Tag: Memories

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Facing the Holidays of 2023

Thanksgiving 23 is in the books, & our Christmas decorations are up! Whew! One lap down in the holiday race! I’m personally so dang proud of myself & the girls, and I’m grateful for the friends & family who pulled us through another holiday. Had Jamey had been here, he & I would have been high fiving about a job well done when the last friend left the house. As it was, I turned the lights off by myself, as the rest of the house went to sleep.

Last year, I unashamedly ran away from the holidays as best as I could.  – A real weakness of mine is that I stink @ crucial conversations & confrontations, & I wasn’t ready to face the hard things about the holidays. I know astrology is silly, but the symbolism associated with the zodiac animal of a crab 🦀 & the way it buries itself in the sand to escape hard things, fits me so well, & that’s just what I did last year. I ran away & hid out.

Fast forward to another year, & I’m trying out new battle tactics, a more sustainable long-term strategy, & my girls are bravely fighting in the trenches right alongside me, & together, I believe, we are all finding peace & joy in new & different ways. 

A real blessing for me is that my girls are 16 & 19, not 3 & 6. Being older, they were major players in Thanksgiving this year. Heidi made the best cheesy green bean casserole EVER that she dedicated 5-hours to. And Halli made a Toffee Cheesecake Graham Cracker pie, that was out of this world, & she too gave up hours & hours of her Wednesday to make it. I pulled up the rear with the loaded mash potatoes and gravy, & a pre-ordered Cajun spiced fried turkey. 🦃 

We hosted a grandma for lunch, & then Friendsgiving for drop in food & & drink & fun & hot tub indulgences, oh my. 

While Jamey was never far from our thoughts, we managed to pull off the traditional holiday fare, while also making it new, an important factor I believe, in moving forward with our loss, though that’s just what’s working for me. Loss & life are different for everyone & no one’s journey is the same, so I share, just to share how we are moving through it, because grief does not come with a playbook.

But with a Thanksgiving win behind us, we woke up to face the Christmas season, with a bit of new.  During & after our war with cancer, we implemented survival mode only tactics & for us, that meant borrowing my Mil’s artificial tree for the last few years. And while that was the best I could muster for holiday cheer for Christmas pasts, the girls said not having that real Christmas tree scent in the house made it not even feel like Christmas. Their registered & legitimate complaints loomed over me, because how was I going to manage a real tree by myself??? Cue the hero Andy’s Nursery!! The 3 of us picked out our perfect tree, & had it DELIVERED first thing Friday morning!! Score!!! 

So, while the holidays are not as happy for us as they once were, together we are finding ways to celebrate with our loss, not that we are moving on away from it, but with it. For example, we still hung Jamey’s stocking yesterday, & my youngest intends to write Daddy a letter & stick it in it. Grief, we are discovering, is not ever something you get through, but something you learn to carry, but you do have to train yourself to maneuver through life with that big pack, and you have to rethink battle plans, because none of us are as innocent & nimble as we once were. We can never go back to the magical ignorance of not knowing deep, soul crushing pain, but we can, & we are, finding ways to get by, smile & live another day, and through another holiday season. 

Happy Holidays to everyone, everywhere. 

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A Memoir by Heidi

The Beginning of No End  

He cried. I have only ever seen my dad cry twice before this: Once when his dad died, once when his brother died. Of the many ways I have imagined my life going, this was never a part of my plan. 

“There are treatments we can try, and I promise to do everything I can to fight this, but because of how late we caught it, it doesn’t look good, and it won’t be easy,” my dad says this in an unfamiliar tone with a strong front, but has fear ripping through him and making his voice unsteady. My mom wasn’t even making the slightest bit of effort to hide how terrified she was. 

“The doctors said it’s stage four and predicted he will have about a year” I can barely make out what she was saying through her sobs. I don’t remember what else was said after that, I just remember realizing everything was gonna be different. I was 14, too young to lose my dad. I was in disbelief; there was no way this could possibly be God’s plan for me. 

His treatment started soon after that. Everything was going so fast and day after day he got sicker. He started eating less, feeling less active, sleeping more, and I watched as my dad; the strongest man and biggest role model I knew, started to diminish before my eyes. 

It didn’t happen overnight though, and it wasn’t all hopeless. My mom, always trying to find a brightside, told us, “Maybe this is just a really hard patch in our lives that we will be able to look back on and say ‘damn that was hell’ but we’ll be so much stronger and all together”.

Despite my moms optimism, the next couple of months were full of more chemo, surgeries, scans, tests, and plans. 

Right before we were let out for winter break, I was in my pjs getting ready for bed when I heard our doorbell. Ding ding ding. 

