Letters to Ryan: I Never Told You (Babies)

Hello again Sweetheart,

One of my biggest regrets is keeping secrets.
It's not being completely and utterly raw with you about how I felt.
It's waiting until it was too late to share things.

I had a small box of baby things I'd already started. I thought I would share them with you when I was ready for a baby. When I was really ready to try. Balls-to-the-Wall, Sink-or-Swim, Let's-Make-a-Baby TRY. I'd collected a few things already that I thought were adorable.

You never knew. 

I know you were ready for kids but I was still scared. Scared of not being a good mom. Scared of not being able to be a mom. I'd practiced for 10 years telling myself it was ok if I couldn't. And then I met you. For the first time in my life I'd met a man I wanted to have kids with. I wanted you to deliver our children. You were so good at your job and I knew it. You had it as a bucket list item and I wanted to give that gift to you. I found the right OB/GYN to make it happen.

I was scared I couldn't provide for them - I had too much in student loans and I wanted to give them the best: the organic food, the gymnastics classes and soccer lessons and whatever they wanted to try I wanted to be in a position financially to offer it. If we had kids you'd have a wife whose debt made those options more difficult. I wanted a better life for our kids than you or I had.

I should have told you I was saving that tiny box of onesies and Little Golden Books. I should have told you that I didn't want to just have kids. I should have told you that I only wanted kids if they were with you.

I love you. I miss you. I haven't forgotten you.

All my Heart,
Stephanie

Tragedy + Time

The Middle Finger

Some days I wake up and it feels like Life is shitting all over me. I crawl into my closet, don my T-shirt and crawl back into bed. I mean this both literally and figuratively. This past weekend was an example. I was not having it...

Fortunately, there are other days, though much fewer and farther between right now, where I wake up at the ass crack of dawn to bust out a run. Where Life is throwing lemons at me and I'm just grabbing them, stomping all over them, drinking vodka straight out the bottle, throwing up my middle finger to everything around me and screaming "EFF all of this!"

These are the days I try to prove something to myself. I try to prove that I can run farther than I thought, I can get out of bed when I don't want to, I can go to work and get done what needs to be done, and I can be good at it again. They are the days when I forget all the bad decisions, all the negative energy over the last many months and I just choose for that morning, or that day, or that week - however long it lasts - I choose to do the absolute best I can to go kick ass.

They are the days when I hold the necklaces around my neck and whisper "Watch me Sweetie. I wish you were here but I'm doing this for you." and I'm proud of what I accomplished instead of exhausted and disappointed by the wrecked individual that I've spent so much time trapped inside. This usually comes when I've had enough. When I've fought flashbacks and day terrors and nightmares all weekend. When I haven't slept well. When another piece of information deals a new blow. I get fed up with it all but instead of retreating, I somehow manage to grasp ahold of hope and struggle forward, even if it's not what I want and even if it's painful.

I am not stronger one day or another. I am not "grieving" or "not grieving"....I will be left with a sore heart, with an ache of what I couldn't ever have with Ryan, for the rest of my life. It's just that for whatever reason, on one day versus another, I find enough energy and resolve to make that day different. Instead of being worn out by another "no" or by another person's silence; instead of being disappointed by another brick wall, instead of hating myself and judging myself and wondering what I did wrong to be discarded by friends and family and strangers --- on these days I remind myself that they don't matter.

And I make my day count.

Letters to Ryan: September 27th

Hey Sweetheart,

We miss you. I miss your hugs. I miss your confidence. I miss your support. I miss your smile. I miss your touch and your compliments. Liberty and Buddy miss Daddy. (The cranky cat does not miss getting roughed up)

Liberty went to her first group class yesterday: Confidence Building. I think it's more for me than her. She did great, of course. You picked the smartest (and most stubborn) of the litter. She's walking better on the harness and we're working on anxiety.

On Friday I was coming home and saw a dog get hit by a van. Back legs broken and possibly a pelvic fracture plus multiple abrasions and contusions obviously. Even in pain he was still more loyal than a most people. I sat in the rain with him trying to calm him and keep him from running into traffic. A few others stopped and got out to help me. We got him to a vet and when I finally got home I was cold and wet and I just wanted you there to tell you about it and get a hug. You were my calm and reassuring right hand in any scenario.

I've worked in the yard more and it's looking great. I've incorporated more blues in the yard because it reminds me of you. The rose bush you planted for me is beautiful. Thank you so much for doing that, darling.

Chargers lost to the Vikings today. Rivers. Oh Rivers. You would have yelled so many times. But the O-line is really where the problems lie right now. I know you're gone, obviously, but it's hard to believe some days. I just don't understand.

