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I Miss Her, But I Did Not Know Her

by | Sep 27, 2010 | Breast Cancer, Cancer and Neoplasia, Coping With Cancer, Grief, Help For Grief And Grieving, Loss | 3 comments

I think my title sums up how I feel.  My heart has been aching for the past year for a person that has been there since I was two, for twenty-eight years of my life, and now she was gone. She was my cousin. She was there before my sister. I don’t remember life before her.

I feel guilty that I didn’t take the time to get to know my cousin. Sure, I did the family obligations, the birthdays, holidays, and weddings. But it wasn’t until I was at her funeral that I realized how much I had missed out on. I felt awful because she used to drive me crazy. I found her very annoying at times. While everyone talked about the saint she was, I felt so guilty about I used to feel about her.

Denean was different, she always was.  She was an old soul before she was in high school.  I think she knew even then. In 1998 we got the call, my mom, best friend and I, while we were working at my mom’s practice: Denean had Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.  It’s treatable, she will beat it.

But, still I think to myself, it’s cancer and she’s only 17.  Through treatment and chemo and losing her hair she remained positive. It was as if she was God’s own army, it was amazing.

Remission with follow-ups came next for five years and then there was a lump.

Breast Cancer.  Denean had a biopsy and yes, at the age of twenty-three she was diagnosed with breast cancer.  A double masectomy and a hysterectomy followed, plus lots of chemo and radiation. Then remission again. She had won, we had won! It was a good day.

Then two days before her brother’s wedding, another lump.  This one was bruised and ugly.  Breast cancer again.  With no breasts.  It had spread.  Lymph nodes, bones, tissue.  Her mother, my aunt and a nurse, asked a doctor how long we would have with her. 5 years, he told her, 5 years at best.

My cousin was twenty-five at the time.  She wouldn’t live to see thirty.

But we were all selfish. We expected her to win, to beat it. She always did.

Looking back, we missed it.  She knew she was dying and she planned for it. My only regret in life is that I didn’t plan for it, too.  My best friend told me to spend time with her while I could and I didn’t. I did once I realized what was happening, but I regret that I didn’t before.  Three weeks before she died, I rushed home with my two-month old baby to be by my cousin’s side.  Until the day that I die, I will be grateful that I had that one week with her. I got to make jokes with her about her ICU nurses, see her sarcastic sense of humor one last time.

I will carry that week with me always.

Denean left the hospital September 17, 2009 and three weeks later she died on Sunday, October 4th, 2009; her father’s birthday.  Her funeral was standing room only. The women and the real men wore pink to honor her.

Denean was that person that you read about in People Magazine.  She fought cancer three times, she put herself through school and she taught to special needs kids–it was her passion. But her most important job of all was that she lead so many people to Christ.  She helped start a prayer group in her high school that started out with 10-20 people. Today, it is well over 200 people.

To say it is an honor to have known her for her entire life would be an understatement.  I feel blessed by the hand of God to be related to Denean.

Thank you for this forum.  It feels amazing to talk about her.

Denean, if by the Grace of God you are reading this, I love you and I miss and I will forever feel blessed to have the honor of being your cousin. I think about you every day and will miss you until the day I die.

Thinking of Mom

by | Sep 23, 2010 | Grief, Help For Grief And Grieving, Loss, Parent Loss | 3 comments

I’ve been thinking about my mom a lot lately.  She passed away 7 and a half years ago – tomorrow would have been her birthday.

When I’d write, she was always my editor, sounding board and supporter.  It makes me sad that she’s not around to bounce ideas off of.  But then again, it’s oddly freeing because she was my audience and she and I didn’t agree on a few things.  Now I don’t have to write what I think she would like, but what I want to writing.  And it’s also a bad idea to have a relative critique what you’ve written because feelings get thrown in. And then holy crap what do you do with that?!  Are they rejecting your writing or are they rejecting you?  What the heck did they really mean when they said that sentence had weird wording?

