by Band Back Together | Oct 15, 2010 | A Letter I Can't Send, Grandparent Loss, Grief, Help For Grief And Grieving, Loss, Parent Loss |
Dear Lucas:
The last time I saw my parents alive was the day after my wedding, Sunday, August 5, 2007.
My sister and I choose to remember them most on October 15, the day we were both notified of their passing.
Sometime between Friday, October 12, 2007 at 8:00 PM and Saturday, October 13, 2007 at 8:00 AM they died of carbon monoxide poisoning. They were 61 and 58 respectively. Too young to die.
My parents lived overseas and dedicated their lives to working at American international schools around the globe for 28 years. My father was the principal of a kindergarten through 12th grade school in Tunis, Tunisia and my mother was a third grade teacher. They died in Tunisia.
For those of you who don’t know, carbon monoxide is odorless, colorless and is the second-leading cause of poisoning deaths in the country. Carbon monoxide poisoning claims nearly 500 lives and another 15,000 require emergency room treatment. It can kill you before you know it because you can’t see it, smell it, or taste it. A water heater vent was damaged in my parent’s kitchen and it emitted carbon monoxide into their home.
It’s hard to be the one left behind to pick up the pieces and ask the unanswerable questions. It’s stupid to walk around angry at an inanimate object. Most of the time I just feel robbed. My parents were anything but done with this life. One week to the day before their lifeless bodies were found, they had decided to retire and return to the United States. They were anxious to see my sister, who had recently graduated from college, start her life and begin building a career. They looked forward to us both having grandchildren (they would have been amazing grandparents and would have completely adored you, not to mention spoiled you rotten!) and had a long list of things they wanted to do to their Arizona home and trips they were excited to take. It’s unfair that they were taken from us too soon. I miss them every single day and ache to hear their voices again.
I’m mostly sorry that you will never get to meet them in the physical sense.
I hope that among me, your dad, your aunt, and everyone who knew them, we will help you know them too.
Sometimes bad things happen to good people, but I will forever believe that the best is yet to be.
by Band Back Together | Oct 15, 2010 | Cancer and Neoplasia, Grief, Loss, Parent Loss |
Cancer might not have destroyed my childhood, but I sure grew up faster. I knew from the time that I was six that my dad was going to die. My family never hid Daddy’s sickness. Even though my parents were divorced and my dad went on to remarry when I was seven, we were always very close. I have great memories of my dad and he will forever be the one I compare all men to.
Nobody will ever be better than my own dad.
My dad was diagnosed with cancer when he was sixteen. It started in his jaw and he went through countless surgeries, had many teeth removed, radiation and chemo (all beginning in 1966 when cancer was very hush-hush and nobody talked about it).
Eventually my dad wound up having half his jaw removed. The cancer showed up again, this time in his lungs. Over the years my dad underwent countless surgeries, radiation, and chemotherapy treatments.
My dad didn’t have “Lung Cancer” and to be honest, I don’t know what he had, but he would get tumors that would grow in the pulmonary artery. Chemo would shrink it, but the bitch kept coming back. My dad never quit smoking though, and he made me promise I would never pick the habit up (which I have stood by and have made my own kid promise to never smoke either).
According to my aunt, my family believes that my dad got the cancer after cleaning up some land for some extra money. Years later, that land was found to be a toxic waste site. To this day there are efforts to clean up that land to make it profitable for the city where my dad grew up.
My dad worked hard even though he wasn’t supposed to do physical labor and when he would get sick he would be down for days, sometimes weeks. That didn’t stop him from moving back to NY when I was ten and buying a house on three acres in upstate NY, building a barn and putting up fence so he could have his own little farm. Nope. Nobody stopped my daddy. I’m fairly certain that if his doctors had known what he was up to, they would have committed him. My dad became a farmer when he was thirty-six. He raised cows, pigs, goats, chickens, ducks, rabbits, a horse named Rusty, and had an enormous vegetable garden.
I remember going with him to a chemo treatment when I was eleven or twelve. His chemo treatments were done seventy miles away in Cooperstown at the hospital there, so my dad, the trooper, made a day of it like it was just another day in his life. He had his chemo and then we walked around Cooperstown and then drove the seventy miles back home. Just another day.
