G is for Grief

My therapist has pointed out that I am a very empathetic person.  Which probably explains why I cry easily watching sad news stories or feel their joy when soldiers return home to their family.  Hayley was just the same.  My mini me.  I have an active imagination.  In the last 19 years I have imagined every scenario possible that would result in one of my children’s deaths or injury.  I know it is kind of creepy.  I am the one that researched the shit out of every single car seat I purchased.  For two kids I purchased more than 8 different car seats and boosters.  They were never handed down.  I always had to have the latest in safety.  I would read results from lab tests.  I always paid attention to the laws in countries like Denmark.  They were always the leaders in safety.  If we had an accident my babies would survive.  I was the one informing other moms to not face their child forward yet.  Scott had a running joke that he still digs up after 20 years.  It goes like this.  “Hey Dawn, I am having trouble going to sleep, can you tell me about your car seat research”.  No joke, he said it in the last month.  Once I survived car seats.  Poor Henry was the only kid in 2nd grade still using a booster.  “No Henry, let me read you this report, you have to be a certain weight and height, I love you and want you safe”.  Poor guy he acted like I was making him wear pull ups to school.  Then junior high.  The girls do what to the boys in the back of the bus?  WTF.  I have always viewed the raising of my children to be a war.  I was the general and responsible for guiding them safely through the various stages of childhood the best I could.  So when I told her that I could tell if she gave a boy a blowjob it was just my way of battling the forces of evil.  That reminds me of a memory.  Many of you have heard this story, mainly cause it is funny shit.  Hayley and I took a parent and kid class at Overtake Hospital about sex and puberty.  It was around the 4th or 5th grade.  I went with her friend and her mom, they have known each other since 6 months old and now they were giggling over tampons.  Hayley pulled it a part and pretended it was an earring.  At one point they separated us.  The kids went with a pediatrician to talk about their bodies without the uncomfortable moms listening.  Us Moms and it was 99% Moms, we sat and listened to another medical professional tell us all the scary things we had to worry about.  She told us about the Blowjobs aka Favors.  My head was spinning.  The one thing that stuck was you have to talk about oral sex.  She said before Junior High.  To make sure you don’t skim over it when having “the talk”.  That week we had “the talk” but not the “oral talk”.  She wasn’t in Junior High yet.  Scott participated in “the talk”.  The books I read suggested an involved father was the key to for a daughter to successfully navigate puberty. He had no issue with it.  I orchestrated a plan with him.  I talked to her alone.  I had books.  Then 10 minutes in he joined the conversation.  He told her he loved her so much and that she could talk to him about anything even periods. He may have mentioned killing any boy that hurt her.  He truly is the best father.  He was there for her on Black Friday 2012 when she got her first period and I was out with my friends.  I brought her home a giraffe pillow pet and Scott, I brought him a bottle of Vodka.

So she is in Junior High.  I am stressing out because I have not had the “oral talk”.  I am waiting for the perfect moment.  I thought it had come.  We were on our way to dance and from the backseat of my white Honda minivan she says “Mom what is a BJ?”.   Here we go!!!   I had rehearsed this moment for months.  “Hayley, I am so glad you asked me that”  I then proceeded to verbally vomit on her all kinds of wisdom.  I told her I could tell if she had done it.  I told her it rots your teeth and if she did that I wouldn’t pay for braces.  I told her that it can cause cancer.  Don’t judge, it is a war.  I told her that oral was sex no matter what the boy said.  I told her that I hoped she would respect herself and say no.  I explained that as a feminist I found the whole idea of giving a blow job and getting nothing in return was a load of crap.  This may have gone over her head.  Finally I took a breath.  I looked in the rearview mirror and saw her trying not to laugh.  I then hear this “Hey Mom, I really appreciate the information but I know what a BJ is, I asked what is a VJ”.  What?  On the radio they were talking about MTV and how one of them had been a VJ.  “Oh, well that is a video jockey, they introduced music videos.  But do you have any questions about the other stuff?”  I lost track how many times I heard her tell that story to her friends.  “You won’t believe what my Mom did”

We survived Junior High with no penises.  Then she is 16, she is driving in a car alone and with other teen drivers.  How can I make sure she is safe?  Where is she right now?  Has there been an accident?  College, Will she drink and fall down those damn cement stairs outside of the Mathis dorm?  Will she try drugs?  Will she trust the wrong person and I will never see her again? Then back to the car, is she too tired to drive the two hours home?  Is she driving too fast?  (yes)

Being so paranoid about my children’s safety I often wondered how someone survived the death of a child.  I always said I couldn’t survive that.  I couldn’t function.  I saw it happen to women I knew.  How is she still standing?  I guess because of her other children, still, I would not be getting out of bed.  What did it feel like?  I wonder if I am not the only one that obsessed over these thoughts.  Some of you have wondered how I am still standing.  I have actually had people, mostly strangers say to me, “Wow, how are you standing? I couldn’t. I would not be able to do what you are doing, I would be curled up in a ball.”  “Well that was Tuesday, Bitch”  Maybe it is a compliment.  But what I hear is this person  judging me.  They think I should be grieving more.  It feels like they think I didn’t love my child as much as they love theirs.  The reason they think this is that people think grief is obvious.  They think you can see it.  It is crying.  It is not leaving the house.  Let me answer that question for you.