And I’ve been struck again by how much she is missing.  I just found out that preliminary tests show that I’m going to be an aunt again.  This will be niece or nephew number 9 (although, I’m leaning toward niece and I have mad baby predicting skills).  Mom was around for the first 4.  Four have been added since she passed and the baby to be named later will be number 5.  Not to mention I got hitched and skipped the whole mom thing and went straight to grandma.  (I highly recommend it.  Grandkids and nieces and nephews are the best inventions ever.) I’ve got 4 precious little ones of my own that Grandma Jessie would have loved.

But she made her choices, and maybe she’s watching wherever she is.

He Was My Husband

by | Sep 23, 2010 | Coping With Losing A Partner, Grief, Help For Grief And Grieving, Loss, Partner/Spouse Loss | 14 comments

Let me be honest with you and give full disclosure. We were not together. But we were very much together. Not sexually or romantically – but in every other way possible. We were a unit. He was my husband and the father of my daughter. We were madly in love and we fought equally as hard as we loved. But we couldn’t make it work because we had separate issues. When those issues aligned, they exploded and caught our lives on fire. We were, as the prolific Eminem says, “what happens when a tornado meets a volcano.”

We were even openly dating other people. I would tell anyone who was interested in me, “If this is going to work, please know you’ll not only be dating me, but you’ll be dating my husband and my daughter.” I’d ask him who he was sleeping with and if they were any good in bed. No one understood us, not even ourselves.

We never divorced and we took our vows very seriously, even if we weren’t fucking. He was still wearing his wedding band when he was found unconscious on a basement floor. I was still wearing mine an hour later when his Uncle called me to tell me things didn’t look good.

Less than 12 hours before that phone call, he and I were eating dinner at a Japanese restaurant with our daughter. We both had soup and split a sushi roll like we always did.

Our daughter was 5 at the time and said, “I like it when it’s just the three of us. We should do this more often.” He and I both nodded in agreement and I told him I’d like that very much. Maybe we could have figured out how to fix the mess we’d made, but probably not.

He mentioned needing to the grocery store to get some things for our daughter since she’d be spending the night at his place the next night. So we went together. I remembered how out of it he seemed to be. After he put only one item (strawberry shampoo) in the basket, he shrugged and said he’d get the rest later.

By then it was raining and he walked us back to my car. As he walked away I said, “Dude, I don’t even get a hug?” and he hugged me in the rain. I told him to be safe. The second I got home I called him to make sure he was home safely. He told me he loved me. I told him loved him, too.

I didn’t hear my cell phone until the second time his Uncle called because it was on vibrate. When my husband didn’t make it to work that morning, they went to check on him and found him unconscious. Paramedics broke his two front teeth trying to insert a breathing tube because his teeth were clenched. They couldn’t determine how long he’d be without oxygen. They couldn’t figure out what in the hell happened.

The whole drive to the hospital, I was convinced it would end up being an overdose or alcohol poisoning. I yelled and I screamed the whole way there. I cried. I told the universe if it took him away from me, I’d fucking kill it.

As it turns out, his system was completely clean. No drugs and the only sign of alcohol was so trace, they said it could have been from using mouthwash after brushing his teeth.

They spent 4 days running tests on him to figure out what happened. Four days on life support.  Four days of not sleeping. Four days of seizures, which I thought was a good sign (I was wrong). Four days for friends and family to trickle in. He was only 25 and none of this made any sense.

I rubbed his feet. I told him stories. I teased him. If he could hear me, I wanted him to know that, like I promised him, I wasn’t going anywhere.

On the fourth day, they fit us all into a little room and told us there was no hope. He was brain dead and, oh yeah, they had no idea why. They might be able to tell us once an autopsy was performed. We made the unanimous decision that he would never want to live on machines.

On that fourth day, they wheeled him into an OR and removed all tubes and machinery. They said I could stay until he took his last breath and at that time I’d be ushered out so they could retrieve the few organs I approved.

I held his hand and quietly sang to him. I told him I didn’t want him to go, but it’d be okay if he had to. My face mask filled with snot and tears as I watched his breathing stop and fade out into the silence in the room.

I went to the liquor store and the guy behind the counter said, “Jesus, who died?” Slinging my bottle of vodka, I crawled into bed until the world stopped making so much noise. It never has.

