Category: grief journey

I find it difficult to look at this flippin’ Christmas Tree. I put it up because that is what I’m suppose to do, right. I need to move forward, be glad, be grateful, be joyful – tis the season. It’s all crap!

I wrote some time ago about not feeling right in my new skin. I don’t know how to live this new life without her. I don’t know how NOT to be a mom. I don’t know how to look at her pictures and not feel the worse possible pain. I don’t know how to look forward to another day, because I don’t. I just want it all to go away. I don’t care if I am here tomorrow. What is the point?

I’ve lost everything. Not much else matters. I keep trying because I have to you know. Not because I want to. Everything I do is because I have to. People say to me they don’t know how I get through every day.

Well…..you see what I choose for you to see. Otherwise you’d all be running the other direction. This grief is scary, painful, dreadful, ugly and it zaps you of every bit of energy and drains your soul. Don’t see the point in taking everyone else with me.

Here is something else to ponder…I hear so much about depression and how counseling may help with sorting it all out… PLEASE! This is just like all the other things we try to do to FIX our lives – medicate the pain. You can’t medicate this type of pain – I’ve tried. The only cure is for it to have not happened at all.

This loss has done me in. I’ve lost so much over my 50 years, but this one has slammed me to the ground so hard I still can’t catch my breath. There is no pill or shrink that can fix that.

Only God can if he chooses. I’ve stopped asking.

I still am struggling on what’s so important about me continuing to live. I see how easy it’s been for my friends and family to move on inspite of her dying. I’m sure that will happen just as well if I’m gone. I am not saying no one cares – it’s just they have their own lives to live and their own families. I may have come to a point where I have done all I can and it’s time for me to go as well. Until I find that reason to fulfill my desire to make a difference – my days here are numbered.

I know it must be difficult for many to grasp this type of pain, but it’s so powerful that I just want to lie down on my bed in my comfortable pjs in my comfortable bed and never wake up. When I say these things to people – they get made at me and tell me to stop saying it, but my friends and family have shown me that life will go on whether I’m here or not. It seems pretty easy for them.

Tommorrow marks the 19th anniversary date of my mother’s passing from breast cancer. I miss her so much. It’s been so long since I’ve heard her voice that I don’t think I can remember it. But when I break out her memory box and open up her perfume – oh – it takes me right back where she was when she was living.

until

I had a very nice time at my friends house. It was quiet and their backyard is amazing. It was like going out into the country, but without leaving the city. I had a chance to do a lot of thinking and a lot of “soul purging” otherwise known as crying. It was very cleansing to my soul and my heart.

I realized I’m not going to make things better by being sad. It won’t bring her back and I need to move on. It doesn’t do justice or honor what she achieved in her life by stopping mine. That doesn’t mean it hurts any less. Her absence is hard to bare, but I know God has a plan for me and I must begin to pursue what that is (when I find out).

What I want people to know, my family and friends included, is that even though life has gone on and everyone is busy doing whatever it was they were doing before she died – my life will NEVER be the same. I just can’t stop feeling the emptiness that exists every DAY – day after DAY!

It’s not just going to magically disappear. It’s going to take a very long time and that’s ok. Please don’t expect me to go on with life as if nothing’s changed, because it’s changed drastically for me. I have to have time to find out who I am now and what my purpose is. I’m not who I was 11 months ago. That person is gone. A lot of things have changed about me and inside of me. My beliefs, my desires, what moves me now, what I love, what I don’t – so on and so on.

Please be patient with me while I’m on this new journey of discovering what God has in store for me.

Blessings

Lately I’ve been reading some of Brit’s writings in the last year of her life. How strangely parallel our thoughts are now. I used to think “how can she feel that way” as I read her soul being poured out onto paper. Now I know, because I too feel those things that she wrote about.

Mostly she wrote about why she was created. What was her purpose in life? Why didn’t anyone love her (she meant boys). Now I can look back at these questions and know that her reason for existence, her purpose in life and the lack of love where all fulfilled. I hope she knew that in the end. I know God has told her so.

As for me, I have been reviewing (with so much sadness) my writings over the past 10 months and I see how far I’ve transitioned from the initial shock of losing her to the resolution of her absence.

But, the one thing I know for sure, all the things I’ve written or felt are still just as painful today. It’s just that I see it all differently. My questions haven’t been answered. The hole in my heart hasn’t been healed. I’ve yet to understand my purpose. So where does that leave me today?

I ask God in my prayers to give me a reason to get up and go on another day. To make my life meaningful. To help me understand why I’m here. I figured out I don’t know how to listen to God. I can’t tell when it’s Him leading me or me leading me. All I know is that when I think it’s me leading me – I usually go down the wrong path. Try things that aren’t successful. That brings me to a whole other area of my life. All those wrong paths. Too many to go into. Yes, I know they have taught me alot, but those paths have also caused so much grief. More than one should have to bear in a lifetime. We’ll leave that for another day!

I will wait, some days patiently and other days not so patiently, for guidance from God. While I wait, I try and finish some un-finished business. You know get my ducks in a row so to speak. Finish some projects I’ve started. Seems like a good idea. Pass the painful time that I live daily.