I remember the last summer I spent with my dad. My stepmom took the kids to the store or something and my dad was watching TV. He called me into the living room and wanted me to sit with him. He looked at me and told me he was dying. It broke my heart. In my heart I had always known Daddy was sick but I will always remember that day. We sat there crying together. It was very emotional.
My dad died on February 25, 1991. He was forty-one.
I was fourteen.
Daddy died of pneumonia in the hospital. I had spoken with him two days earlier on the phone for our weekly Sunday afternoon call. My grandma, aunt, uncle and my dad’s cousin had gotten the call late at night to get to the hospital because he was fading fast, but they didn’t want me to see my dad in that condition. They didn’t want me to remember him that way so I wasn’t told anything until 6:00 the next morning when the call came.
I crumbled.
I fell apart.
I knew it was going to happen one day. I had expected to have my daddy longer, not to lose him just as I was learning about life.
Nobody at home understood what I was going through. Most of my friends took off, not knowing what to say or do. My best friend, the girl I knew I could count on for anything, was the one who stayed… the only one. The one who I am still best friends with to this very day.
My gram, Dad’s mom, died five weeks later of colon cancer that was diagnosed not six months earlier. I think she just gave up after she lost her youngest son.
After my dad died, my stepmom deeded their house back to the bank, took their three kids and moved to California to be with her oldest daughter.
Without telling me.
I will never forget calling on Christmas morning to wish them Merry Christmas and getting the this number has been disconnected message. I sat and sobbed. I frantically called my dad’s cousin who couldn’t believe that this woman didn’t have the guts to tell me she was moving. She didn’t have an address or a phone number for her because she hadn’t contacted her.
I didn’t hear from my stepmom until 3 ½ years later when my mom passed away unexpectedly. She wanted to play mother-figure to me and at the time we got along fine, cordially. I didn’t see my siblings for eight whole years. My sister would call now and again to say hi, but we never got the chance to be close. My brothers don’t talk to me at all.
I don’t speak to my stepmom.
My kid has my dad’s middle name as his first. I wanted to name him after my dad outright, but my stepsister went and did that first. He wasn’t even her dad. I tried the reverse, but it just didn’t sound right.
I miss my dad every day. It never gets easier. The pain changes but it never goes away. I see my dad in my own son every day, in his mannerisms and his kindness… in his temper, too.
He lives through my son, yet I still miss him so much.
by Band Back Together | Oct 13, 2010 | Grief, Help For Grief And Grieving, Loss, Parent Loss |
Always when I least expect it, something will stop me right in my tracks and make me yearn to see my father again or just hear his voice one more time.
I think they’re called grief attacks and they come out of nowhere; it might be a song on the radio, an expression on Lucas’ face, or a memory that flashes through my mind in the middle of doing something totally unrelated.
Luckily, these “attacks” usually only lasts a few minutes but they take my breath away and I don’t see them ending any time soon.
Recently I was waiting for my suitcase in the baggage claim area at the airport and I saw a man with a beat up old briefcase between his legs that looked just like my dad’s. I couldn’t stop staring at it.
A briefcase that I keep in my closet because I don’t know what else to do with it.
A briefcase that I have only been able to open a handful of times because it physically hurts too much.
A briefcase that is filled with my dad’s scent, his check books, keys, business cards notes to himself and wallet.
I hate that god damned briefcase and I miss the man that carried it.
by Band Back Together | Oct 12, 2010 | Baby Loss, Coping With Baby Loss, Livng Through A Miscarriage, Long Distance Relationships, Loss, Miscarriage |
I should be a mother.
I’m not.
I got pregnant at 18. My boyfriend (now husband) and I hadn’t been together long – it was a long-distance relationship, and the two months he spent visiting me that summer were the first time we’d been together face-to-face, the first time we’d gotten intimate without a phone or keyboard or webcam involved.
It wasn’t until he left to go back home, after plans had been made for me to visit his family at Christmas, during my winter break, that we found out I was pregnant. And not exactly in the best way possible. I was on the pill, and my period had been almost non-existent thanks to the contraceptives. I started bleeding and cramping. So get thee to the doctor, young Anne, where I had the fright of my life.
