Codes were written next to our names on a big whiteboard. I later found out that these codes were all about whether we were on suicide watch or simply "observation" and noted how many minutes the staff interacted with us during a shift. We were reduced to codes and numbers, medications and statuses.

Because of my special medical needs, the nurse's station was supposed to be adequately stocked with catheter supplies and equipment. The hospital where I'd been taken to the ER made phone calls to find me a bed in a hospital that could accommodate my medical needs. Instead of doing so, however, the hospital had one catheter tray that I was supposed to re-use, and it was several sizes too large. I ended up bleeding and in tears - again - because of the pain. I had no choice, however. My medical needs did not resolve just because of my psychological needs. My sense of hopelessness and helplessness deepened.

Mid-morning, my vital signs were taken and a technician drew blood. I returned to my room, in tears again. I was afraid. Everyone was a stranger to me, and after hearing the other patient ranting all morning, I was more on edge than ever. I prayed for sleep that didn't come.

In the early afternoon, the psychiatrist came to get me. I met with her in a small room off the common area. Finally, I was speaking with someone of intelligence who treated me like a human being and not just a psych patient. She was kind and took the time to get to know me a little. I shared with her that I had a problem with the catheter equipment and she immediately took it upon herself to try and find out why they hadn't gotten in the supplies I needed. She said that she'd have me transferred if they couldn't meet my needs. At that moment, I wasn't sure I'd accept a transfer to anywhere but home. I wasn't sure they were going to do anything to help me, and I wasn't sure I wanted the help.

Incredibly kind, she noted that she knew I was a fish out of water. She'd read my patient history and knew that I was an educated woman and that it was my first admission to the hospital for depression. She suggested that I could ask for a notebook to journal, and she further asked me to do a little homework for her, mapping out my history for her and letting her know if there had been any periods of high energy or elevated mood, to see if there was a pattern to that. We talked about the grief and how it had impacted me. We talked about my recent history of not sleeping, of taking care of two young boys and how overwhelmed that had made me feel. She asked if she could contact Kim. I provided the information. At that point, I didn't know if there was still an "us", but I figured Kim might be able to give some input to help me. At that point, she was on her way with the boys to a wedding in Charlotte, one that I was supposed to attend with her.

At lunch, I barely ate again. Everything tasted like gravel and sat heavily in my stomach. Nothing felt good to me. All I wanted was to feel like being alive, but with the recent events, any joy I'd had was gone.

I called Kim later in the afternoon and talked to her while she drove. She seemed kind enough, but she was distant. She'd been distant for the last several weeks, and it seemed that now that she was getting well, she didn't need me anymore. The balance in our relationship had shifted to a very cold, dark place. Suddenly, I felt like a caged animal. I wanted to get out of the hospital and try to mend things with her, though now I'm not sure why I thought they could be mended. I later found out that she had announced - almost immediately - that she was single again and on the market. I was cast aside like last night's casserole. Instead of being there for me when a wound opened up in my heart, the way I'd been there for her when the wound opened up in her belly, she abandoned me.

After that phone call, any hope I had was gone. Though I didn't say anything to the doctors, I was still feeling suicidal. I'd never been treated so callously by anyone who said they loved me. I've never been cut off so coldly.

That first afternoon was busy. A nurse came and took me to see the medical doctor between lunch and dinner. I was led into a small examination room and asked to put on a paper gown. A doctor with a handlebar mustache and a thick accent came in and poked and prodded me, asking me a rapid series of questions. My hands shook, as I didn't know what to expect. How much could a doctor do in a psychiatric hospital? What was he allowed to do to me? I felt very little control, but he made it quick and was kind to me. He said that because of hospital-borne infections, I should use a fresh catheter every time. But the hospital still didn't have any supplies, and I had precious few on hand in my bag, which Paul still had in my car.

The ward got quiet that evening as the weekend approached. From my roommate, another woman who had been admitted for depression related to grief, I learned that the weekends were quiet and lonely, something I didn't need more of. It would give me, I knew, too much time to think. Gradually, I began to talk more to my roommate and the other patients. If I had to be there, I figured I should try to keep myself busy, though all I really wanted to do was sleep.

On Saturday, I had a visit from Paul. He brought me some clothes from home and the small stash of my own catheter supplies. I could tell by the look in his eyes that he was quite worried about me. He tried to reassure me that he would help me in any way that he could, that I should focus on getting well.

"Stop thinking about Kim," he said. "She's obviously not that concerned about you."

He was so angry that she had let me drive away that day, knowing that I was suicidal. At the time, I was too deep in my illness and sadness to think about it, but later I wondered why an ER physician would not know the protocol for dealing with a suicidal person. The thing is - she does know what to do as a physician, but she doesn't know what to do as a person, as a partner. As my partner, she didn't care enough to stop me.

Later, I learned (from the babysitter) that she called her friend and ex-lover Katherine, crying and asking her what to do -- after she let me drive away. (She didn't cry when I was there. The tears were all to get attention and sympathy from Katherine.) Katherine supposedly told her to do nothing. Of course that's what she'd tell her, because finally I was out of the way. Shortly after Kim and I got together, Katherine told Kim what a big mistake she'd made by not sticking around. Kim made sure to read me all the messages. It was all very unnecessary and painful, but Kim didn't seem very concerned about my feelings. But when she would say Katherine's name, she would hold her name in such awe. I always knew that the two of them would be the end of "us."