I miss your eyes. You know our babies would have had the prettiest eyes. I love you, Sweetie. You are not forgotten.

Wordless Wednesday: Protecting my Sanity

Planning for What You Can't Know

This morning I woke up and dragged myself out of bed, put on shorts and running shoes, and was downtown on the trail by 5:45am. Tonight I came home and ran hills for 40 minutes. I fucking hate hills. But the burn in my lungs and the vomit reflex in my gut dulled the pain in my heart and finally blurred a mind currently running low on glucose. It’s been a rough week. Yesterday I planned to run – I didn’t. Sunday I acted pretty normal up until I crashed out at 4pm and did nothing the rest of the day. Saturday I finished a 6 mile run before sunrise. That run is the only thing I remember about last week. The rest of what went on was just some chick taking up space on this planet and using oxygen…

Depression is one thing – there’s a uniquely abnormal normalcy to it. Nothing prepares you for cycles within grief. 

It’s fair to say that the last 8 months and 9 days have all been rough; but it’s impossible to plan on the week where you can’t get out of bed or where you crawl back into bed every day as soon as you’re home. When the week before you’d managed 30 miles but today opening your eyes is too much to handle. It’s impossible to plan for a morning which goes so well and something – who knows what – flips a switch in your mind and you zombie it through the rest of the day. When I spend hours fighting thoughts which attempt to intrude. It’s at those times I think: Who is this person? Don’t you want to try? Don’t you want to live?

Yes and No.

The strategy I’ve attempted is to simply back myself into a corner – pay for the sand volleyball league and you’ll be sure to go, buy the chair for reading so you can set it up in the corner and be productive in some way. Treat yourself to a new dress (one that actually fits) to push you to go out for dinner…

The techniques that used to work don’t anymore because the person they worked on is gone. And I have no idea who this new female is that stands in her place. Because the thing is, you can’t plan for literally nothing mattering. 

It’s so hard to decide a course of action when 5 minutes or 2 hours or 1 day or 2 weeks later your feeling will flip and overwhelm you. You can’t expect that even something as standard as feeding the dogs, feeding the cat, or feeding yourself will actually happen. Sometimes it’s because you literally cannot remember. Sometimes it’s because you don’t really care. I feel like I should care, but right now I don’t even feel.

The Questions

How was Ryan any different than the 400 others that he worked with?
Why do those that whine and complain, that are never satisfied, even those that are mean and cruel - why do they still financial stability, happiness, friends and parties, families that love and support them? Why do they get a husband or wife to spoon at the end of the night? Why has everyone forgotten about him? Why do I not matter anymore - why did you lie and tell me I did?

Where did everyone go? 

What did he do to not deserve peace? What did I do to not deserve happily ever after? 

Philosophy Friday: When We Are Fighting Our Hardest

I think it applies to anyone that kindness makes a much bigger difference when someone is at at their lowest -- and perhaps most unlovely -- versus when they're on top -- or easiest to love.

Alternately, on my "good" or "not bad" days, I'm still fighting. It's still exhausting.

I came home today

I came home today.

Traffic was light. I pulled up at 4:48. Turned into our neighborhood and realized

...I am early, but it doesn't matter.

Because he isn't there.

I have 7 hours and 12 minutes left in my day. And no one to spend it with. Because they all left. But even if they were here...the person that I could survive even alone with he isn't here.

I could have spent hours with him, snuggled into bed, made a meal, gone out for dinner or a drink.

Talked. Touched. Smiled.

I don't walk around expecting him to appear. I know that, I learned that, I've lived that for the last 8 months and 5 days. But I still get the heart pangs when something hits me unexpectedly and I realize - it can't go back to the way it was. It will never be the same.

I miss you Sweetheart

They Don't Want to Know

A lesson I was not ready to learn. For me, it was less than 3 months.
Whatever you do, release them from the obligation they so obviously don't want...
for it will protect you more than false promises and pain of secondary loss right at the
point that your shock begins to wear off and the initial fog breaks.

The "Worst" Loss

“Losing a child IS the WORST”

I don’t know…

 

I don’t know what it is like to create and carry a child for 9 months

I only know that I was supposed to – that I had picked an OB/GYN who would let him deliver when the time came because it was an event he wanted to experience more than anything.
“I’ve delivered enough crack babies, I want to with my own.”

I don’t know what it’s like to birth a child

I only know that when our gross little mess of new life was laid on my chest, that I’d look at him or her and say “Hello Nolan” or “Hello Elyse”. That this step in life was ours to take together, and he was the only one I'd wanted to try it with. I only know that he had claimed the name of his first son years before and had signed off a week prior to his death on my suggestion for our daughter.

