Stages of Grief

I suppose I thought I'd passed it by. The memories and the hurts of this day. I thought Maybe this will be the first year that it won't hurt. It won't anguish. I won't grieve...

We left church and were driving home, and I felt like a vacuum came and sucked all of the oxygen out of my chest. Emotions surged and washed and soared and I couldn't define it or describe it or psychoanalyze it, in that moment. I felt angry. Super angry. Angrier than I've ever felt before.

It was bizarre, because it was so completely unexpected. In the years past, February has been filled with the conflicted feelings of grief and joy all surrounding a day... the day my children were born. The day of loss. The day of death. The day that my physical body was free from the weight of them, and the day the psychological agony, the emotional strain, the intensity of it all began. Five years they were in and out of hospitals. Five years of never knowing if this sickness was going to be the one to take them for good. Five years of spending so much time in the PICU that the nurses recognized and knew us by name as we walked in. Five years of grief and guilt and sorrow.

Anger was new. But angry, I was. I asked my husband to keep driving. I didn't want to go home. I didn't want to stop moving. I can't say why, it's just where I was at. I am angry. I'm angry about all of the grief and the loss. I'm angry about all of the years I worried and waited... waited for them to die, and waited for them to get better. I'm angry about not carrying them longer. I'm angry about not remembering to cherish each beautiful moment, because I was so overwhelmingly afraid all.the.time.

How can you love your own children in that atmosphere? You can't. Not really. Love is not fear.

I was so alone in that surgical room. I remember feeling so immensely alone, and the solitude of that weight is daunting. I remember the sobbing, the burden... so many things I can't define. I remember the nurse who held me, and I remember apologizing over and over again for crying so fiercely. I was so tired, nuggets. I was so tired and afraid, and exhausted. I just wanted it to be done, but I also wanted it to continue. I was torn between the death of myself and the death of you, and I felt lost. I didn't know if I would ever see you or hold you. I didn't know if I would ever hear you cry or see you smile. I didn't know anything, and in that moment the weight of the entire world crashed down on my exhausted, over-weighted body. I broke.

In the car tonight, I felt alone. A voice whispered in my brain: You're not alone now and you weren't alone then. I know that. I hold on to that with all the might that my fragile hands can. Truth is rooting. It anchors us to the earth while the waves wash over. I was not alone then, and I'm not alone now. Even if my feelings say otherwise.

I wish that this story could be defined in a beautiful way. I wish, my beloved nuggets that the deep and intense love I have for you will never be lost in the grief of that singular day. I hope that my lifetime of dying for you over and over again will be the foundation of love and affection that you hold on to when your own waves of loneliness wash over. I begged God over and over again for your lives. In every plea, he mercifully saw my grief and answered the call. He healed you and has kept you here, and I know His purpose for you is magnificent!

I hope you see mercy in these stories. I hope you understand, maybe just a little, why I've spent so many days afraid, and worked so hard to overcome this weakness in myself. I hope you never misinterpret this sorrow as your fault, or your burden to bear. It's not. The sorrow is my own. It's my own weakness, my own flaws, my own vulnerability. It's when my body broke, even though my will wanted something else. It is the singularly most powerful lesson where God showed me His divinity and my humanity and without it I would not be who I am.

You three, and your precious older sister, saved me. You saved me from the greatest lie the devil ever convinced me of: that I am running this show.

But tonight, I felt so angry. Tonight I feel so sad. Tonight I feel sorry. Sorry for what I wasn't able to do. Sorry for what didn't happen. Sorry that I didn't get to be awake to hear your first cries, and see your tiny bodies. Sorry that my stupid body wasn't numb, and sorry that I couldn't control the screams that surged out of my as they cut in, so that Dr. E knew I could feel it all. Sorry that you were taken away from me, and I was sent home with out you for 6 weeks. Sorry that you didn't get to breast feed, and that you were poked and prodded and pestered for years after your birth. I'm sorry that I didn't carry you longer so that you were stronger and more able to handle the germs that came at you.

I'm sorry for every IV you've had to get, every feeding tube, every blood draw, every PIC line... I'm sorry, because every time they did it to you all I felt in my heart is I'm a freaking asshole... if I had only carried them longer!

So I'm angry... maybe next year I'll reach acceptance?

pain

Sometimes the pain is so intense that I'm doubled over, trying not to throw up, sobbing. I have a mass, of some sort, growing on one of my ovaries. It became infected. We are hoping it's a cyst that will dissolve.

I have finished my antibiotics. I will go back for a follow up visit in several weeks to be re-scanned (this will be looking to see if it's grown, shrunk, or disappeared - yay for disappearing acts!). Why am I telling you this? A lot of reasons.

The first is that to attempt to define this pain to you is impossible. It comes in unpredictable waves, but always with the same level of intensity. It begins in my back, and then shoots throw my pelvis making labor seem like a walk in the park. Nothing helps (well, by "nothing" I mean ibuprofin doesn't help, because I don't take heavy duty painkillers as a general policy in regards to myself).

America, I am filled with blessings. Please don't read this as a complaint letter. It's not. I have health insurance. I have an amazing team of medical providers, who tell me when to be concerned and when not to be. I have a husband who rubs my shoulders and sits with me while I cry and breathe and wait it out. I have children who do their best to help out, and who have compassion and mercy in having to miss out on events we were planning to go to because one of those waves came crashing down on me. I am disgustingly fortunate. I do not take this for granted for one moment.

The second is because it has reminded me how often we carry burdens that we don't share. Very few people know what is going on here. Not because it's a secret, it's just not something that generally comes up in conversation. Hey guys! How are ya? I have an infected mess of something on my ovary! It hurts like a son of a motherless goat! How about them apples!?!! 

How many times have we come in to contact with someone particularly feisty or snippy, and assumed they were just a jerk? How many times have we made assessments and judgments about the people we encounter, when we don't have all the details? Why is it so difficult to assume the best in people? Why is it so easy to believe the worst?

Thirdly, prayer is powerful. I am terrified of cancer. I had court side tickets to my Mom's cancer. It wasn't glamorous or beautiful. It was fierce and awful. The devil knows this fear in me. He prods it and stokes those coals in my heart, trying to ignite a fire. If I'm paralyzed by fear, then I have forsaken Love.

This morning a wave came. I say "wave" because it really comes like that. It is sudden and uncontrollable. There will be no pain and then all of a sudden I feel like I can't catch my breath. Even if I'm sobbing, I still know how fortunate I am.