When it happens again





I was taking Baby Girl to camp, about to leave her for five days.  We had an hour or so to waste so we stopped for ice cream.  While we were standing in an extremely long ice cream line my mother in law called me. "Hey whats up" I said very causally because it was the middle of the afternoon, I figured she wanted to tell baby girl to have a great time at camp.  "Where are you right now?" there was something wrong with her voice, it was shaky, something had happened but I didn't know what. I left Baby Girl in line with Auntie and I walked away. "Whats going on? We are getting ice cream"  "good I wanted to make sure you weren't driving and I wanted to make sure Baby Girl didn't hear me. Rick died this morning." WAIT WHAT! "Wait what?"  "Rick had a heart attack and died this morning"

Rick is Dan's older brother. Arguably the brother most like Dan, they had a lot in common that the other brothers didn't. They were both religious, they both wanted to help people, they both procrastinated.  Rick lives literally on the other side of the country with his wife. He was 58. They have four kids in their 20's and three very small grand children. They were just here three weeks before visiting all of us. We went to the beach, he did a bunch of yard work for Dan's parents. He was perfectly healthy. Out of nowhere he was dead. Dan's parents lost a child, again. Another brother gone in an instant, the family shattered, again.

"Don't tell Baby Girl. Let her have a good week at camp" said my mother in law. Yes I can't tell Baby Girl just before I drop her off at camp. "I will come over as soon as I can" I tell her as I hang up the phone. As soon as I can was about 4 hours latter, i had to drop off baby girl and then drive two hours home. I don't want to do this again. I don't want my family to do this again, we have had enough.  We had no choice. "you have a choice" my in laws said, "if it will be too hard for you, if you don't want to go we all understand, you can just stay home"  I thought about it for half a second, no I don't have a choice. "No I have to go, SHE needs me" My sister in law needs me, I can help her, only I have been through this before, I have to go.

Five days latter I was back at camp to pick up Baby Girl. We were alone in her cabin gathering her stuff. "hey Baby Girl why don't you come sit down by momma, I have to talk to you."  She turned and looked at me, her eyes huge with fear. "Is Gem (the cat) ok?"  "yes Gems ok" "Is Daisy (the other cat) ok?" "yes daisy is ok" "Is Nugget (the hamster) ok" "Yes Nugget is ok" "Is Maple (the neighbors cat) ok" "yes Maple is ok. All the animals are ok."  her eyes got bigger "what about all the humans" she asked me. This is where her mind goes, when I say I have to talk to her, this is her experience, people die. "welllllllll" I said and patted the spot next to me. She came and sat down.  "Uncle Rick had a heart attack and died this morning. So now he gets to live in heaven with Daddy."

She did not react how I expected her to. Remarkably she reacted how one would probably expect an 11 year old to at such news. It's just that I don't have the typical 11 year old. baby Girl pushes her emotions away. Baby Girl doesn't react, she removes, she ignores, she acts like it didn't happen. She developed this skill when her daddy died three and a half years ago. The shock was so immense and painful she couldn't take it and she pushed it away. That is not what happened this time, she was 11 now not 7. It was her uncle not her dad. She has gone to years of therapy. She immediately started to cry, almost at a scream she cried "No, No, No, no mommy no" I held her. she cried and cried, she sobbed into my lap.  after awhile she sat up and whipped her eyes. She went into the bathroom, I could hear her sobbing through the door. She came out. "I want to go home now mommy" ok lets go home.

So it was that a day later, on the 12th of July, 3 1/2 years exactly after Dan died 7 adults from the west coast were on a plane to the east coast, to go to Ricks funeral. We decided to leave Baby Girl and her cousins behind with other relatives. They didn't need to fly across the country and back in three days with a funeral in between. They didn't need to go through this again, it was bad enough that the adults had to.  But i will write about that experience in a different blog.


I wrote a book about my grief, you can read it here: Carry on Castle

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

PTSD is not for sissys

Image
Do you know what PTSD is? Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I bet you think you do.  You might say something like "ya its what people that go off to war have" true. You might say "It's when people see really terrible things" true. A few really smart people might say "ya my friend watched her beloved husband die and now she has it" very true. If you are a mental health professional you might say "ya a child who all of a sudden has a dad who dies will have it" also true.  I was telling a friend once about how life is now without Dan and she said "wow it's almost like you have PTSD or something." No not almost, we do. But what exactly is it? Well it's complicated. I can't describe it for baby girl because I am not in her mind (unfortunately) but I can try and describe it for me. I am hesitant to do so; it's not an easy thing to talk about, But if we are going on a the point of this blog is to be therapeutic for me and h
Read more

The Floor

Image
I pulled him off of our bed and onto the floor. The 911 dispatcher told me to. She said it would help him breathe. I grabbed his ankles and pulled hard on his legs. He fell to the floor with a loud thump. I gasped at the loudness of it, but he didn’t move on his own at all. He didn't shake his head and say, “Ow, what’d you pull me off the bed for?” He didn't do anything. He just laid there. She told me to lift his neck up to help him breathe. I tried, but it was hard to move him, and I didn't want to hurt him.  I put my head on his chest again and again, I couldn’t tell if he was breathing, I couldn’t tell if that was his heartbeat or mine that I heard as he laid on the floor.  “Daddy! Wrestle with me!” she would shout, as she jumped into him and they landed on the floor. It was their favorite game. She would pound him and he would exaggerate the impact, clutching his stomach and lifting his legs in the air.  “You got me good, baby girl!” he would tell her. She would grin i
Read more

Milestones in grief

Image
                                                                Dan and I around 2011 I wrote this for a writing contest about milestones. Writing about every grief milestone would take a book and I had a word limit so I couldn't do that. I tried to do the really big ones. I have not had a particularly eventful life. When I was eight, my parents moved, but they took me with them. At ten, I had a pretty bad accident, but I came out of it fine. My husband and I met at sixteen, and at nineteen, we went against all good advice and got married. I gave birth to our daughter when I was 27.   I loved our boring, normal life. We were living our happily ever after. I was a stay at home mom, Dan was finishing up grad school. Everyone says this kind of thing at funerals, but Dan really was the most amazing person I’ve ever met in my life. He wanted to save the world: the people, the animals, the ecosystem. He wanted to make the world better, and he was. I loved our little family and couldn
Read more