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.

An Assault On Myself By Myself

Maybe I’m remembering this all wrong. Maybe I’m not the person I think I am. I have grasped tightly to the label “widow” as its definition most closely mirrors how I view myself, but is that even wrong? Do I even deserve that? I would have done anything for you, Ryan. We talked about this and I was setting everything up to make that happen because it was best for you – so it was necessary for us.

The abandonment by those around me, the ones who promised when no promise was requested, the ones who never made a promise to begin with, the ones you expected by default to stay and the ones you truly felt would…have they left because I carry a tag they think I do not deserve? Have they made the connections in the string of events, cast their blame, and turned their backs on me because of it? I hate them for doing that but I understand that decision, because I do carry the blame. I have chosen, months later now, to learn from the regrets but am nowhere near forgiveness for the guilt. The bits and pieces that are separated into those 2 piles are very well defined now; I am rational at least, enough to see that. Regrets would not have changed the outcome, they would have simply provided better memories to me, the survivor, and maybe for my Love, though not survived. The horrible details that are placed in the guilt pile are the ones which undoubtedly would have kept him here by my side. I do not wish for them to be in that pile, I do not choose them to be. They simply are. Perhaps then, to others, I am a person so unloveable and painful to be around that removing me entirely is a rational decision I just cannot see for myself. 

Perhaps I an addict to grief and unwilling to admit it.

I know my brain is warped. In a bizarre way it’s almost as if I can feel that I am not just chemically but structurally different.  Feeling physiologically incapable of tasks that you were otherwise competent to perform is so incredibly frustrating.

I want Ryan back. I also want my brain back. I don’t need a diagnosis because I already recognize this environment that I am residing in – one so atypical for me. I sit back as a casual observer wondering who this person is with an obvious aphasia, with anxiety, the woman who cannot retain information, who cannot carry conversations on with multiple people at a time because the conversations in her head cannot be kept separate from those flowing from her lips. Who is that person? This woman who observes herself externally…she studied this, this was her passion, the study of neurobiology put a smile on her face and woke her up for years on early mornings and kept her locked in a dark room late at night to better understand this phenomenal structure that is the mammalian brain.

That woman is now trapped by a mind she cannot escape, by a brain that attacks her when she least expects. Her decisions over the last 7 months and 15 days have not always been logical or appropriate, though she extends to herself forgiveness for those. But how do you continue to wake up when waking up entails constantly fighting yourself to hit a level best described as functional? If struggling for that is the best I’ve got, and if that alone exhausts me, how will I ever expect to hit a plane dubbed successful again? Why, Brain, why are you attacking me? Why, Body, are you so slow to recover and so quick to break down? I am not wallowing, I am fucking trying!

Wordless Wednesdays: Remember You've Survived

And holy fuck have there been some brutally bad days in there...

Wordless Wednesday: Love Him Forever

The Difference Between Losing the Battle & Winning

A friend posted the photo this morning.

I've spent the last 3-4 weeks so busy I'm left exhausted, frustrated, defeated, and mostly numb & empty. I mostly prefer numb to the searing pain that was the weeks before. I have transitioned I think to speak of details of Ryan's death as statements of fact, separated from their emotional connection. I worry how this makes me appear to others (i.e. "insensitive", "crazy", "strong", "detatched") and while I say I don't really care - I do.

My fight is almost exclusively in my mind now. I've packaged up things so well that I am no longer the reactive, teary-eyed person in public that I'm anticipated to be or that people are scared I will turn into. I'm the occasionally screaming, silent tear mourner that lost her Every Day nearly 6 months ago now. The battle remains almost exclusively in private now.

I fear not seeing the year 2016 by my own hand. I fear looking back at 35 and wondering why I am still where I am at. I fear that if I move forward I will be subject to a different level of insensitive comments.

I want to take a trip. I want to challenge my brain and take the MCAT, continuing on with school. I want to crush it on the marathon next year. I want to be the little white lady one day drinking Guinness and telling stories and sharing experiences that leave people's mouths wide open and who then walk away inspired. All of these take day-by-day and even moment-by-moment struggles to challenge the way I can't help but think and the darkness I'd prefer to disappear into.

Just because I want those positives doesn't mean I still don't want Ryan. Running well next year, experiencing another birthday, finding my passions and trying new things doesn't negate the feelings of wishing for him to be there with and for me. It doesn't dull the pain of him not being there; it probably intensifies it. Because I'll look for him and not find him at the finish line, I'll cry for the empty spot on the beach next to me and the seat that won't be filled at graduation.

People are confused at times: "moving forward" = "moving on" they think. Ryan won't ever be forgotten. His memory brings me JOY, not pain! My Sweetheart won't ever not be loved, mourned, and missed. He was my first choice - robbed from me not by my own or his wishes. I can still carry him with me, literally and metaphorically, as I search for my own meaning in life and push myself to live in a way that he would be proud of. For now, I wander numb through the house - private tears running down my face searching for enough strength to begin the arduous task of feeding myself or even getting out of bed, hoping for strength to be gifted to me by a stranger or a less-than-handful of friends that didn't lose hope in me.

Oprah's Lesson to Me

As it's the day before July 4th and no traffic was on the road I was running early to work this morning.

I felt compelled to stop at Starbucks to treat myself. While my standard is a skinny vanilla latte or maybe a cappuccino, for one reason or another the Oprah Cinnamon Chai Latte caught my attention....things are getting crazy 'round here.

Got to work, drink still in hand, and hopped onto Facebook to see about putting up a post first thing on my work page. Was logged in to my personal, however, and at the top of my feed was a friend's post which had a Maya Angelou interview from OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network) called "Love Liberates".

I bawled.

A lot.

Being a widow to suicide has been an overwhelming and personally destroying process.

He was mine. To love, to take care of, to support. We had no children yet so every last ounce of attention and nurturing and every last drop of care that I had was poured into him. I cannot yet forgive myself for losing him. The last minute of the video just twist the knife so deep into my gut this morning.

"If you need permission to go, I liberate you...You see love liberates, it doesn't bind....Love says I love you...I would like to be near you; I'd like to have your arms around me; I'd like to hear your voice in my ear. But that's not possible now, so I love you. Go."

His first words to me in our last conversation were "I have to let you go." He asked what I thought about us and I said "Sweetie, sometimes things are rough and sometimes nothing can go wrong, but it doesn't matter what's going on outside because I love you either way." I repeated "I love you" perhaps 50-60 times in the 9 minutes I was on the phone with him.

I cannot let him go. Her words are so beautiful and as awful as it is to say, I've thought to myself multiple times "At least he isn't hurting any longer." It's so shameful to think because I know the stress and the frustration and the thoughts flooding over his mind were things that could be managed, mitigated, or removed entirely from their grasp on him. That the pain could have subsided and we would shift into more carefully and intensely managing his needs. I don't understand this concept. I want him released from hurt but not like this.

I imagine, though it is so far off it's inconceivable, that one day I can reach the point where I not only forgive myself but where I say to him "Ryan, Sweetie, I love you and I liberate you."