{"id":273,"date":"2018-01-09T08:24:08","date_gmt":"2018-01-09T08:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hayleysmom.com\/?p=273"},"modified":"2018-01-09T08:24:08","modified_gmt":"2018-01-09T08:24:08","slug":"hayleys-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hayleysmom.com\/index.php\/2018\/01\/09\/hayleys-light\/","title":{"rendered":"Hayley’s Light"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have been amazed at how caring and generous friends and strangers have been since we lost Hayley. \u00a0I know a lot of people but I don’t let a large number in to my squad. \u00a0Mainly because it is hard to find that many people that swear as much as I do. \u00a0Also, my time was spent with Hayley and Henry. \u00a0Mostly Hayley, you know girl stuff. \u00a0We did just about everything together. \u00a0We had adventures, we did boring stuff like the store or got our nails done. \u00a0But it didn’t matter as long as we were together. \u00a0Please don’t think I have forgotten my other child. \u00a0Henry and I have our special time, things we do together. \u00a0He is into things that I am not very good at. \u00a0I suck at xbox and PC gaming just baffles me. \u00a0That is his and Scott’s thing. \u00a0Hayley was my best friend. \u00a0I was so lucky to have that kind of relationship with her. \u00a0It would have been such a different dynamic with two girls. \u00a0Henry is a great balance for me. \u00a0I have really been amazed to find how much time I spent talking, texting, calling, sitting with, driving with, or everything with her. \u00a0Now that it is gone I sit and realize how big of a hole she has left.<\/p>\n

My grief has grown. \u00a0Just like Finn, the golden retriever puppy. \u00a0I am the crazy dog lady. \u00a0We are back to 4 dogs but the pack works for me. \u00a0My friends and Scott were oh so clever. \u00a0They knew if there was a new puppy to care for that I would have no choice but to get out and stay out of bed between 7 and 2 when there would be no witnesses. \u00a0They were absolutely right. \u00a0I have so many times groaned when I heard him whine, thinking that at that moment there is nothing more I would like to do but stay in bed for hours. \u00a0If I sleep it isn’t real. \u00a0My three older dogs would think that was the best day ever. \u00a0Sleeping on our bed is their favorite. \u00a0What I didn’t expect was that for the last 9 weeks Scott sleeps in Hayley’s room, while I sleep in ours with the puppy. We use a crate for him to keep him out of trouble and safe. \u00a0He is ready to sleep by 7 p.m. \u00a0Of course I am not. \u00a0We usually head to bed between 8 and 9 where he is coaxed or herded into his crate by Scott. \u00a0Scott then lays on the floor next to the crate reading on his iPad while Finn paces and cries. \u00a0I get ready for bed. \u00a0By the time I am in bed Finn is asleep. \u00a0A couple of times so was Scott. \u00a0I am a night owl, going to bed at 8 is not normal. \u00a0So I proceed to surf the net, write, crochet, or draw. \u00a0I usually fall asleep between 11 and midnight. \u00a0If I have to go to the bathroom or grab a charger, I literally will roll and army crawl away from the bed hoping he won’t notice. \u00a0He has a savvy sense of my location at all times. \u00a0I can be so quiet and he will always wake up and howl, bark or cry until I am back in bed next to the crate. \u00a0He knows his job is to watch over me and he takes it way too seriously. \u00a0Finn has to pee at any time between 1:30 and 3:00, occasionally twice. \u00a0He then will need to go again between 4:45 and 6:30. \u00a0At this point I could be totally hosed. \u00a0I can tell if he will go back to sleep until maybe 7:30 or 8:00, but most of the time he is up and ready to chew on you or anything he can. \u00a0His size makes me forget he is a baby, just a puppy. \u00a0I really expect that he can be more self sufficient. \u00a0So guess who has NEVER been a morning person, yet by 7:00 each morning I am downstairs nodding off on the couch while I hold one end of a dog toy or toss a ball for an hour. \u00a0Thank you Tena and Stacia. \u00a0So clever.<\/p>\n