The days and months following I heard some lovely gems:

“You weren’t together anymore. Why are you so upset?”

“We should get the ashes until your daughter turns 18. Then she can have them.”

“You’re not his wife.”

“Why was he wearing his ring if you weren’t together?”

“Weren’t you guys dating other people?”

“Why are you listed in the obituary?”

So let’s get this straight:

I wasn’t really his wife anymore, but I was wife enough to pay the medical bills (because he was on MY insurance), pay for half the funeral service, get all documents in order and pay off all the remaining debt he left behind. I could answer any question you’d ever ask about him. I wasn’t really his wife? Fuck you.

I admit we weren’t normal or conventional.

But let me be honest with you. Full disclosure. I loved that man with a depth, passion, and ferocity I could never explain. I hated him because he was everything I wanted and we couldn’t make it work. He was my best friend and knew everything about me – and loved me anyway.

He loved the smell of pumpkin and drank coffee at all hours. He wanted tattoos but never got any. His entire life was dedicated to our daughter. He was a chef. He smelled like mint. He had the most beautiful brown eyes that he passed down to our daughter. He dressed really well, except he had awful taste in hats.

Losing him is the worst thing that has ever happened to me and it has stolen a chunk of my heart forever.

He was my husband.

Grief Has No Logic

by | Sep 23, 2010 | Grief, Help For Grief And Grieving, Jealousy, Loss | 2 comments

Several months ago I had to lay to rest -and mourn- the death of a dream that I didn’t even know I had. Or would ever have. Every now and then, however, it shimmers into my periphery, and I have to once more let it go.

I don’t know why it came into mind this morning. But it did, just for a moment, as My True Love and I were stumbling around in quasi-waking states getting ready for work. I turned and saw him brushing his teeth, and my gut clenched for a split second.

I will never have a biological child with My True Love.

We will never have a child that is born from us, together, fully ours.

My grief doesn’t even make logical sense, really.

I don’t want another pregnancy. I don’t want to deal with a newborn again. There are ways in which I fear it, because of the PPD that shadowed those three long years. I also don’t want a vertical c-section scar, as shallow a reason as this is, but that is what I would get: I was told that if I had another pregnancy, they wouldn’t want to use the same bikini-cut entry point because three abdominal surgeries have built up too much scar tissue there. And with my medical history, we can’t risk labor.

MTL had a vasectomy years ago. Combined with my (much-loved and effective) Mirena IUD, the chances of getting pregnant are so infinitesimal that if it happened, we’d know it was God saying Thou SHALT have a child. So there. And I imagine that it would cause some serious initial issues, since (1) getting pregnant with an IUD is generally a Bad Idea and (2) MTL would be seriously wondering about paternity.

All that aside: we don’t want more children. We have five, combined. We have enough.

Apparently there’s a part of me that doesn’t care. There’s a part of me that hates the fact that we will never have a child that is our love made flesh. There’s a part of me that, as much as I love my boys, as much as I am growing to love his children, yearns for that biological connection to him and is angry that we will never have it. There’s a part of me that resents that other people have that connection to him and to me instead.

My sister just had a child. Both MTL and I have been all aflutter about how adorable he is and getting mushy about babies in general. We both have a soft spot for them. We miss the smell and feel of our babies, all the things about them that go to that mushy center.

(We don’t miss the poop or the crying or the sleepless nights, though. We’re not that crazy.)

And that part of me, the part that doesn’t care about all that, the part that isn’t based on logic, is insanely jealous. Not only that she has a baby, but that she has a baby with the man she loves.

I don’t have that.

And I never will.

Miscarried

by | Sep 23, 2010 | Baby Loss, Coping With Baby Loss, Grief, Help For Grief And Grieving, Livng Through A Miscarriage, Loss, Miscarriage, Pregnancy | 2 comments

I wrote the following Monday, July 12, 2010 just hours before I had a D&C procedure.

I can’t sleep. Too much on my mind. I write this with a lump in my throat.

The day before my son Lucas’ first birthday, got a positive pregnancy test. We had only been “trying” for two weeks! Can you say fertile? Stranger things have happened.