On Sunday, I woke up with pain and a fever. It was my worst fear - another UTI while in a hospital not equipped to deal with it. The nurse checked on me and gave me an Ativan - an anti-anxiety drug - to help me deal with the pain. I'm not sure what that was supposed to do, but I took it. She said she'd have the doctor come in.

It was late afternoon when he finally showed up and - from across the room - said he'd order some Cipro and pyridium for me. He also made sure that I had pain medication ordered, another mix-up they'd had. My pain management was all messed up, as was my bladder care. It was all conspiring to make it quite difficult for me to get better.

As it turned out, they never got the meds for me. The pharmacy tech left without dispensing the meds, so I had to go another day and night without medication for the infection. Monday morning, the kindly psychiatrist made the nurse go to the pharmacy and get the medication for me. She was quite frustrated over the whole thing, and she understood when she found out that on Sunday afternoon, I had signed the 72-hour request for discharge. I would be discharged no later than Tuesday at 2 pm. She spent more time with me, reviewing the history I'd written out for her, and she correctly diagnosed me with bipolar type II. She started me back on medication to treat it.

Some part of me - the stupid part - still had hope that if I were out of the hospital, Kim would come around. I still had hope that I could just go home and get back to my life and back to work right away. Little did I know that I had so much further to go before I'd be ready for that. More about all of that in the next post.

Peace - D

Shit My Students Write

noreply@blogger.com (RiverPoet) — Tue, 03 May 2011 11:36:00 +0000

I know that I have a wide variety of readers from all over the world who are of above average intelligence (hence, you're reading Poetic License! ;-)). I think you'll enjoy the following blog:

http://shitmystudentswrite.tumblr.com/

It's a compilation of snippets from actual student papers. HILARIOUS! Enjoy!

D

Wordless

noreply@blogger.com (RiverPoet) — Mon, 02 May 2011 00:44:00 +0000

Between the medical problems (including, now, another drug allergy) and the life issues, I find myself to be in absolute shock sometimes, unable to string my thoughts together into anything interesting. I am hoping this passes soon, because I have the opportunity now to work on the memoir. I have to get back to it soon. I know I'll get there. All in due time.

Meanwhile, I invite you to visit any of the wonderful blogs listed in the right-hand pane. My friends produce some wonderful thoughts and beautiful photographs. They are definitely worth a visit!

Sugar, Sugar

noreply@blogger.com (RiverPoet) — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 23:12:00 +0000

Sugar.

That's what they found in my urinalysis this morning. Sugar and bilirubin -- neither of which should be there.

Many people call refined sugar "white death," because it contains nothing useful for the body (e.g., vitamins and minerals). Instead it just taxes the body and weakens it. If we were smart, we'd all run screaming away from it, but we seek it out instead.

I had the sense yesterday that something was amiss in my body, but I couldn't put my finger on it. At around 5:30 this morning, however, that something made itself known - another UTI. I woke up in the darkness with a fever and pain in my lower abdomen. A trip to the loo resulted in terrible pain. At one point I had decided not to go in for therapy today. An early appointment with my rheumatologist was already planned, so I figured I could squeeze in another one to the urologist after that.

That's exactly what I did, and the nurse read off something like this: "Yes, you have leukocytes, so you do have an infection. Large bilirubin. Large sugar..." I'm assuming "large" meant high counts and had nothing to do with the size of the molecules. I was prescribed some antibiotics for the infection and told that maybe the other abnormalities were "nothing to worry about." The doctor wasn't in, so the nurse really couldn't say.

I told the nurse to let my urologist know that I'd follow up with my primary care provider. I was prediabetic in 2006-7, but I got my weight and diet under control and, I guess, bought some time. Do I eat sweets? Yeah. They have crept back into my diet, though I'm only ~10 lbs up from where I stopped the weight loss. If I can "blame" anything for the sugar, it might be the sodas that I indulge in here and there. For a long time, I'd given those up, but because I'm often nauseated, I reach for a Coke to settle my stomach.

Diabetes can make you feel nauseated; Coke settles the stomach; Coke contains a lot of sugar. (I can't use artificial sweeteners because of the migraines, so I suppose it's going to be unsweetened beverages like water from here on out.) So my quick fix for one problem may have aggravated the underlying problem.

I won't really know what's going on with me until after I see my doctor on Thursday. Right now diabetes is the lesser and most manageable of the variety of things it could be, but it's all speculation. It's hard to believe that it didn't show up during any of the copious amounts of blood work they did when I was in the hospital. But Mom was a diabetic, as was my grandmother on my mom's side. That makes me genetically predisposed to it, and if that's what I have, I will deal with it.

Diabetes doesn't scare me nearly as much as what I had to deal with starting last October - the urology stuff. It does make me sad that I don't have a partner in my life who can be there for me and support me through this. For the first time in my life, I'm on my own, completely. It still blows my mind, all of the stuff I went through with Kim, learning to take care of that gaping wound in her belly, ignoring the odors as best I could, taking her to appointments and seeing to it that she followed doctor's orders, looking after the boys while she healed. But when I needed her, she kicked me to the curb. All I have to say to that is that Karma is a bitch, baby! When you profess to love someone and you abandon them in their time of need, you invite the universe to take a giant crap on you. May it do just that. Amen and amen.