I don’t know what the "firsts" were like: to hear the first words, first “I love you”, or see the first smile

I only what it feels like to play on repeat our last conversation, remember our last words running them through my brain every day, to hear his last “I Love You”, and to remember how he smiled at me specifically - to remember the unique smiles of intimacy and love.

I don’t know what it’s like to pick a little boy up from scraped knees, broken bones, and tell him “It’s ok”

I only know what it feels like to get the call that he’s in the hospital and to leave dinner to go be with him, to rub his feet because he’s been on them all day, to massage his back because the muscle that tore still hurts just standing for too long. I only know what it’s like when he tells me it’s hurting and he’s frustrated and he’s tired, to wrap my entire body around him and tell him it’s ok while wracking my brain to figure out what I can do to keep him from hurting any more. And for my answer to still not keep him here or stop the hurting before it was too late.

I don’t know what it’s like for a teenage boy high on hormones to yell “I hate you!” and to still love him

I only know what it’s like for a grown man at a low point of depression to say
“I don’t want you” and to still love him.

I don’t know what it’s like to pour my life into someone every day for 18 years

I only know that it was my responsibility to take care of him now. That for many every day “will be” different now, but for me every day “IS” different because he was the most important person in my life and he was present every day. I only know that I was blessed to have him for 1,252 days, and that it will never be long enough. I only know that I feel robbed of 50 more years with my Every Day.

 …I only know how frustrating and unhelpful it is to have your pain, which is so excruciating and overwhelming, not justified and to hear from others that it is still not as bad as another.

I only know me. I know that I hurt for his mom; that thankfully she is seemingly the only person that hasn't attempted to compare. Thankfully we have looked at each other and said "I don't even know how you..." and we respect the different love, the different relationship, and the different travel within grief that each other is going through. For that I am so grateful.

When I was Twelve

When I was twelve I wanted a white poufy dress and flowers galore.  I wanted a wedding.
Being a tomboy I wasn't ever the one sitting around picking out wedding colors and floral arrangements and naming all my future kids. But if I thought about it, I knew one day, that the traditional wedding was something I'd get to enjoy. Tomboys can still be Daddy's girls - you look forward to the walking down the aisle moment.

When I was sixteen I wanted kids.
I didn't know how many or when, but similar to the twelve year old, I saw that happening. The last two weeks of my sixteenth year, after dozens of trips to the ER, years of visits to the OB/GYN and a second, 7 hour surgery at Walter Reed, I found out that was not a certainty I could be given. "We'll talk about it when you get to that stage in life" was the answer I'd been left with. I spent the next ten years convincing myself kids weren't necessary for my happiness. If I held onto that dream, it was likely that I would try and fail and putting motherhood on a pedestal seemed like a way to get really hurt down the line.

When I was twenty-two I wanted something small and intimate. I wanted a marriage.
I imagined my future husband and I would be fronting most of the expense and I'd realized watching others marry that the wedding business was a nightmare of dollar signs and more choices than you could imagine. A rustic-chic celebration of hopes and futures with my complement, my partner, my other half. I was still waiting for him.

When I was twenty-six I'd found him and I wanted a union with my best friend.
I wanted to head to Thailand for two weeks to celebrate us, to give us both a much-needed break from life and stress and a temporary escape from all things bearing down. Eloping was the perfect way to wrap up the commitment we'd make and the hard work we'd already put in. It was the icing on the cake - letting him surf as much as he wanted and sit relaxed on a beach; it was me eating as many noodles as I could and trekking into the jungle for adventure and once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Memories we'd review with smiles on our faces decades from that time. It wasn't about show, it wasn't about anyone else's opinions. It was a $200 lace dress, a pair of Toms, and my soulmate. It was the start of trying for babies, even if I failed. It was scary as shit, but He was worth it.

A month and a day before the end of my twenty-sixth year, my most mature vision of committed love was robbed right out of my hands. Violently. An intense weekend of depression visited my kind, intelligent, compassionate, sacrificial, Life-of-the-Party fiance and suicide stole My Every Day right out from under me. He was mine to protect and to care for; he was mine to support and love; but he was gone.

Eight months and 2 days after my soul was crushed, the best idea of the direction I should be taking rests on a new philosophy: not everyone gets Happily Ever After.

What a bullshit lesson. Sometimes it's innocent children, 8 years old, that life teaches that to; others are slammed with that reality at 26 and some wander through life eternally oblivious to this reality. They'll quip "life's not fair" while having never experienced what that actually looks like. I think the most likelihood of surviving this nightmare that I wake up to will only happen if I can stop trying to attain "Happily Ever After". 

I don't like this lesson, I don't want it, I hate it. But it feels like the lesson Life is trying to teach me.