“Jamey will you get the door?” my mom shouts from across the house. 

“Can you get it?” 

“No, I think you should get it honey.” This is when I knew there was something going on. My mom would’ve done anything for my dad, especially such a simple task like answering the front door. Halli must’ve thought this was unusual as well because she meets me in the hallway walking to the front door. As my dad opens the door we see one of his best friends standing there with a single candle in his hand. Confused, I get closer to the door. That’s when I see what is happening. There are almost 100 people in our yard with candles in hand. 

The four of us step outside and we are handed candles and lyrics with Christmas carols on them. Tears filled my eyes as the sound of 100 of our closest friends singing Silent Night filled the air. We sang many songs that night and all cried. Even with so many of our friends and family there supporting us I couldn’t shake the fear that this could be my family’s last Christmas. 

Although there are so many awful and hard things I could talk about going through this, there are so many blessings that surround us as well. The support we felt from our friends and community was unimaginable, and we knew we were not fighting this alone. 

Flashforward to the middle of summer, the doctors have decided they have done all they can do. My dad was put on hospice care and a hospital bed was placed in the middle of our living room. 

My mom slept on the couch next to him every night, but her back started aching so we decided I would sleep next to him instead. 

My mom and I were watching a show next to him. We all got tired and my mom said goodnight. I tried to talk to my dad some, but he wasn’t lucid and couldn’t talk very well. I went to bed and I didn’t know whether I should pray for God to take him and end his misery or for him to live another day. That night I prayed for him to live another day and for God not to take him. It was my job to watch over him tonight; he would survive. 

The next morning I woke up to the sun shining bright in my eyes and my sister and mom fighting in the back of the house. I quickly sat up to see how my dad was doing. 

“Dada,” no response. 

I say it again a little louder, this time making sure he heard me, “Dada.” Again no response. A rush of panic floods through me and I bolt up gettin closer to him. He is still. He isn’t moving. His eyes are frozen open staring into space. I shake him and ask him to wake up. I beg him to wake up. I touch his forehead, the feel of his ice cold skin immediately makes my heart plummet. 

“Mama! Halli! Help, he won’t wake up!” I shout and I scream and I cry. No one comes. I can still hear them fighting about whatever they were fighting about in the back of the house.

 I run to them and scream, “He’s gone.” They come running. Everything after that is a blur. 

There is not a happy ending or even an ending to this story. I am still learning how to live in a world that he is not in. I still wake up some mornings forgetting he is gone and not coming back. Things will never be the way they used to be and they will never end up the way I imagined them to. 

The first week of school my syllabuses come back with only one parent signature and the other line blank. When I look to the sidelines during my games only my mom is sitting there with an empty void where he used to be. Fathers Day is no longer a celebration, it is a day full of grief and sorrow. Holidays are no longer holidays, they are just a time where I miss my dad being by my side. My 16th birthday, graduation, wedding day, and the rest of my life there will always be something missing. 

Everyday is another day that I miss my dad and learn how to live life without him being here. It turns out there is not always an ending and life keeps moving.

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Advent, a Season of Waiting 

A silver lining about trying to run & hide from grief leading up to Christmas is that I purposely did not over commit myself to the busyness of the season. I only minimally decorated; the girls kept their gift lists short, because of a small kitchen project, no baking took place, & I most definitely did not send out cards. While I don’t intend to always be such a grinch, it was really all I could muster this year. Next year I think / hope it’ll be, not easier, but maybe more joyous. Our oldest will be “home” from college, & that ‘change’ will make it more festive, & maybe motivate me to do more, though to be honest, I kind of like this less. 

In some ways, maybe a lot of ways, I’m realizing that much of what I used to do, not just at Christmas time, but a million big & small things daily, all year, every year, I did because I was trying to make things a certain way for my life with Jamey. Not that Jamey mandated things be this way or that way, but because I think I was always trying to embody this family / couple ideal that we shared. I did the things, but so did he. I guess that’s kind of part of the deal of sharing your life with someone. The two of you motivate each other & hopefully bring out the best in each other. And with Jamey gone, one, my best maybe long gone, & two, with we three now living as Family 2.0, I don’t think my former vision is at all attainable, & I need a new ideal / dream / model to shoot for, or then again, maybe I don’t. Maybe that’s the real change that’s stemming from this cosmic shift in our lives. Maybe I need to stop squeezing the reigns so tightly, & let life & God lead me organically to the next … (fill in the blank) & just trust His timing & His nudging, & wait. 