This thing with the sugar kind of pisses me off, but it doesn't throw me. I'm fine. I'm still in therapy each day (reducing it to half days next week) and am going for a little pampering at the salon tomorrow (another great form of mental health care!). Every day I get a little stronger and a little better at handling the unexpected. Things that used to stress me out (like a mean, nasty neighbor) no longer wreck my day. Now I give the problem an appropriate amount of energy and then move on.

I continue to say, each day, that I am grateful for this illness. Even the breakup is a blessing, because I'd rather know 3 months into it whether my so-called "partner" can handle the tough stuff or not. Kim wasn't cut out to handle any of it. She was too weak in love and spirit to handle it. My life has been all about the tough stuff, and anyone who wants to walk this road with me will need to be up to that challenge. When the time is right, a warrior princess will come along. She'll be more than up to the task. She'll be girded with armor but will have a heart that s open and accessible to me. Together, we'll rule the kingdom.

Meanwhile, I have my friends, my dogs, and my blog. I have my writing. And right now, I have (Washington) Capitals hockey in the post-season. Round two, baby!

Have a great weekend, all!

D

Much Ado about Life

noreply@blogger.com (RiverPoet) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 23:04:00 +0000

My days are full and wonderful. My life is good. I am good. Thank God I am alive today! If you are my friend or a loyal reader, I believe you will like this post. I believe it will give you hope.

Read it again. You read it right. My life is good.

My days are spent in group therapy from 0900-1530, learning how to manage stress and life in general, learning how to not let the inevitable stressors of life derail me, and learning to say "no." I've met some wonderful people who have become my friends and with whom I'm planning housewarming parties and celebrations as we move on with our lives beyond the hospital. Like me, these folks became overwhelmed by life because of illness, grief, or simply too much piled on them. Sometimes we find that we created that pile of shit we sat in or at least contributed to it. At times, we willingly took a shovel and heaped it onto ourselves, not realizing that we all have a breaking point. None of us are immune to that.

Despite what some of you may think of people who seek inpatient help for psychological or psychiatric issues, none of my fellow patients are incapable, incompetent, or unstable. They are computer geeks, government specialists, medical personnel, and other highly-educated folks from all walks of life. We also had a laborer and a housewife, but each person is intelligent and well-spoken. Each is special in his or her own way; it's just that life hit them like a rogue wave, rolling them under and filling their lungs with sand and salt. Most of these folks had a breakdown due to depression. Some were suicidal, and others were paralyzed by anxiety. It can truly happen to anyone. Whatever got us all there, we've bonded in a special way.

As for me, it was mainly the grief combined with intractable stress and overwhelming responsibilities. For two years I have been stuck in that fly trap of self-doubt, self-blame, and the blackest depression imaginable, all as a result of my complicated grief over Stephanie. Other parents I've encountered have a similar experience, and many seem almost envious that I made the decision to seek inpatient treatment. "I've thought of that many times," one mother wrote to me, "but I was afraid to do it." I encouraged her to think about it. It's the best thing that ever happened to me, because it pulled me off the fly paper. It lifted me out of the tar-black sea. It gave me a toolkit to use in removing my own shackles.

When Stephanie died, a hole was blown into my chest. Everything hurt. Everything was too much. Food lost its appeal, yet I ate. Sunlight lost its brightness, yet I moved through it. I went on, determined to live, to seek love, to attempt to enjoy each day as it came. But that became harder and harder to do, as I continued to heap blame on myself and to question each and every decision and action from the last twenty-five years. Unable to see the separation between Stephanie and me, unable to fully appreciate the fact that I was still breathing even though she was not, I shambled through life, ghost-like and frightened, waiting for the next shoe to drop. In reality, I felt as though a dump truck was poised above my head, ready to drop all of the shoes from all the world on my head. It was a seemingly inescapable pit of hell. Nothing that anyone could say to me or do for me would change it. All the reassurance and support in the world would not alleviate the incredible amount of guilt I felt.

In fact, I'd become so accustomed to the darkness, I couldn't even recognize that I was in it. Like a miner who's been underground too long, my eyes had adjusted, and I believed light shone where indeed there was none. The faintest glimmer was enough, I thought. I believed my instincts to be gone. I believed myself to be unimportant and insignificant. I lost faith in me.

It was this loss of self that led me down the path to two bad relationships in a row. If I'd listened to my gut, I never would have stayed in North Carolina, yielding to pressure from Denise. She'd as much as said that if I went back to Maryland, she couldn't do a long distance relationship. Her message to me was that I either did it her way or lost her. We all know how that turned out. If I'd trusted my instincts a couple of months ago, I wouldn't have been in that whole situation with Kim. I would have put the brakes on and taken care of me. I would be wrapping up my spring semester right now, still living in my own place but dating her (maybe). But the implication was that if I went home, it meant I didn't love her, so I stayed and got overly involved with someone I barely knew. She quickly went from wanting to marry me to wanting to abandon me -- when I needed her most. Because I didn't know my own worth anymore, because I was weakened from two years of self-blame, I let it all happen. I let myself get overloaded to the breaking point. I dropped my classes. I forgot how to tend to my own needs. I let myself be guilted into going against my grain.

