My Achy Breaky Heart

I have a billion and one things to do today.  I have a review to write about chocolate.  I know.  I am so lucky to get to taste chocolate and then write what I think about it... and get paid to do it!  But there are no words in my brain about chocolate right now.  I need to write a post to promote our Holiday Craft Expo coming up in two weeks.  And promote it on Facebook and Twitter and every other social media platform that I can think of.  But I have no words for that either.  My heart is full.  Achy breaky full.  So much sadness seeping out of it that I cannot stop the flow.  And my brain is paralyzed.  Having to arrange words into anything that makes sense right now seems so impossible.  But I need to write.  It's the only way to wash away my hurt.

 

Someone will probably think this post is selfish.  That's okay...it is. I am acutely aware that I am not the only one hurting tonight.  My entire family hurts.  My mother hurts as she cares for her husband in what has become the most unimaginable circumstance.  He lays in his bed, dying of cancer.  My step-dad hurts.  He's the one who is dying.  To say I can't fathom what he must be feeling and thinking is an understatement..  A month or two ago he was diagnosed with bone cancer and told he had about 6 months to live.  It was shocking and sad and we were not prepared for the news.  I guess no one is ever prepared for that kind of news. But we thought we had more time to say our goodbyes and get our relationship affairs in order with him.  To say the things we needed to say to a man who welcomed us into his home, even though we were not his children.  To hug this John Wayne-esque, giant of a man who was never big on showing emotion or public displays of affection.  All of the sudden, his health deteriorated and now we are, along with him, staring his death in the face.

I am not ready for this.  I am not ready to lose another person with whom I did not get the chance to develop the kind of deep, meaningful relationship I wanted to have.  I am not ready for my boys to lose the only grandfather they have had who was willing to spend time with them, JUST when he decided to quit being a hermit and start paying attention to them!  They were just starting to get to know him!  They were just starting to hear his hilarious stories and see his face light up when he talked about all of his life adventures.  They were just starting to earn nicknames from him, because he rarely calls anyone by their real name...he has a nickname for everyone. 

My grief over his passing is way more profound than I feel like I can handle.  And I have had to stop and figure out why his passing is affecting me to the point that I want to shut down.  I can't shut down.  People are counting on me to take care of them and help them.  My mom doesn't have the luxury of just shutting down and she truly needs and deserves to shutdown over this.  Why am I not able to be stronger this time around?  It's not like my step-dad and I are super close.  I love him very much, but we haven't had a typical father-daughter relationship (more on that later).  So why do I feel like I am losing more than I can stand to lose?  That sounds bad.  Like I'm saying I shouldn't be AS SAD that he is passing away because he isn't my real dad and we weren't as close as we could have been.  That's not what I mean by saying I shouldn't be so very, very depressed about this. I'm saying that the level of sadness and grief I feel is debilitating and it feels like there is more to it than my step dad's untimely and pending death.

I have to believe that this is less about his rapidly approaching crossover to heaven, which is truly a blessing given the extreme amount of pain he is enduring, and more about my feeling that one more time I am being left alone to deal with life.  I feel like my whole life has revolved around people leaving me.  I won't go into details. But it's happened a lot. And the hurt has caused has started to become unbearable.  I thought my real dad dying tragically and unexpectedly was pretty painful to sort through.  But now I am losing my other dad - the only one I have left and have struggled to develop a relationship with - and it almost feels worse than the first loss.  

Clearly I need to get over my own abandonment issues and focus on the good times that I had with my step-father.  I have some good memories of him.  He is a good man who had issues of his own due to his upbringing.  His walls were so high.  It took him until just recently to finally decide to let them down and start to let us in a little more and now he's leaving us. It doesn't feel fair.  I know...we all have our issues.  I just wish my family's issues would have been less detrimental to our having a rich and full "normal" life. The whole thing just really, really sucks and I'm not ready to say goodbye to one more person who means something to me. Oh my gosh, I can't tell you how NOT ready for this I am. 

And yes...I feel like a self-absorbed, whiny ass, drama queen for posting this.  Because my dad's cancer and death should not be all about me.  But the truth is, it is about me.  And about him.  And about my mom and my sister and my aunt and my sons and whoever else is affected by his disease.  Every single one of our lives is changing because my step-dad has cancer and is dying. And it hurts.  So I sit and write to process and heal and then I have to choose whether or not to share what I feel with everyone else or hide it away somewhere.  Who will I hurt by posting this?  I don't know, but I'm pretty sure there will be someone. Who will feel like I am seeking out attention?  I don't know that either, but I know sometimes I have a problem with that.  Who will just read the post with an open heart and identify with it and walk away with a greater desire to spend more time with their kids and grand kids so they don't have to feel like they missed out on one of life's greatest joys?  I hope many.  

Will sharing this do any good?  I don't know.  I just know it helps me.  And I choose to think I am not the only one in the world who has these kinds of thoughts and struggles.  So I guess I hope that when I make my personal issues public, it helps someone, somewhere, deal with a difficult situation because they know they are not alone.  So for now, this post will go live.  Because it's what I need to do to cope and to find some peace in my out of control life.      