Resolution – how does it feel? Empty. Sorrowful. Um – can’t say happy, glad, joyful – those are feelings I can easily portray, but don’t know well. Emptiness, pain and sorrow – I know them well, but don’t feel I portray them well. What you see is not what is real. You see what I choose for you to see. Plain and simple. I care for you all too much for you to see the real anguish that exists to my very soul. Oh it’s easier to get up every day – but what you don’t understand is that the emptiness is still present – every time I look at her picture I am reminded of what I have lost. I know I have gained so much by having her in my life.

But my question is: How do I take that knowledge and make a new life? Right now it’s very hard to see my life without her. But I keep trying. I keep waiting. The cost of all of this on my body and my soul – well it’s – I can’t even put it into words – that’s how hard this all is.

until next time,

I recently was asked to share my faith story with my church. So when I did, never did I think it would go any farther than the words I typed. Then I was approached about sharing my story on video. Ok…so I thought that it would be a good way to continue on my journey and purpose.

A few weeks ago I sat and talked candidly about my faith and my about daughter. It was difficult, but somehow I manage to pull it off. Later on the guy who was behind the camera said that when he reviewed the video the next day he wept and wept.

After seeing it for the first time yesterday, I must say I can see why. It’s very emotional, gut-wrenching and it’s the best tribute to God and to my daughter, Brittany. God has truly blessed me beyond belief. I had an amazing girl, with an amazing gift. No doubt, sometimes, she made life difficult, but what teenager doesn’t!

I’ve learned so much in these past few months. It’s been rough, sometimes I’m not sure I can take another minute. As I said in the video – I had a choice to see this loss two ways: tragic and sad or I can see the time I had with her as a gift from God. Now when I think of it as a tragic event, it makes me sad and I sometimes think I can’t go on without her. Then there are other times I think of it as a blessing because I can see how she made a huge difference in my life and in so many others. She was a gift to me and I have to go on believing I was meant to continue on fulfilling a life God intended me to have from the beginning. Not the one I thought I was suppose to live. That’s my journey.

Yes, I will continue to have bad days, and I will write about them – because what I write about is genuine. But I will also write about the blessings I have received by being Brittany’s mom.

until next time,

While she was opening her presents she was so excited and was trying to open up a package and had some trouble, so mom tried to help her and she cried out “I can do it”. All of the sudden a time rushed into my memory of my Brittany when she was two opening her presents and saying something very similar like “my can do it”. Tears welled up in my eyes and I had to secretly leave the room. I became so overwhelmed with sadness and grief. And I wasn’t anticipating it. That’s grief! It comes whenever it wants and stays for however long it wants.

I was reading an article about a family who has a child with autism. She said something publicly that I’ve not really had the guts to say to anyone face to face about how I feel. But I’ve been able to write it for the most part here and in my personal journals. But here it is in a nutshell…

Then at age 5 the diagnosis of epilepsy was devastating to us. I was in nursing school at the time and knew what the complications could be. Then the constant battles with insurance, medications, doctors appointments, medical tests… it was all consuming. Then the words of that mother I mentioned earlier…

“I put on a good face in the public,
but in the most private recesses of
my being, I felt my heart start to die
a little.”

Then came the diagnosis of Crohn’s Disease. Age 10 was a rough year. She experienced stomach pain, increasing seizures and we didn’t know what was going to happen. Then after a year of up and down moments…things got better. But what it was really was “the calm before the storm”..

“I put on a good face in the public,
but in the most private recesses of
my being, I felt my heart start to die
a little more….”

Her last year of life was constantly in turmoil. But she lived it full of life and never let it get her down, well not for long any way. But once I realized we were dealing with something truly devasting…..

“I put on a good face in the public,
but in the most private recesses of
my being, I felt my heart start to die
a little more….”

Her last year of life was constantly in turmoil. But she lived it full of life and never let it get her down, well not for long any way. The really good stuff that happened…having found her best friend Caro and her love Andy. She had finally found what she’d been missing for so long. Acceptance of her peers.

Then the final months of her life were the worst of my life, because down deep I had a sick feeling things were going to get worse. But I never thought she would die! Then she did! Without warning, not even a chance to say goodbye! My last words to her “go do your homework”. There at her desk minutes later – she had a severe grand mal seizure for which she never recovered. Over the next 12 hours I watched, them try and revive her 4 times. Finally stopping it all because the doctor said her heart couldn’t take much more. I couldn’t take seeing her the way she was, my last vision of her being pounded on and shocked….

I know it was her time – I’m a nurse – I know they did everything they could – but God wanted her more. I’m glad she doesn’t have to suffer any more…but when does my suffering end?

These words are mine now since the very moment I said STOP CPR….

It rests next to the other hole in my heart
where my mother used to be, which lies
next to the hole where my grandmother
used to be, which lies next to the few other
people who have broken my heart.”

My hope is in the Lord to heal my heart because it is written “God is close to the brokenhearted, he comforts them.”

m