Now I'm recovering from all of that, and I'm finding that it's not only possible to get my life back, it's actually happening!

Sure, it's costing me time off work and money that I didn't have. For example, just to move my stuff back over here set me back $300, but it was so worth it to have things back where they belonged. Boxes are scattered around me, but it's alright. Slowly, I'm unpacking and sorting out my life again, one afternoon at a time, as the last rays of the sunset splash the clouds outside my window, I polish one more part of my life.

And yes, among other things, the grief has opened me up to getting my heart broken -- twice! Two women that I loved and trusted took my heart and stomped it into the ground. These experiences, I believe, happened because I was unable to feel my own self-worth. I was unable to forgive myself for anything real or imagined that I did wrong during Stephanie's lifetime. This left me with very poor judgment. It is highly unlikely that, if I had been my old self, I would have believed any of this garbage or would have fallen for it. I would have been able to sit back and say, "Well, you know what? If you can't wait for me or get to know me better or work through this with me, then we aren't right for each other."

I'm feeling that old gumption coming back. I'm feeling release from the self-blame and self-doubt. I'm having a change of heart and mind. Hope springs eternal.

When I get home from therapy, I take the dogs out, do some laundry, and relax with a book or magazine. I make a little dinner for myself and read about my friends' lives on Facebook. I surf some blogs and catch up with friends by phone. Last night I went out on a spontaneous trip to the bookstore to meet a friend for coffee.

This is what my life was before, and this is what it is again.

I'm getting lots of encouragement to fulfill my promises to myself -- finishing grad school and finishing the memoir. Now that I've got all of my computer components and various systems unpacked and online, I have all my raw material in one place. The book will be a useful one, not just for my own psyche but for other grieving parents. As I've said to others, encouraging them to move past their brush with suicide, "You never know who you might bless with your actions now."

We, the bereaved parents, the walking wounded, are a sad club. We know pain so deep that it cannot be fully described. We know heartbreak so acute that it will never properly heal. But we also know joy, because we had those children in our lives for a short time. We know hope, because we believe we'll see those children again and that we can touch others with our stories. We know life, because we once gave it to our children, and gradually we learn to trust in life again and to trust in ourselves to navigate life.

Joy. Hope. Life. It's all here. It's all mine. It sustains me.

Peace - D

Stella Got Her Groove Back!

noreply@blogger.com (RiverPoet) — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 12:40:00 +0000

It's been an interesting 24 hours, but I can feel my old self coming back. I'm feeling strong, confident, and ready to rock and roll. I'm hoping this is my last week in therapy, because I'm ready to get back to work and my life. Time to move on and be the highly-competent person that I know myself to be. Once again, I let someone run and (try to) ruin my life, but I'm back, baby! Once I get to feeling like my old self again, it will be much harder for someone to manipulate me into doing something I don't want to do or don't feel I'm ready for. I can feel the forgiveness running through my veins, and I no longer feel as though there was anything else I could have done for Stephanie, for Denise, or for Kim. I did my best, and now it's time to do my best for me.

My theme song of the day is the explicit version of Cee Lo Green's song. This is for you, and you know who you are!

Starting Over

noreply@blogger.com (RiverPoet) — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 17:15:00 +0000

Today I'm starting over.

In search of some balance for myself, I refuse to keep taking the judgment that keeps being heaped on me. In some respects, this is like Denise all over again. I'm being judged for something I can't help, and the person who said she loved me is sitting back feeling superior because of her status and relative control of the situation.

No more. I'm done. I'm taking back my power. I was in a good place after the holidays, and I'll get into that good place again. At this point, I say the serenity prayer and get out of my pity place.

Yesterday I hired a U-Haul truck and a couple of helpers to get my things out of Kim's house. She had thrown quite a bit of my stuff into garbage bags and had it all tossed into the office I had used there; however, I still had to get my things out of the "blue room" where we had so many good times with the boys, reading stories and having parties, and out of the kitchen. It was rough, but I got through it. Last night I slept in my own bed again. Today I have many of the boxes unpacked, and I have my clothes put away in closets and drawers. It's been two long days of sweat and hard work, but I am home.

Last night I did something I really wasn't ready for, though. I went over to Kim's house for a visit. I intended to just see the boys, since I wanted to bring them Easter baskets, but time wore on and Kim pulled into the driveway. She got out of the truck and smiled at me. We hugged for what seemed like a good five minutes or so. It felt hopeful to me. I thought, "Okay, maybe we really can start over." But what started out well ended with me feeling lousy about myself again. She had to make sure to put me in my place and analyze me before the end of the evening. Mind you, I wasn't ready to move back in -- not by a long shot -- but I took her at her word when she said we could "start over." Starting over shouldn't hurt so much.

Though Kim hasn't "had time" to text me back when I texted her, her phone was going off constantly (and she was responding). She joked that old girlfriends were coming out of the woodwork. It was a low blow. I thought, "You know, if you had ever loved me, you wouldn't find new ways to torture me all the time." As Paul put it, if someone has a broken arm, you don't hit them in it while they're healing. Likewise, you don't play head games with someone whose psyche is healing.