Just because I am out of bed does not mean I am active or getting anything accomplished. \u00a0My energy level is nearly as low as it can be and still be conscious. \u00a0Today I accomplished one load of laundry, got my nails done and painted some rocks. \u00a0I was exhausted by 4:00. \u00a0The grief I feel is frightening. \u00a0The best days are when I can trick my brain to slightly believe she is up at school. \u00a0Everyone’s grief is as individual as a fingerprint. \u00a0I have learned that I have judged other’s in the past. \u00a0I have thought unkind opinions of when someone should be “over” their grief or at least doing better. \u00a0I was so very wrong. \u00a0My grief reminds me of a long hallway in a hotel. \u00a0Sort of like the one in the shining but with no creepy twins at the end of the hall. \u00a0I am trying to get to the elevator at the end of the hall to take me to a peaceful place. \u00a0But I never reach it. \u00a0During my attempts I may open a door. \u00a0That door may be my memory of the night I watched her die. \u00a0The shock and disbelief. \u00a0They said she would be fine. \u00a0My screaming her name as they did chest compressions and her soul left her body. \u00a0Falling to the ground screaming and weeping intermittently. \u00a0Just when they thought I was calming down, the screaming would start again. \u00a0The meeting with the surgeon. \u00a0This room sucks. \u00a0I would give it a negative 100 on trip advisor. \u00a0I try so hard not to go into that room but I am not always successful in keeping that door closed. \u00a0I have noticed that the narrative has changed slightly. \u00a0Shockingly there is now a twinge of pride and a small smile. \u00a0What was done that night saved her body so that many others can live and their mothers are not experiencing this hell. \u00a0The smile is that I know for a fact Hayley would find it funny that I peed my pants. \u00a0I remember thinking briefly that thought when it happened because my brain was not accepting what it was seeing. \u00a0It created a scenario where she would survive.<\/p>\n

Some rooms contain memories. \u00a0Some are years of similar memories grouped together. \u00a0Our 18 years of visiting Cannon Beach. \u00a0That room has her naked at 2 splashing in the water in front of our rental house. \u00a0Skim boarding at around 11. \u00a0Bringing friends as she got older. \u00a0Dance competitions at Seaside piggy backed on to CB. \u00a0The next room might be all the time she and I spent on my parent’s boat. \u00a0There are hundreds of rooms that include 15 years of dance recitals, competitions, costumes, hair and make up. \u00a0Another may be the day she was born, holding her in my arms for the first time. \u00a0The struggle to become pregnant and the reward on April 29, 1998. \u00a0The trouble of preeclampsia at the end of the pregnancy, the hospitalization after as my kidneys shut down. \u00a0Even while very ill and hospitalized I refused to be separated from Hayley. \u00a0She stayed with me in my room at First Hill Swedish, but there had to be another adult at all times. \u00a0Sara and Scott took turns. \u00a0Nothing could convince me to let her go home without me. \u00a0Some rooms are just me sitting in a chair thinking, fuck, I have been through a lot of shit. \u00a0How could the worst nightmare happen on top of all the other shit. \u00a0I know everyone deals with shit, but my shit hill is so much higher than almost everyone I know. \u00a0I have faced financial ruin, faced death, countless surgeries, a separation, loss of my stepmom, loss of my dad, loss of my beloved grandmother, loss of friends and loss of a career. \u00a0I cannot remember one 5 year period where we did not face a major life event. \u00a0The big stuff, not little stuff. \u00a0Yet through it all we had the two H’s, Hayley Storm and Henry Scott. \u00a0They even have the same initials.<\/p>\n

One of the rooms in Hotel Grief is the room of kindness. \u00a0The things that have been done to show care and ease our suffering in basic ways. \u00a0This is my way of publicly thanking everyone for everything and anything they did to ease our pain and make things easier for us. \u00a0Thanks to my most organized friend, there was food for weeks and weeks. \u00a0In that room I see an alternative where if we had not had so much generosity with food, that would have been a stressor that I could not handle. \u00a0My friend left a cooler on our porch for the deliveries. \u00a0This was not her first rodeo. \u00a0How nice not to have to answer the door. \u00a0How nice that everyone understood. \u00a0Henry called it the magic blue box. \u00a0I have a stack of thank you cards, and every time I sit down to try to write and send them, I can’t figure out what to say. \u00a0“Thank you for the brownies, they are my favorite and demolishing all of them kept me from crying for a good 15 minutes”. \u00a0My friends say people don’t expect a card.<\/p>\n

There was the food and then there was the go fund me page. \u00a0I have donated to countless causes in my life. \u00a0I raised over 2 million dollars in 5 years for Heart Disease Research. \u00a0Never did it occur to me we would be on the receiving end. \u00a0Without a job meant no family leave pay. \u00a0Had we not had that fund I don’t know what I would have done. \u00a0I was planning and hoping to be back to work by October. \u00a0When I lost Hayley, I cannot even imagine. \u00a0That fund gave me peace of mind and the gift of time.<\/p>\n

