My fortieth birthday sucked. I wasn't looking forward to it. I let everyone know that I hated turning forty and that it just sucked. And you know what happened? It sucked. My therapist at the time said that I pretty much told everyone how to handle it. What she didn't seem to grasp was that everyone was supposed to rally and make sure that it didn't suck. She told me that next time, maybe I should tell everyone that it's going to be a party. That by calling out that my birthday was going to rock, it just had a better chance of actually rocking. And you know what happened? It rocked. I declared it my "I made it through forty!" celebration. I didn't get breakfast at Tiffany's but I did get a cup of coffee at Tiffany's while Hubs let me wander around and pick something out for myself. I walked out with the legendary blue box. 41 rocked.
Tomorrow, there will be all myriad of debauchery and celebrating. Corned beef, cabbage, Kelly green, clovers and consuming of copious beer. I don't know a "c/k" sounding beer word to finish that out properly. OH! There is Killian's but not everyone drinks it, even on St. Patrick's day even though it's Irish. On the other hand, not everyone eats corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's day. Which you should. I wait all year to buy corned beef at a good price.
I had to look up why St. Patrick's day just is. He is credited with bringing Christianity into Ireland. He is said to have used three leaf clovers to explain the Holy Trinity. Good on ya, Patrick! So, when did all the drinking become associated, you might ask as I did. Well, it turns out that because there are eating and drinking restrictions during Lenten, those are lifted for the day. So I guess everyone eats as much beef and drinks as much beer as possible to make up for lost time and to store it up for the time to come until Easter.
My family doesn't do any of that for St. Patrick's day. Except the corned beef and cabbage bit. Because of all that I said just right there in that paragraph above about how much I love corned beef and would eat it all year long if only it was as cheap as it is for this "holiday". I am an alcoholic and I can't drink beer or liquor of any color at any time, ever. No matter how entirely "appropriate" or certainly enticing it is on this particular day. We don't wear green. Last year, I did lift the ban for the kids because they didn't want to get pinched or look weird. It's a fair argument. And the reality is, they are here and they get to relay those feelings. And she is not.
Tomorrow, there will be a ten year anniversary that a handful of people will notice. And the ones that do don't really celebrate, per se. We, the ones left behind, find some sort of way to muddle through what makes no sense anymore. I have one friend who lost her fifteen year old son and says that the anniversaries aren't any harder. She says every day is awful, one doesn't stand out as more awful. For me, the anniversaries feel different. They are more marked. It may be because it is on a day when year after year I have to watch people celebrate. It may be because Hubs and I actually had to make a decision to let our daughter go on this particular date rather than it being a thing that just "happened". It doesn't really matter why. That's just what my reality is. And as such, I had built up tomorrow as particularly significant. Particularly painful and awful. What I didn't count on was that I would have no control or warning over how it would feel today.
On the last day of a sale which features your 4 children's favorite cereal, you have to go. It costs a dollar a box. You have to go. You are also out of milk. You have to go. I didn't mind that I had to go. Until I went. Today is gray and windy and cold. There is talk of snow which makes people flock to the grocery to stock up on whatever frozen precipitation of any sort might potentially deprive them of. I buzzed through my usual route through the store and felt increasingly raw. By the end, I felt like a gaping wound. I felt out in the open and like any thing had the potential to level me. I felt the fullness of grievity. It's when you have this out of body experience like you are not of this world and it all seems so strange and foreign and weird and you don't belong here but the sadness and the loss press down on you with such weight that if feels not only like it's keeping you on the ground but that it could flatten you. And I wondered how in the hell I could have possibly assumed that I wouldn't experience anything until tomorrow. That it would all fit tightly and rightly in the calendar box reserved for the date proper. It isn't as if I'm not blindsided regularly on insignificant days. Truly, I get knocked for a loop and am at a loss as to what the trigger was. But as for today - did I bring it on myself? All this anticipation building on itself, a house of cards on a bed of water? Did it suck, does tomorrow suck just because I said it was going to?