There was something I really wanted to know, so I just put it out there. I asked her why she let me leave the house that day, when I had confessed to her that I was suicidal, that I didn't want to go on. She shrugged and said, "What could I do?"

Well, let's see. She's an emergency physician. When a person says they intend to harm themselves or others, what is the protocol? You intervene. You call 911. You at least try to talk to them. She could have called the crisis hotline, or she could have had Paul come get me. Instead, she let me drive out of there. I could have hurt myself and/or someone else. A vehicle is a loaded weapon when one isn't thinking right. I came so close to rolling it out into traffic, and I shudder to think that I could have hurt an innocent person, maybe even a child. I just wasn't thinking right that day, and her inaction spoke volumes about her priorities and about the fact that she didn't really love me at all. In fact, I think she had such animosity towards me that she would rather have let me die than help me. She completely lost her bearings, even as a physician.

She also accused me of pressuring her last night and of wanting everything to go back to the way it was right now. I assured her that was not true and that I couldn't see how moving my things out was pressuring her. I pointed out that she had seemed glad to see me at first and then (probably after she talked to Katherine while she was going to get pizza for us all), she turned it all around and got cold with me again. I'm so tired of the coldness. That's not love. That's not kindness. I'm not sure what that is. I think she was upset because the boys kept asking her if I could stay. That didn't go over well, but none of that came from me. I never mentioned to them anything about me staying. I just told them that the Easter bunny had made a mistake and dropped off baskets at my house for them.

In the hospital, the psychiatrist tried to gently point out to me that perhaps Kim doesn't have a compassionate personality. Perhaps she isn't the right person for me to be with, considering all that I have gone through. She pointed out that I shouldn't have to change who I am or to stifle my feelings just because of an emotionally-distant partner. She was right, of course. I'm not sure Kim knows the meaning of the word "compassion," and I'm pretty sure my psychiatrist had this talk with me after she spoke with Kim about my condition. It would have been pretty easy for her to size up how my so-called partner felt about me from that conversation.

So rather than allow myself to continue to be tortured and raked over the coals, I'm moving on, and this post is the last of what I'll say about her and I (except for the most basic references when I finish writing about the hospitalization experience). She really doesn't deserve any more of my energy. As my friend Patty said, when she saw me rushing into this relationship: "Well, sometimes you just have to hop on the bus. If you find you're on the wrong bus, get a transfer!" I'm getting that transfer token now.

I sent the requisite "Dear Kim" email, telling her that trust is a two-way street and that I was no longer interested in getting to know her because I don't trust her. I know all I need to know. It's best if I don't see her anymore and if I just walk away -- even though it will hurt a lot more than I'm letting on. I just can't keep putting myself through this. If I learned anything from the situation with Denise, it's that going back won't change things. It didn't work, and it won't work.

I'm just reaching out to friends now, as well as working on me. I have another couple of weeks in outpatient therapy and then will be going back to work. I'm planning for the fall semester, and I'm really thinking of moving down to Raleigh to be near Sean once I'm done with the degree. There's nothing else for me up here.

Paul is still staying at the townhouse with me for a little while longer, though he's going on a cruise starting next weekend. Sean is going to come up for a visit with me for that weekend, then I'll be on my own. I'm not afraid to be alone. If today has taught me anything, it's that I can be here alone and find plenty to do. I've been catching up on my rest, but when I find those free moments, I fill them with peaceful activities that make me feel happy and balanced. The bulldogs and I are enjoying a lazy Easter Sunday in which a gentle breeze is blowing the flowering tree in the backyard and the only noise is the quiet rush of air from the A/C.

In time, I will find peace once more. - D

Hospitals and Hell: Part I (edited)

noreply@blogger.com (RiverPoet) — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 20:56:00 +0000

This is a long post, but I hope you'll read it. It's important. This is the brief version of the story of the second worst day of my life. I feel I owe it to myself to explore what happened on April 14th so that perhaps I can understand it and maybe recover. Just know, as you read this, that while it is very difficult to be the person who finds him- or herself with a mental illness, to be the other person in the relationship can be equally confusing, frightening, and frustrating. Mental illness and the misconceptions about it ruin couples every day.

-----------------------------------------
A funny thing happened on the way to my fourth month with Kim; I had a nervous breakdown.

This has been coming on for weeks, or should I say it's been coming on since the day the police came to my door and told me my daughter was dead. I began to grow more and more agitated in the days and weeks leading up to the second anniversary of Stephanie's death, and then it got worse from there. I began to lash out at Kim, and she began to pull back from me. The more she pulled back, though, the worse I got. We had loud, ugly arguments within earshot of the kids. Paul and I never did that, not even when we were in our darkest days. I told my friends, "I don't know what's wrong with me. This isn't like me." None of us put it together, though. It was all so out of character for me.