Learning I was pregnant for the first time was one of the most exciting days of my life. Not only is it a major milestone on the path of adulthood, it is one of the most joyous experiences you will ever have. I will never forget the day I found out I was pregnant with Lucas. I cried tears of happiness, excitement, and fear.

Learning I was pregnant a second time was a little more shocking for me. I had just gotten back to my pre-pregnancy weight and into my favorite jeans. The hair around my face was starting to grow back and I was FINALLY starting to get the hang of this “mommy thing.” The tears this time came from pure disbelief. I was excited but also troubled by how our perfect little family of three was going to change. I was mostly concerned with how this new addition would affect Lucas and how I might handle two under two. Doing the quick calculations, Lucas and his sibling would be almost 21 months apart.

I thought I was nine weeks along at my first OB/GYN visit when an ultrasound revealed that I was only measuring at six weeks. We were told we could have our dates off.

I’m pretty good (obsessive) with dates and knew deep down inside that something was terribly wrong.

My doctor ordered blood work to check my hCG (the pregnancy hormone) levels and more ultrasounds a week later. Unfortunately, my hCG levels dropped and we learned last Thursday that there had been no growth to the embryo since week six. I had a terrific pregnancy with my son, so why would I think anything would or could go wrong with this one? I certainly felt pregnant.

But, in the end, my gut was right. There was something wrong and this pregnancy wasn’t meant to be.

Of course, we’ll never know exactly what went wrong. Why did this happen to us? What went wrong? Did I do something different this time around? Will it happen again?

I know that miscarriage is far more common than we like to think and often times there are no answers. I’ll have to accept that. Eventually.

All I know right now is that this hurts. I’m sad and because I don’t want to wait around for my body to have a natural miscarriage, I have a D & C (a procedure to scrape and collect the tissue from inside the uterus) scheduled for this afternoon.

Please keep those of us who have been through this terrible ordeal in your thoughts. Thank you.

A Letter I Can’t Send: Dear Mama and Daddy

by | Sep 21, 2010 | A Letter I Can't Send, Cancer and Neoplasia, Coping With Cancer, Grief, Help For Grief And Grieving, Loss, Parent Loss | 3 comments

Dear Mama & Daddy,

Well, here it is…September again. It seems like it should get easier. And some years it even does. But, for some reason, this year is hard. Mama, September 3 is now and forever will be the day you went away. And Daddy, September 21 will always be the day you left.

I miss you both so much. Daddy, you never got to meet Tabitha, but you would have been crazy about her. You would have called her “Sport Model”. You would have goosed her in the ribs with your finger stub just like you did me, and she would have hated it and loved it at the same time just like I did. I wish you could have known her. And I hope that you can see her from where you are.

Mama…oh God, where do I start? I hate, hate, hate the cancer that took you away. I’m glad you’re not hurting anymore, but my God. You always said that you wouldn’t want Grandma to come back because it would mean she would have to suffer again. I can’t say that. I’d take you back in a heartbeat and give you medicine to help you not suffer. I’m so sorry that I didn’t wake up that morning when you called me. That morning when your pelvis was broken and you tried to get up to use the bathroom. The doctor said that you falling back on the bed didn’t break your pelvis. That your pelvis was broken before you ever tried to get up because the cancer was in your bones. But still. If I could have a do-over, I sure would take it.

And Daddy, don’t think that all my guilt is reserved for Mama. I haven’t forgotten that time I ran off for a week and worried you so much and left you alone. You remember that song by Travis Tritt? Tell Me You Didn’t Say Goodbye? Well, I still can’t hear that song without losing it. Even after all this time.

Mama…Daddy…I’m sorry. I wasn’t the daughter I should have been. And I didn’t realize it until it was too late. I hope there really is a Heaven. And I hope that the two of you are together there. And I hope that you both can see all the way into my heart and know that even though I failed you both miserably, I always loved you and thought you were the very best parents anyone ever had. And I hope to see you both again someday.

Charles Franklin Brunson

March 1941 ~ September 1995

Virginia Faye Brunson

January 1943 ~ September 2008