You cannot always see it.  What you see is just the absolute tiniest tip of the iceberg.  I had no idea.  I thought my well developed empathy allowed me to put myself in these other Mom’s shoes.  I have never been more wrong in my life.  While I worried about Hayley’s driving and other obvious dangers, her future lurked.  It never occurred to me that an outpatient day surgery with an epidural could result in her death.  Of course we sign the forms that say we understand there is a chance that could happen.  But even the anesthesiologist skimmed over that and said it would all be fine.  It was not fine.  You truly believe that doctors and nurses can fix anything and that they could never cause more harm.  How could I forget that they are human beings with flaws and not one of them perfect.  As a paranoid Mom how did I ever think that.  What if I had worried as much about this as I did the car seats?  Would I have been able to keep her safe?  I have always had 100% trust in the medical field.  It never occurred to me that a hospital would be so incompetent in their care over those 5 days that I would lose one of the loves of my life.  That only happens to other people, not me.  I have handled enough in my lifetime.  I have always laughed when I saw that quote, “God only gives challenges to the people that can handle them”.  Seriously, Fuck that!  I have handled my share for at least a dozen people.  Deaths of Grandparents.  Death of my stepmother while I watched. Death of my Father, watching his body being wheeled down the steps in a black bag realizing we will never have the chance to repair a complicated relationship.  Death of more than one friend.  Divorce with parents that made bad choices.  Separation from Scott.  I have been fired from the job that I was absolutely the best at.  I have been sued for helping an employee.  Cardiac Arrest.  Pacemaker.  I have had 9 surgeries in my lifetime.  I survived a DVT, blood clot.  I am way over my quota.  This is bullshit.  I want her back, I deserve it, I have earned it.

Grief is not just one feeling.  It is not a list of feelings and physical pain that fits neatly in a box.  It is always changing.  It changes even from hour to hour.  For example; I feel a sharp pain in my abdomen.  Constant and sharp.  I cry.  I want Hayley with every fiber of my being.  We are trying to plan a trip as a family.  Every idea is one Hayley would love.  There is that sharp pain like a knife being twisted.  I need her.  I need her right this minute.  I found another sock behind my nightstand.  So cute, pink and white.  I smelled it.  It smelled like her skin.  I told Scott to smell it, he agreed.  Asking him to smell his daughter’s sock no longer even seems odd.  The pain is so sharp, yet the tears are slow and big running down my face. This grief I call the knife.

Then there is the slow burn.  It usually starts earlier in the day.  It starts out slow and it gains strength as the day goes on.  I am irritable.  It doesn’t necessarily make me cry.  The fire grows.  The memories feed it.  Little things feed the burn.  A shoe.  A Target run, I should grab Hayley that, sigh.  Christmas decorations.  The fire grows all day.  Sometime it only takes an hour.  Then it explodes like a back draft.  The crying is physically painful.  I throw myself down on the floor, my whole body is tense.  The sobs are loud and they burn.  As slowly as it started the fire is drenched by the tears until you just physically are done for the day.  The slow burn usually requires Xanax.  People judge others that use pharmaceuticals to survive.  I don’t.  Those medications are what keep me standing and breathing.  My hope is that they will be my bridge to a time when I have the strength and skill set to manage my pain without them.  But if I never do, I am okay with that too.

Then there is the choke.  When I cannot talk without choking up.  Every sentence I am fighting the sobs.  I am shoving the pain down as hard as I can.  I feel it in my skin.  I feel it in my eyes.  I will look at the person with me and just hope they can see my signals.  I am not Okay.  Look in my eyes.  My throat is tight.  I can barely breathe.  Where is she?  Why did this happen?  When this type of grief is surfacing I need to talk about her.  I have to.  If I don’t I will choke on the grief.  If I talk about her she will not be forgotten.

Grief does not have a template.  The steps, Denial, Anger, Acceptance, etc.  That is bullshit.  There are so many more words and stages.  They don’t happen neatly in an order.  You can cycle through all of the stages in one day.  You can be stuck on one for weeks.  This pain is all consuming.  I am not me.  I am a shell of me.  I rarely look at myself in the mirror.  When I do I am startled by what I see.  My face does not look like me.  My body carries the extra weight.  My face is swollen.  My eyes are not mine.  I see someone else.  I don’t want to be this person.  This is not real.  Where is she?  Bring her back to me.  Bring my daughter back to me.  Our Family is missing a wheel.  Hayley and I were the two front tires in a front wheel drive vehicle.  Henry and Scott were the back.  They still have their half.  My half is gone.  I am so lonely.  I am lonely in a crowd.  I am lonely with people that have gone out of their way to make me feel loved.  I have had so many amazing women reach out.  People that I only knew their name prior to the nightmare have stepped up and done so much to keep me standing.  That support is the only reason I am still here.  Half of me died with Hayley.  But the other half thrives on this attention.  Food, cards, little things on the doorstep, texts, emails, stories of Hayley.  Sometimes it comes in other forms.  I had mentioned in another post about Hayley and I loving to leave our mark on any display that had the alphabet.  It was too tempting, one of us would be the look out.  Saturday night I was at Target at midnight, closing.  It was great, no crowds. I found some ornaments and came up with the only word I could.  “Damnit”  I can hear her say it.  “Damnit Henry! Get your shit together”.  I can hear her voice trying not to break into a giggle.  Trying so hard to say it without laughing.  I posted it my work on Facebook.  One of my new friends, one of my new tribe members posted a picture tonight from the same Target.  Obviously it had been corrected, she made it Hayley worthy again.  I laughed, a real one.  I startled myself.  I had forgotten what a laugh felt like.

The Inspiration, Damnit #1

Thank You S.C., maybe we are trend setters