But what did Kim know about my character? Very little, since I moved in only a short time after I met her. She needed help, and I was glad to do it. She needed wound care, and I did it. She didn't know me before, so she had no context for understanding what was going on with me when the sadness and angst hit me. All she knew was that this woman she loved was losing it, hurting her deeply and scaring the boys in the process. She saved me from killing myself once, just before the anniversary, but I began to think about doing it again. When she asked if I was safe, I lied and said, "Yes. I'm not thinking that way anymore."

But I knew that something was really wrong in my head and some days all I wanted to do was to make it stop. If I could have slept, I would have slept for a week. If I could have eaten, I would have eaten everything in the refrigerator. Anything to make it stop.

I was seeing myself acting out, but I couldn't stop myself. I had already gone to the psychiatrist and to the therapist. My psychiatrist took me off the bipolar med in January, telling me he didn't think I had bipolar disorder at all and that sleep was what I really needed. He changed my meds and sent me on my way. Late last month, when I was up for three days with less than a few hours sleep, I went back to him, with Kim in tow. I said, "I'm not sleeping - at all." Kim's observation was that I was "very productive" when I didn't sleep. The laundry was done. The kitchen was clean. The pantry was stocked. I guess that was all good and not too scary, eh? All my projects at work were ahead of schedule, and I was taking on extra ones. It should have been a warning sign to me, but what I knew to look for in my daughter, I failed to recognize in myself.

The doctor gave me another anti-depressant that was good for sleep and anxiety, according to him. So I added one more pill to the mix. I began to sleep, and for a few days, I felt better.

But I was going into a full-blown crisis. Descending into hell.

Some of the symptoms I was having - besides my impulsiveness, agitation, and sleeplessness - were attacks of shaking and being cold, having flashbacks to the day I got the news about Stephanie. It's like I was reliving it over and over again. Nothing good was getting through to me. Even if Kim hadn't begun to pull away from me, I wouldn't have heard anything good she had to say to me. The stress of every little thing began to get to me. I wasn't able to handle anything with any strength or grace. She says that I complained about everything. My nerves felt as though they were on the outside of my body, and everything everywhere hurt. I wanted to be held so that I wouldn't feel as though I were falling to pieces, but ...

In the middle of this crisis, I had surgery to do the test implant of the neurostimulator for my bladder. Wrong decision. Though the device worked and I'll eventually go forward with having the permanent implant, the anesthesia made my anger and frustration worse. I wanted to sleep for days, but instead I started fighting with Kim even more. I think we both expected me to be functional the day after surgery, but I wasn't. Far from it. She called in the sitter to take care of the kids.

Things began to unravel rapidly. I tried to return to work on Monday, though I still felt lousy. At times, i would simply stare into the computer monitor, losing myself in my thoughts, which raced and jumped from one topic to another. I managed to get my bills paid for the month, for the most part, but I had to file an extension for my taxes. I simply couldn't get it together, and I still haven't. Everything felt out of sync and disjointed, and last Wednesday evening, it all fell completely apart.

I was freezing cold and trembling all over. I paid our sitter for an extra two hours with the boys because I was in such distress by the end of my work day. During a meeting, I had to have the manager repeat questions to me because I couldn't retain a thought for more than a minute. I wrote it off to being tired and recovering from surgery. I told the babysitter, a young woman who knew my daughter from AA, that I was feeling completely stressed out, exhausted, out of my head, and unable to function. I told her that I felt like Kim and I were hopelessly drifting apart, in large part because I couldn't function and couldn't be whatever it was she needed me to be. I was too distraught to recognize how deep the cracks were penetrating into my psyche. I was too distraught to know what to do. I thought maybe I should go away for a few days, as Kim had suggested earlier in the week. ("Would it help if you took a few days to be by yourself?" she had asked.)

The sitter said, "Maybe it would be good for you. Maybe you just need some sleep and a few days off."

I nodded. She was trying to be supportive. She'd seen some of the arguments and had seen how stressed out I had been about everything. Because she had known Stephanie, we had a bit of a bond. But neither she nor Kim has ever seen me at my best. They have only seen this desperate woman who was headed at breakneck speed toward a full-on meltdown.

Woodenly, I threw some things in a suitcase and took some items out of the room I shared with Kim. I intended to pay the sitter for the rest of the evening and just leave, but I felt like I was going to fall down from exhaustion. So I went to the basement and left a note for Kim. I told her that I had to go off and deal with my crap and she had to deal with hers. I told her I couldn't handle anything right then, not even talking.

Sometime during the wee hours, Kim came down and flipped the light on in the basement bedroom, wanting to know what was going on. She hadn't seen the note. She later said she'd half-expected to find me dead down there. Wouldn't that have been ironic, since my daughter died that same way? Of an overdose at the home of a friend, in the basement room? We argued back and forth and then she went back upstairs. I fell asleep.

In the morning, I felt a little clearer and wanted to talk to her. It was far too late for that. She was angry and hurt. My need for space and some time to think turned into a breakup. She marched the boys in front of me and told me to say goodbye to them, because they were a "package deal." I couldn't find any way to convince her that we could talk, that we could figure it all out. She was done. For the record, I didn't say goodbye to those children. They were crying and so was I. I told them I would see them later. The whole situation was way out of control.

The thing is, bipolar disorder is an illness that you can't control through willpower or inner strength. The brain chemistry is so out of whack that sometimes it can only be balanced through a medication or a combination of medications. In my case, it is taking some intensive intervention to try to get everything on an even keel.