In 2003, this amazing, beautiful girl entered the world and I got to be the conduit. We named her Journey and she was sweet and curious and fun. She turned a year old and started some wobbly first steps. We bought her some Mary Janes from Stride Rite so that she could have proper friction and fit while she started taking the world by storm. Her older brother adored her. And the feeling was mutual. One day in March 2004, the virus that her brother had been recovering from started to invade her little body. And something went terribly wrong. I took her to the emergency room and the next thing I knew, she was hooked up to all kinds of tubes and machines in the ICU. Testing showed that there was bleeding on her brain. On the opposite side of her brain, there was a clot. These two completely opposing forces left little room for a different outcome. On March 16, we noticed that there was a marked difference in her brain activity. And we knew that Journey was only Journey when she was able to explore and really experience life. Anything less, she wouldn't be Journey anymore. She had reached a point of no return so early the following morning, we told her that we loved her and that we would miss her and that she belonged to God and it was okay to go. And she did.
On St. Patrick's day every year since, we go off the grid. We keep the kids out of school and do something we don't normally do because that day - it's not normal. It shouldn't feel normal. A few weeks ago, I asked Hubs if he wanted to keep it as it had always been or if he wanted to change it to just he and I. We decided that this year, we would do something, just the two of us. We had started thinking of what we would do when he got word that he would have to go out of town that day. He leaves before the crack of dawn and comes back the next day. There really just isn't any way to express the sucker punch this feels like. To both of us. There is one person on the planet that knows what each and every today has felt like for the past 10 years to either of us. There is one person on the planet that understands the breadth of tomorrow to either of us. And we will be apart. And after I got home from the store, I realized that part of my overwhelming feeling of exposure was the realization that my anchor, my heart, the love of my life and my partner in brokenness will be in a plane flying over a large portion of the country away from me. The level of lack of control I feel is - I can't wrap my brain around it. The fact that there is a plane that has just disappeared making like all the headlines anymore is really straining my sanity about this situation. Obviously nothing compared to the families who actually have someone on that plane.
On a better day, I will share the beautiful things that have happened since Journey died. The fruit borne of such a heartbreak. But today, I am stuck here, in the this. I don't know what tomorrow brings. I know I have kids to get out the door. And kids to pick up. And kids to feed dinner to. I know I have to not drink. Beyond that, all the plans that I have tried to make for the day have kind of fallen through. .I don't know what to do with that or if there is purpose within that. I guess all I can do is what I have done every day for the past 10 years. Be honest. Be true. Be faithful. Remember to breathe. Remember to live. Remember to love. Defy grievity.
I had to look up why St. Patrick's day just is. He is credited with bringing Christianity into Ireland. He is said to have used three leaf clovers to explain the Holy Trinity. Good on ya, Patrick! So, when did all the drinking become associated, you might ask as I did. Well, it turns out that because there are eating and drinking restrictions during Lenten, those are lifted for the day. So I guess everyone eats as much beef and drinks as much beer as possible to make up for lost time and to store it up for the time to come until Easter.
My family doesn't do any of that for St. Patrick's day. Except the corned beef and cabbage bit. Because of all that I said just right there in that paragraph above about how much I love corned beef and would eat it all year long if only it was as cheap as it is for this "holiday". I am an alcoholic and I can't drink beer or liquor of any color at any time, ever. No matter how entirely "appropriate" or certainly enticing it is on this particular day. We don't wear green. Last year, I did lift the ban for the kids because they didn't want to get pinched or look weird. It's a fair argument. And the reality is, they are here and they get to relay those feelings. And she is not.
Tomorrow, there will be a ten year anniversary that a handful of people will notice. And the ones that do don't really celebrate, per se. We, the ones left behind, find some sort of way to muddle through what makes no sense anymore. I have one friend who lost her fifteen year old son and says that the anniversaries aren't any harder. She says every day is awful, one doesn't stand out as more awful. For me, the anniversaries feel different. They are more marked. It may be because it is on a day when year after year I have to watch people celebrate. It may be because Hubs and I actually had to make a decision to let our daughter go on this particular date rather than it being a thing that just "happened". It doesn't really matter why. That's just what my reality is. And as such, I had built up tomorrow as particularly significant. Particularly painful and awful. What I didn't count on was that I would have no control or warning over how it would feel today.
