This season has been incredibly hard for me. There have been several things that have just
been looming over my head, my mind, my thoughts. But in the self-protective way that I do, I push
it under the surface and pretend that everything is okay. I move on.
I keep going. I have become
pretty good at acting, pretty good at pretending that this isn’t killing
me.
Two and a half years later and I still can’t really come to
grips with the fact that you’re actually gone.
That it really is over. That I
won’t ever see you here again. I can go into “fact mode” and discuss
it. I can talk about details and what
happened. But when I do, it is
shallow. It is from a third party
perspective. It isn’t personal. I don’t
feel a connection to it, it is as if I am telling a story about someone else,
but it is even more impersonal than that.
I suppress the hurt, the pain, the grief. I push it aside. I cant tell the story no problem.
At Kylie’s school recently I had a mom ask me questions
about how you died. And I easily went
into the story. It was no problem and I felt
nothing at all. There was no personal
connection to it at all. I told her how
you died in your sleep. I told her how I
went into action mode, I called people, I notified everyone, I talked to the
medical examiner. I made Dad eat. I did all of that. I was the adult. I took care of everyone. And it was mostly easy to talk about. It is easier to pull myself out of it than to
accept the reality. But really? I died a
little that day. Calling people killed
me. Hearing everyone’s grief, all of
their reactions, those notifications killed me in a way that I shouldn’t have had
to experience. This shouldn’t have been
my job. But it was. And since it was, I have to remove myself
from that pain because it is just too much to bear. I just can’t really handle it. It still isn’t real. You being gone, mom, just can’t be real.
A few days after that instance at the school, I was in the
kitchen washing dishes when the dog started barking. The first thought that went through my head
was that perhaps we had a surprise visitor.
The first person I hoped it was?
You. In one instant I had true
real hope that you were at my door and in those nanoseconds in my brain I had a
full rollercoaster of emotions. Hope to
see you. Reality of you being gone. Sadness of missing you. Feeling like an idiot for forgetting. And crashing into despair that I’ll never see
you here again. All of this happened in
an instant but it was so real. Once
again I had to bury it. That
rollercoaster was way too heavy to be able to deal with. I can’t handle that disappointment, that
reality.
Christmas Eve service was outside. It was dusk.
I was standing at our seats with the kids when a woman gasped in horror
and then said my name with relief. For
an instant she thought I was you. And
she went on a little of the rollercoaster that I had gone on that night where I
thought you might be at my door. And the
moments after might have been a little awkward for both of us, but I found
myself comforting her, and again assuring her that I was okay. I took care of her. I removed myself again from my own pain and
took care of this sweet woman. It has
become my role, to care for others who have lost you.
I did my best this season to not mourn you, to not miss
you. I tried hard to pretend like it was
all okay. But somehow you kept coming up
in every situation. The past week or so
I have been dreading today. New Year’s
Eve. You and Dad’s anniversary. New Years Eve was always about you two. And I don’t mean that in a bad way,
either. It was a happy day and I loved
how special it was for the two of you. I
just keep having this flashback of this memory I have, my favorite New Year’s Eve
memory. I can’t get past it, can’t get
it out of my mind.
We were in the Continental Ranch house, I had to be in
middle school. It was before you redid
the house. We were in those big rolling
chairs at the kitchen table. It was your
anniversary, New Years Eve, but you guys decided to spend it with us. We were having a candlelit dinner. It was
steak, but I don’t remember what else was on our plates. Dad had gotten new thick blown glass wine
glasses from Five Bridges, I think, and we had Martinelli’s in them. Dad
whisked you into the dimly lit living room to dance to Luther Vandross with you.
I remember feeling embarrassed to be witnessing this
intimate moment between the two of you.
You guys slow dancing in the near dark to your wedding song, I was
wishing to be anywhere else, wishing that you guys had the privacy you
deserved. But there was also a part of
me that felt happy. Happy that you guys
loved each other, happy that you didn’t hide it, and hopeful that someday I
would find a man who would slow dance with me and romance me that way.
But now I am so glad that I have that moment to
remember. I am so glad that you shared
that evening with us. It is really truly
one of my absolute favorite memories. I
have had a heavy heart for a couple days…I have been deeply missing you. As I have been trying to hold the tears at
bay, I have also been able to reminisce on this one particular memory. This memory isn’t tainted by any
sadness. It makes me smile every time I
think of it.
I can hear the words of the song in my head. I can see you swaying to the music. I can almost feel the butterflies in your
stomach, the smile on your heart. It
makes me long to go back there…to not only remember it, but to experience it
again. To hear you, to see you, for you
to be real. For you to not be a distant
fading memory anymore, a topic that I avoid, a non-personal fact. I want you to go back to being my mom. To
dancing in the dark with Dad. To being
Kylie’s best friend. To being our rock and
supporter. To fighting for the hearts of
my family. To being a prayer warrior for
us.
I need you to help explain to me why. Why would you take a risk like this? Why would you choose that medication when you
knew the risks? In order for me to really be able to process this, to be able
to accept it, I need to be able to talk to you.
You are the only person who can help me through this and you are also
the only person who can’t be here to help me through it. I think this is why I feel so lost about it
all. This is why I have to make it a
fact, an impersonal and unattached fact.
But you can’t stay that way.
Because fact is, I ache for you.
I miss you so deeply that everything about me is scarred by the loss of
you. I am no longer me, I am a numb,
cold, robot version of who I used to
be. I long to go back to candlelit steak
dinners with you and Dad dancing to Luther Vandross. I long to curl up in your bed and watch
movies with you. I hurt, mom. I hurt without you and I don’t know how to
keep going. I feel stuck and trapped
here and I don’t know how to change that.
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