I read a wonderful book a few years ago called "An Unquiet Mind," by Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison, a clinical psychologist who suffers from bipolar disorder. (She also wrote a beautiful memoir about the loss of her husband, Dr. Richard Wyatt.) Jamison - who certainly knew a great deal about the disorder, both academically and personally - had episodes that threatened her life, her education, her career, and her relationships. In fact, her illness was so devastating that she actually did attempt suicide. She now celebrates that day as her new beginning.

Maybe I will forever remember April 14th as the day I got a chance to start life over again. I didn't "pull the trigger," so to speak, but I did at first contemplate taking my foot off the brake and rolling out in front of a semi that was barreling north on Hwy 15 (but Lily and CC were in the car with me and I couldn't sacrifice them for the sake of my own illness), and then I contemplated finishing off all of my pills in a cup of yogurt, crushing up the extended release ones for an immediate, heart-stopping rush of chemicals. Instead, I began to cry. I cried and cried harder. Kim called Paul and told him that I had left the house, intending to hurt myself. He called me and kept calling me back every time I hung up. I managed to get to the townhouse, which we'd been packing up and cleaning up, preparing to rent it out, and, as he had done so many times before for physical maladies, he took me to the hospital and handled everything. He had never seen me like I was that day, and true to his word to our son, he never abandoned me. I'll always be grateful to him that he has saved my life on multiple occasions; this was no exception.

It took two years, but Stephanie's death added to all the physical and emotional stress finally broke me in two.

I was in the ER until about 1 o'clock in the morning. I surrendered my personal belongings and answered pages and pages of questions from a social worker. I signed a form, voluntarily admitting myself into a psychiatric hospital to which I was taken by ambulance and delivered at around 2 a.m.

It was the most frightening, humbling experience of my life, being taken into a locked ward and strip-searched for anything with which I could hurt myself. I was handed disposable scrubs to wear by a staff member who looked at me with suspicion and disdain. Instead of being treated as someone who was ill, I was being treated as someone who was suspect, stigmatized, and despised. I felt as though I were in jail, and my dignity was gone.

What came next was hope and help, but that first night, all I could think was that I would have rather had the yogurt cocktail.

"I long ago abandoned the notion of a life without storms, or a world without dry and killing seasons. Life is too complicated, too constantly changing, to be anything but what it is. And I am, by nature, too mercurial to be anything but deeply wary of the grave unnaturalness involved in any attempt to exert too much control over essentially uncontrollable forces. There will always be propelling, disturbing elements, and they will be there until, as Lowell put it, the watch is taken from the wrist. It is, at the end of the day, the individual moments of restlessness, of bleakness, of strong persuasions and maddened enthusiasms, that inform one's life, change the nature and direction of one's work, and give final meaning and color to one's loves and friendships." - Kay Redfield Jamison

D

Blindness (7 of 30)

noreply@blogger.com (RiverPoet) — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 23:40:00 +0000

I found out today that Kim has been suffering from a lot of physical pain recently -- neck, shoulders, head -- and hasn't been saying anything about it to me.

Normally, it is something I'd pick up on just by being observant, but so many things vie for my attention these days, so much has happened, that I missed it. This hasn't exactly been a calm, windless sea we've sailed, but Kim is a huge blessing who came into my life at just this moment. She's been an amazing rock for me these last few weeks, just the best partner I could have ever imagined, and I've expressed my gratitude in all the ways I could muster. The best way I could have expressed it, however, is by noticing.

It isn't that she has said anything to me about my lack of focus on her, no guilt trips, pleas for appreciation/attention, or anything like that. No. All she did was ask if I could get her something for pain today. Then she mentioned that she'd tried using a heating pad on her neck to no avail.

"What's wrong with your neck?" I asked. I honestly didn't know.

"It's just stress," she said.

Her job can be stressful, though not as much as it used to be when she worked twelve-hour shifts in the ER, though something in her voice told me it wasn't work-related. Something in her face confirmed it. Was it the tiny worry lines? I'm not sure, but suddenly I realized -- really got it -- that everything I'd been through lately had taken a huge toll on her, as well. And it was all piled on top of other stressors (for example, an elderly father who is sick). I was incapable of being a good partner the last couple of weeks, incapable of any balance, but she loved me anyway.

She quickly assured me that she loved me and that she didn't want all the apologies and solicitations she knew were coming (because when I've been present, I've apologized all over the place). She said that she knew there was nothing that could be helped about the way things had been lately, that she just wished she could fix it all for me. Trust me, if she could have fixed it, I would have let her. If she could have fixed it, she would have made me accept the help.

Lest you think this is about some kind of false praise or coercion (because let's face it -- if you were around during my last relationship, you know that was always a probability), let me assure you that Kim doesn't have to guilt me into praising her. She doesn't have to point out how she saved my life. It's obvious who has been right there by my side through this very dark period. When I've cried, when I've raged, when I've fallen into a depressed silence, she's been there. She has put food in front of me. She has checked on me. She has loved me, in spite of me being at my worst. She deserves all the love and praise I could give her.