Mom Strength

This is a hard post for me to write tonight. And I'm writing for purely selfish reasons, which is the last reason I should be writing, given the subject of this post and the example that has been set for me today. Selfishness has no place in this drama I have watched play out over the last few days. And yet, here I am, with my high maintenance ways, selfishly working through my issues at the expense of my readers. Sorry...the grief is too much to bear alone.

Having said that, the grief and sadness I feel today is NOTHING compared to the loss and suffering my friends have had to endure the last few days as they deal with the tragic loss of their 2 year old son. What makes the loss even more unbearable is that the little boy's caretaker was the one who unknowingly took his life when she backed over him in the driveway. In an instant, 2 families who are the best of friends have been changed forever and a little bundle of energy and mischief is gone.

As I sat at the church waiting for the funeral to begin, I was immediately struck by the fact that the large chapel was full to capacity. That was not surprising. My friends are amazing people who are so easy to love. And the town where they live - where I used to live - is a kind and giving community, full of people who truly care about one another and who delight in serving and supporting their neighbors. I miss my old town.

The service was full of spiritual moments and incredible music that sounded as if it had been flown in on the wings of angels. The people who were there to support this dear family, including those of us in the congregation, offered our hearts and our voices, doing our utmost to usher in a feeling of love, reverence and faith though melody and lyrics that brought even the strongest man there to his knees.

As I struggled to maintain even a modicum of composure, thoughts raced through my head at a breakneck pace. How does a person even begin to deal with the loss of a child? How does the babysitter ever recover from the guilt she must be feeling? How is my friend still standing and talking? Why has she not fallen to the ground by now in a broken, sobbing heap?

I stopped to think about that last question for quite awhile. The question arose when I watched my friends get up to speak about their son. The father did such a great job of supporting his sweet wife. He was trying to be strong for her, for his other children. He spoke with great tenderness, then broke down for just a moment.  As he regained his composure, he had no more words, so he turned to his wife - my friend.  She stood there in front of a few hundred people with quivering lips and swollen eyes. That's when I wondered if she was going to collapse under the weight of the situation. I watched with tears streaming down my own face as she put her hand out on the podium to steady herself. Two or three times she opened her mouth to speak but no words came out, only choked back sobs. She hung her head for a few moments and her shoulders shook visibly as her body tried hard to fight back the grief. We all felt her pain and sat helplessly, offering our heartfelt love and support through silent prayer.

After a few moments, she stood up straight, wiped her tears, took a deep breath and stepped up to the microphone. She had a renewed strength about her. It was her Mom Strength kicking in. It's that strength that magically appears when we are beyond exhausted and longing for peace and sleep, but we keep going because a sick child needs us. It's the kind of strength that allows you to sit back and watch your child make mistakes, even when you know it will cause them great pain. It's the same strength that God gives you to keep having babies, even when the pain is so unbearable that you think it might kill you. Her Mom Strength was getting her through this. And with everything she had, she began to offer up her thoughts, her memories, her feelings, her testimony and her thanks to God for the precious gift of motherhood that she had been given. She recognized that it had been their privilege to bring that sweet little child into their home and thanked Heavenly Father for blessing them with the opportunity to share in their son's short life here on earth.

And then, this incredible friend of mine, this broken, hurting human being, did the most humbling thing I have ever witnessed. She looked to the babysitter, who by some miracle had managed to drag herself to what I can only imagine must have been the second most torutuous event of her life (the first being the horrible drive backward out of my friend's driveway), and thanked her for taking such good care of their son while my friend went to work each day. She offered her love and condolences to the caretaker, knowing that she too must be consumed with grief and overwrought with sadness. My friend did the most unselfish thing a person can do...she reached out and offered a hand of forgiveness to someone that others might have cast off as unlovable because of a life-ending mistake. There was no hate, no harsh words, no blame. Only solace. My dear, sweet, incredibly strong friend rose to the occasion and offered the ultimate sacrifice and example of Christ-like love. She laid her anger at the alter so that everyone could heal and move on.   

You would think I would leave there trying to live up to my friend's example of strength. And yet, here I sit, in my own selfishness tonight, sobbing like a baby. I lost nothing because of this tragedy. In fact, it opened my eyes and I gained a much better perpective of what matters and what doesn't. But I still sit here with giant tears pouring out of my face...horrified at the thought of having to go through something so traumatic with one of my own children; racked with guilt that I did not make a bigger effort to spend more time with my dear friends since moving from that little town; overwhelmed with homesickness and a desire to move back to the only place that ever felt like home; heartbroken for a friend who suffers so greatly and for whom I can do nothing to ease her pain; and finally, feeling incredibly moved by my friend's selfless actions.  All of which keep the tears flowing.  I guess this is how I process.  I write and I ramble and I cry. 

So thanks, dear readers and friends, for indulging my need to sob on your shoulders. I hope I cry enough tonight to wash the selfishness and grief away so I can be a source of support for my friend and her family. She gave me a great gift today when she offered up her example of courage, faith and selflessness. I would like to return her the favor.