But oh, how in the words of one of my favs, Tom Petty, the waiting is the hardest part, & I’m soooo not a good waiter. I like having a goal in my mind to work towards, but in this stage of life, I feel like God is reshaping me for something ahead that I can’t see. It’s like I too am in a period of Advent, waiting for a different notable person to arrive. I am waiting for the new version of me to materialize.   I feel like He is actively sanding off some rough spots here & there, adding a bit more wet clay there & totally morphing me, preparing me, for the next. And while I don’t know what the next looks like, I am trying to lean on God & have faith. For though I’m tripping & stumbling every day, I do believe He has surrounded me with some of the kindest, sweetest friends to help me stay, maybe not in a lane, because maybe I’m supposed to be changing lanes, but to at least stay strong & to stay in the race.  Truly, friends are a blessing from heaven & make life so much easier to not only bear, but enjoy. 

     Numbers 11:17, “And I will take some of the Spirit that is on you and put it on them, and they shall bear the burden of the people with you, so that you may not bear it yourself alone.” 

But back to that whole waiting part. Waiting stinks. I’m a doer; I’m Martha vs Mary, & I’m so bad at waiting. But in this season of Advent, waiting on the celebration of Christmas and Jesus’ birth, I can’t help but think I too am waiting on the new me.  I am reminded that I need not dread the waiting, but rather I should be waiting in excited anticipation. I need to wait while savoring the present. Wait in peace & to trust His plan, His ideal, His dream, His vision & know that He has already carried me this far, He’s not about to just drop me now. So, wherever you are physically, emotionally, or spiritually this holiday season, I encourage us all to savor the waiting & trust that “When the time is right, I the Lord, will make it happen.” Isaiah 60:22

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Celebrities with CRC and Taking Out the Trash

You know how when you are focused on one thing, one thing that for whatever reason God has said you can’t have, or that you at least can’t have right now, all you can see everywhere you look is other people who have that thing? Like when your maternal clock ⏰ starts ticking (do men even have paternal clocks???) and you want a baby so badly that your teeth hurt, but for whatever reason another month goes by and you aren’t pregnant again, but THE ONLY people you EVER see are all the beautiful pregnant ladies of the world?? Or how, in my case, I seem to be surrounded by the cutest older couples around every bend walking & holding hands, literally, absolutely anyplace I ever go when I venture out of my house.  It’s like our minds just like to focus on whatever will torture our psyches the most. 

My dreams, my plans, of growing old with Jamey, puttering around & helping each other fill in the blanks to a shared story, or being this eccentric old couple rocking out at some concert we are much too old to attend, all went up in smoke with cancer. It seems so very unfair. But all the why’s & what ifs that keep me up at night are all asked in vain. But now I’m wondering, is it just me? Is it because I’m hyper focused on colon & colorectal cancer that I hear about it ALL the time?? Does it seem more common to anyone else but me?? I mean Kirstie Alley? Really? Rebecca from Cheers was a victim too? It’s insane! This is a preventable disease! But it’s also kind of a taboo one. No one likes to talk about the symptoms, everyone wants to, excuse the pun, poo poo, any oddities dealing with their bathroom habits, but you know what is even less fun to talk about? Dying! Dying is way less fun to talk about. It’s also way less fun talking about how your daughters no longer have their daddy to cheer them on & off the soccer ⚽️ field, or to watch them graduate high school, or to talk to them about boys, or to have their daddy talk to boys about treating them right, or way off into the future, how they won’t have their daddy to walk them down the aisle at their wedding.

I’ve heard there are 5 stages to grief, (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, & acceptance) but that you don’t really move through them in a linear line, you bounce around in and out of them like a person with attention deficit disorder. Well, I’ll share, up until recently, I don’t think I’ve really spent any time in the anger stage. Maybe I’ve been able to avoid it because my friends have loved me so well. But spoiler alert, I think I’m starting to dip my toes in that miserable pool of emotion. I’m angry. I’m angry that my husband, who always teased me about being a closet hypochondriac, didn’t do every single thing in his power to make sure he didn’t leave us alone. I’m angry that he didn’t even tell me anything was wrong for at least 6 months, because I know without a shadow of doubt, I would have Googled that mess & nagged until he literally got his toosh to the doctor. I’m angry that I’m alone. I’m angry that when I look at the trash can & think someone needs to take that outside, that it takes me a second to realize that someone is me. It’s all me. Everything falls on my shoulders all alone from now  until forever. I’m mad. I’m angry, & I’m sad. 