On the last day of a sale which features your 4 children's favorite cereal, you have to go. It costs a dollar a box. You have to go. You are also out of milk. You have to go. I didn't mind that I had to go. Until I went. Today is gray and windy and cold. There is talk of snow which makes people flock to the grocery to stock up on whatever frozen precipitation of any sort might potentially deprive them of. I buzzed through my usual route through the store and felt increasingly raw. By the end, I felt like a gaping wound. I felt out in the open and like any thing had the potential to level me. I felt the fullness of grievity. It's when you have this out of body experience like you are not of this world and it all seems so strange and foreign and weird and you don't belong here but the sadness and the loss press down on you with such weight that if feels not only like it's keeping you on the ground but that it could flatten you. And I wondered how in the hell I could have possibly assumed that I wouldn't experience anything until tomorrow. That it would all fit tightly and rightly in the calendar box reserved for the date proper. It isn't as if I'm not blindsided regularly on insignificant days. Truly, I get knocked for a loop and am at a loss as to what the trigger was. But as for today - did I bring it on myself? All this anticipation building on itself, a house of cards on a bed of water? Did it suck, does tomorrow suck just because I said it was going to?
In 2003, this amazing, beautiful girl entered the world and I got to be the conduit. We named her Journey and she was sweet and curious and fun. She turned a year old and started some wobbly first steps. We bought her some Mary Janes from Stride Rite so that she could have proper friction and fit while she started taking the world by storm. Her older brother adored her. And the feeling was mutual. One day in March 2004, the virus that her brother had been recovering from started to invade her little body. And something went terribly wrong. I took her to the emergency room and the next thing I knew, she was hooked up to all kinds of tubes and machines in the ICU. Testing showed that there was bleeding on her brain. On the opposite side of her brain, there was a clot. These two completely opposing forces left little room for a different outcome. On March 16, we noticed that there was a marked difference in her brain activity. And we knew that Journey was only Journey when she was able to explore and really experience life. Anything less, she wouldn't be Journey anymore. She had reached a point of no return so early the following morning, we told her that we loved her and that we would miss her and that she belonged to God and it was okay to go. And she did.
On St. Patrick's day every year since, we go off the grid. We keep the kids out of school and do something we don't normally do because that day - it's not normal. It shouldn't feel normal. A few weeks ago, I asked Hubs if he wanted to keep it as it had always been or if he wanted to change it to just he and I. We decided that this year, we would do something, just the two of us. We had started thinking of what we would do when he got word that he would have to go out of town that day. He leaves before the crack of dawn and comes back the next day. There really just isn't any way to express the sucker punch this feels like. To both of us. There is one person on the planet that knows what each and every today has felt like for the past 10 years to either of us. There is one person on the planet that understands the breadth of tomorrow to either of us. And we will be apart. And after I got home from the store, I realized that part of my overwhelming feeling of exposure was the realization that my anchor, my heart, the love of my life and my partner in brokenness will be in a plane flying over a large portion of the country away from me. The level of lack of control I feel is - I can't wrap my brain around it. The fact that there is a plane that has just disappeared making like all the headlines anymore is really straining my sanity about this situation. Obviously nothing compared to the families who actually have someone on that plane.
On a better day, I will share the beautiful things that have happened since Journey died. The fruit borne of such a heartbreak. But today, I am stuck here, in the this. I don't know what tomorrow brings. I know I have kids to get out the door. And kids to pick up. And kids to feed dinner to. I know I have to not drink. Beyond that, all the plans that I have tried to make for the day have kind of fallen through. .I don't know what to do with that or if there is purpose within that. I guess all I can do is what I have done every day for the past 10 years. Be honest. Be true. Be faithful. Remember to breathe. Remember to live. Remember to love. Defy grievity.
Jenny, my heart is breaking for you! Please know that I will be praying hard for you tonight and tomorrow until Hubs gets home. I pray that Jesus will hold you tight and get you through this day as He has these past 10 years. I love you and miss you! Glenda
ReplyDeleteDear Jenny, Thank you for sharing your beautiful, difficult words. I am only 2.5 years into this grief journey, but what you write holds true to me, too. Thinking of you today. Tomorrow would be my son's 15th birthday, March 18, and the day hangs heavy over me. XOXO
ReplyDeleteAnna - I am humbled that you reached out to me. Thank you so much for your encouragement. We have cake on Journey's birthday every year and celebrate her life and the mark she made on us. Happy birthday to Jack. I hope that you do whatever you need to do today - even if it's crawling into bed just a little too early and eating just a little too much ice cream and watching a little too much Netflix. Peace. smooch.
DeleteI love everything about this. Thank you for sharing.
ReplyDelete