Little gifts have been left on my porch since the summer. \u00a0Books, candy, flowers, wonderful things. \u00a0It could have been just a single piece of chocolate and it held the power to make me feel loved and gave me that little piece of strength.<\/p>\n

The gift of time. \u00a0One of Hayley’s favorite people was at my side to make the candle light vigil for Hayley’s recipients a success. \u00a0Then there were the 200 plus people that were there burning their fingers on hot wax. \u00a0She made the beautiful Red Barn feel like Hayley. \u00a0There was the gift of the property for the service. \u00a0The gift of Root Beer, Hayley’s favorite. \u00a0The gift of speaking at the service and therefore forever being etched in Hayley’s history. \u00a0The gift of plants, flowers and programs. \u00a0The giant photo of Hayley. \u00a0The handmade cookies with her name and favorite sayings. \u00a0The talented musicians both friends of Hayley. \u00a0The AV System so everyone could hear. \u00a0The talented women that made it all look lovely. \u00a0The 500 plus people that stood 10 deep for 2 hours. \u00a0The people outside that stood in the heat and listened the best they could from the windows and doors. \u00a0The slide show lovingly put together by a friend the night before. \u00a0The glassy babies at the service and in my home. \u00a0The Hayley glassy baby. \u00a0Other gifts of time included decorating a Christmas tree in a coastal theme. \u00a0Cleaning Henry’s man cave! \u00a0Jen deserves a medal.<\/p>\n

This room is huge and everywhere I look are the acts of kindness. \u00a0Some were as complicated as my brother handling the details at the end to as simple as a letter or a card. \u00a0Random Texts or messages on Facebook or in the comments section of this blog. \u00a0I devour those messages as if I am starving. \u00a0The majority of these acts of kindness have been performed by strangers or acquaintances that I faintly know, maybe from Facebook. \u00a0Community members. \u00a0I have never been one to graciously accept help. \u00a0I finally stopped stressing about all of it when someone said, “letting people help is more about them than you”. \u00a0They would do anything to make this go away, to take my pain. \u00a0But they can’t, so they bake. \u00a0They do something and by doing these acts of kindness they feel less helpless.<\/p>\n

A thank you will never suffice; ever. \u00a0I love the room of kindness. \u00a0It makes me feel less alone. \u00a0Some of these strangers I now call friends. \u00a0I am so thankful. \u00a0So are Scott and Henry. \u00a0I thought about the thank you cards, I could never get through them. \u00a0I thought about standing on the corner near Safeway with a sandwich board that says “Thank you to the best community; \u00a0I am sorry about that time I called your kids entitled brats”<\/p>\n

On New Year’s day, over 20 people joined us in the freezing cold to light flying sky lanterns in Hayley’s honor. \u00a0To welcome the new year. \u00a0I thought for sure the dock might tip and we were all going to do an unintentional polar plunge. \u00a0It was so beautiful, the sunset, the mountain, the lake and the lights. \u00a0\"\"But when I turned and looked at the people that came I was overcome with emotion. \u00a0There were people I did not know prior to this tragedy. \u00a0There were people I have known 16 years. \u00a0Girls that grew up with Hayley all to become amazing young women. \u00a0It was moms and dads. \u00a0I will continue to do everything I can to keep Hayley’s light alive. \u00a0I am not going to have mine and her lives mean nothing but tears and pain. \u00a0Every mother thinks their kids are the best, and they hope that they are good people. \u00a0Hayley’s death showed me that she was a good person. \u00a0The best. \u00a0That room in Hotel Grief is the one with light shining through at the bottom of the door. \u00a0In there is Hayley’s light. \u00a0This room is as painful as all of the others. \u00a0Because now I know what I am missing. \u00a0I did not notice how bright the light was until it was gone. \u00a0Don’t take for granted the light in your lives. \u00a0Take the time to think about some of the Hayley stories and imagine what would your story sound like. \u00a0The electricity that powered Hayley’s light was not perfect but it touched so many people in such a short time. \u00a0Take the time to be<\/strong> thankful. \u00a0Thanks is all I have the strength to give to people right now. \u00a0I am trying to learn to “be” all of the things Hayley would expect from me, but I have not had much success yet; \u00a0But my Thankful Light is super nova bright.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Thank you<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

— Dawn, Scott and Henry<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have been amazed at how caring and generous friends and strangers have been since we lost Hayley. \u00a0I know a lot of people but I don’t let a large number in to my squad. \u00a0Mainly because it is hard to find that many people that swear as much as I do. \u00a0Also, my time … <\/p>\n

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