But the only thing I seem to be able to do with that anger is swing the fire 🔥 out of some kettle bells, yell at cars in traffic, & use it to fuel ⛽️ my message about getting screened. Yes, the prep stinks (actually quite literally 😂) but it is sooooo much better than the alternative. If you love someone, anyone, a person or a pet, or someone, anyone, again person or pet, loves you, GET SCREENED. Supposedly all signs are suggesting that by 2030 colorectal cancer will be the leading cause of cancer deaths for people under 50. Now by 2030 I’ll be fortunate if I’m still here, but by 2030 both of my two beautiful daughters, because now they have a family history, should have been screened a few times. But they wouldn’t be, nobody would be, if we didn’t talk about it & make it as common place as getting your annual physical or your twice a year dental 🦷 cleaning. I totally get that Heaven is going to be Agh-mazing, but those people & pets left behind sure would miss you here on earth. So if nothing else, don’t do it for you, do it for the love of someone else.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go take out the trash.

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Thankful for much, even the suck..

So, here we are, facing the 1st of the Hallmark holidays without Jamey, Thanksgiving. 

Thanksgiving used to be kind of a big deal for us, because it was the 1st big family gathering Jamey & I, several years ago, finally felt equipped & ready to host on our own. Early marriage we always trekked it back down to Florida to be with my parents & grandparents, but once we lost my grans & moved into a house with a little more elbow room, we were ready to host. Now that’s not to say we did do so seamlessly, as it took us a few years to get the hang of it, but we did it & loved it. 

However, we most certainly learned a few things along the way. We learned that if Jamey was intent on smoking the bird 🦃 in the Big Green Egg, Thanksgiving lunch @ 12:00 PM was not a good idea, because it meant he (we) had to stay up most of the night monitoring the temperature, & you can’t stay up all night without imbibing 🥃🍺🍷 at least a wee bit, so subsequent feasts were all dinners versus lunches. I learned that it’s really over kill to deep fry the onions on your back porch in your new Fry Daddy for the green bean casserole, & store bought, fried & dried, onions are really delicious when comparing the ROI. Yes, lots of tweaks were made over the years. We even moved the festivities out to Smyer Lake one year, where the kitchen appliances may not have been as nice, but the ambiance was top drawer. But then Covid 🦠😷 side swiped our newly acquired hosting hats, & we had to settle for a low-key family of 4. Oh, how innocent & naive I was to think that Thanksgiving with just the 4 of us during a pandemic was rather somber & sad. I mean what I wouldn’t give to go back in time & relish it more, appreciate it more, cherish it more, & imprint every minute of it into my wretched memory more. Just writing that makes me sob big hard tears that I’ve been managing to keep at bay for longer & longer periods of time as of late, but I guess it just goes to show you that grief lives in a deep dark well that never runs dry. 😥 But despite the tears, I’m truly thankful for the many, many happy memories. I just sometimes still can’t believe that they really are just memories, and that realization sucks, but life goes on for the rest of us.

Our “feast” this year will be small & mostly ordered from a local delicatessen, but we will get by & try to focus on the many, many good things & countless blessings in our lives. For example, our oldest has been receiving college acceptances & both girls just might be able to squeak out an all A report card. And friends! Oh my goodness our friends! Friends continue to show up & support us in the most unexpected & beautiful ways, whether it be by coming to the the 18th Annual Finish The Fight Iron Bowl Kickoff Casino Party last week, or by stomping out my boa that may or may not have caught fire 🔥 recently, or by leaving THE. MOST. DELICIOUS. loaf of “Rosemary Remembrance” bread on our front porch. (It was sooo good; I’ve even asked for the recipe & I don’t bake, & I’ve never made 🍞 bread in my life!) The kindnesses & support are nothing short of phenomenal, & I’m so thankful! But the suck is never too far off. In the last 2 weeks, 2 dear & longtime friends have shared with me that loved ones in their inner circles have been diagnosed with CRC. It feels like it’s everywhere, but my daughter says it’s just because I’m hyper focused on CRC. Maybe so, but I’d be negligent if I didn’t put in a plug here for everyone reading this now, if you haven’t yet, schedule your colonoscopy sooner versus later. I don’t want anyone else to feel compelled to write a grief blog, maybe some sort of happy blog, but let’s prevent anymore pathetic grief blogs.

I’ll close out this post on Thanksgiving Eve, with a PSA that’s not about colonoscopies: Love on your honeys. Squeeze ‘em tight. Don’t sigh or fight if someone overcooks, undercooks, or forgets to cook anything. Just squeeze their hands & give thanks to God, & try with all your might to remember & appreciate it all. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

P.S.  Apologies for not posting last week.  I was running around with my hair on fire (It was apparently out of control!) and pealing in everywhere I went on two wheels. Then throw in one of your besties visiting from out of town, a fundraiser to “Finish the Fight” with a dozen or so friends all gathered in one place, and journaling / blogging was just not happening. 😊