My need to fix people was (is?) all about codependency. For Kim, it is a critical part of who she is, woven into her fiber. Kim is accustomed to saving lives and then fading into the background. Being in emergency medicine, she sits at the cusp between life and death, straddling the fine line between them, sometimes able to yank a person back from the precipice and other times having to acknowledge that forces beyond her have prevailed. It is her job and her nature to try to fix what most of us could never hope to fix -- damaged, broken bodes. Just the other night, she kept a baby alive at the urgent care center while the ambulance was on its way. I imagine the gratitude those parents feel when I think of it. As a mom who has lost, I know how grateful I would have been if anyone had been able to save Stephanie.

What Kim wanted to fix with me, though, was more of a broken soul. During the inevitable slew of apologies that spilled out of me, I actually said, "Well, it's not as though I were going to die..."

She put up one finger and said, "Yes, what you went through was life-threatening..."

She's right, of course, which made me want to apologize more. She and the boys had to witness my breakdown, and as bad as it felt from the inside, there is no way for me to know what it looked like or felt like to those outside my head. Instead of being able to resuscitate me and keep me alive, though, she had to talk me into life.

I hung my head. "This is why I tried to leave," I said. "This is why I tried to push you away, to save you from having to deal with it all."

Again, she said, "But I love you."

So this wonderful, kind, beautiful woman has been dealing with stress at work and stress at home, and then stress from me on top of it all. Whereas I wanted to make her life easier, I've sometimes made it more difficult. But has she complained? No. She just asked for a little help today.

Now it seems like the worst has passed. The seas are calm and sleep is trying to return. I'm so grateful that she is the one who is there when I fall asleep and there when I wake up. I'm grateful for the little sweethearts who call out, "I love you, hot dog!" or "I love you, Dora-mom!" I never want to cause any of them a moment's pain or sadness.

It's time to live. It is so time to live.

Peace - D

Star Light, Star Bright

noreply@blogger.com (RiverPoet) — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 01:13:00 +0000

It's been 24 months--that's right, two years--since Stephanie died. If there is a God, my angel is resting well in the next life or is working hard on some task she needs to do. I don't know if there is an afterlife, if there is reincarnation, or if there is nothing, but I suspect, given the feeling that I have of her, that the soul goes on. Her soul has moved into another form, no longer animating the body she could never count on.

This post isn't about sadness, however. It's about renewal. In her wake, Stephanie left sadness, sure, but she also left us with a chance to find our own happiness. without worrying over her physical and mental health 24 hours a day.

We who loved her have tortured ourselves these last two years, wracked with guilt over things we could not control, over things that could not be taken back or fixed--ever. We who were left had to find a way to go on without her. That has been difficult. Collectively, we - her immediate family - have suffered. We have lost sleep, come close to ending it all, cried, screamed, sought therapy, sought friends and loved ones to listen to us, sought silence, and have felt simply wretched for two years. In some religions and cultures, there is a definite time limit put upon grieving. One enters into a period of mourning, during which it is acceptable to show outward signs of grief, the most recognizable of which is the wearing of black clothing. In modern USA, there is no such guideline. We simply grieve until we cannot help but come alive again. I am coming alive again.

Paul will handle his grief in his way. Sean will handle his grief in his way.

This has been such a trying weekend, as Sean is moving to Raleigh. I should say he has moved, since he and his dad will be unloading the truck into the apartment tomorrow. Tonight, they are in a hotel near the apartments. It is a hard weekend to have my son in another state and now living away for good. It has been hard on all of us, and we have each been by turns snappy, anxious, and weepy. But we are coming alive. We can't help it. He is starting a new life with a new job and a new city. He is doing what his sister could not do and did not live to do--grow up. We parents (biological and step) are immensely proud of him.

Life has richly blessed us. Paul has been with his girlfriend for nearly two years now. He now has teenage daughters to think about. I've been with Kim a shorter time, but we have two little boys to think about. And we all have Sean. He has us. We are a modern family: 3 moms, 1 dad, 3 brothers, and 2 sisters. I've lost count of the animals. We collectively have a lot of love between us, and that love is healing.

Today, on the way out of town, Paul and Sean went through a brief and sudden hailstorm (out of an otherwise dreary, cold, drizzly day). I told them I thought it was Stephanie's version of a going away party for her brother.

On the way to the mall to get my hair cut, I was behind the very car we bought for Stephanie in 2001. How do I know? The little old couple driving it looked like the ones who bought the car after she died. While there is a slim chance it wasn't her car, I felt that it was. It was in front of me all the way down Hwy 15. As we drove into the mall area, they split off and went a different way and then ended up across the parking space from me. The hair stood up on the back of my neck.

"Hello, Stephanie," I said aloud.

I feel that her soul is still around. She comes to us in dreams. She communicates, like she did today. She is not gone; she is simply in a new form. And she wants us to be renewed. She wants us to be happier people.

We're working on that.

Peace - D

Ticking

noreply@blogger.com (RiverPoet) — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 17:35:00 +0000

My little shrine has been disassembled, the one that contained a double picture of Stephanie (age 2 and age 14), a small Buddha statue, a heart, and a candle. It may reappear here and there, but for now, I don't feel I need it. Instead, I'm enjoying each piece of it separately.

Baby steps.

D