That I was miscarrying was shocking enough – I was on the pill! That I was still pregnant after that was even more so. Twins run in both of our families. My boyfriend and I flailed around, tried to make plans and decide what to do – we were 18! Living in different countries! Both in school! What would we tell our parents?! Nothing, it turned out.
I miscarried the first at around five weeks, and the second four weeks later.
Intellectually, it was a relief. I was 18, in university, no job, living with my parents and siblings, my partner lived in another country… a baby was the last thing I needed.
But oh, how I wanted it. Far more after I lost them both than while I was still pregnant. A pregnant woman or small baby would bring me to tears. I was a wreck for weeks afterward (I’m still surprised my mother never seemed to figure out something was wrong) and ended up withdrawing from university and entering a modern apprenticeship at a daycare. Which was even more agonizing, though I loved working with the children.
I gave that up after six months (and trouble with both the senior daycare staff who (illegally) treated me like a cleaner and the ‘adviser’ for my apprenticeship work forgetting to meet with me and holding our meetings in front or the co-workers who were breaking the law so I couldn’t SAY anything) and moved to office work, which is where I’ve been since. Fewer babies and pregnant women.
It’s been six years, but it still hurts. I cry at baby product advertisements on the TV. I sobbed for hours after reading some of the posts here on Band Back Together. I watch children on the bus and on the street. I wonder what my babies would have been like. I brush off co-workers’ and in-laws’ questions about when we’re planning to start a family with a flip comment about having plenty of time.
I don’t tell them that I should have twin five-year-olds.
It still hurts. I sometimes wonder if it will ever stop.
by Band Back Together | Oct 12, 2010 | Divorce, Domestic Abuse, Estrangement, Grief, Loss, Loved One in Prison, Parent Loss |
I found out yesterday that my biological father, Michael, passed away. I still don’t know how to process the news. I have been estranged from him for most of my life but he was always a constant figure on the back of my mind. My mom divorced him when I was a baby and married my step-father when I was three. My step-father is my father, he raised me, he walked me down the aisle and he has always been there for me.
When I was little, I would spend a little time with Michael and I have good memories of those times. As a kid you’re oblivious to the bad stuff. As I got older, I found out about all the bad things and I saw him less and less. He wasn’t a good man to my mom and my brother. He was abusive and mean to them. I struggled with that for awhile because I never saw that side of him. He was careful to only show me his good side.
When I was twelve, he went to jail.
That was the last of I saw of him. It was then that my parents realized he would never change so they stopped letting me see him. I went about my life. I’d occasionally get updates through the grapevine and I was fine with that. I would imagine sometimes that one day he’d be different and we’d be able to have a relationship.
When I turned 18, I tracked him down and gave him a call. I drove to see him by myself and spent the afternoon with him. It seemed like old times but was very awkward at the same time. We didn’t know each other any more, but we tried. We began speaking on the phone fairly often and were trying to get to know each other again.
It was nice, and I thought that maybe he really was a different person from the one my mom and brother knew. Then one day, I saw that side of him for the first time and it scared me. I never spoke to him again.
About a month ago, I received a phone call. He was in the hospital about to pass away.
I was devastated but I don’t know why. He was never there for me. He wasn’t my ‘dad,’ but I was still so upset. My husband convinced me to go to the hospital and make my peace. He came with me. I’m so glad I went, even though it was incredibly awkward. He was skinny and frail. He wasn’t the strong handsome man I remembered from my childhood. I stood and we spoke as if we were acquaintances, we didn’t speak of the past at all. We made light conversation for about an hour and then I left.
That was the last time I ever saw him.
My aunt called yesterday to inform me that he passed away. Apparently, he tried to smoke a cigarette while hooked up to oxygen and it didn’t end well. I feel awful that he went that way. I wish it could have been a peaceful death for him.
Since that phone call, my emotions have been all over the place; anger to sadness and everything in between. I still have the man I consider my father and Grace’s grandfather, but I still feel such a sense of loss. Mostly a loss of the future relationship I still thought I would one day have. I’m angry I didn’t have a ‘normal’ childhood with a regular family and a dad that wasn’t crazy. I have a lot of what if’s and they’re driving me crazy.
There is nothing I can change now. Everything is final. Our relationship will never change. He passed away alone, without me in his life and I feel like it was my fault. Like I withheld my relationship from him to punish him and he didn’t deserve it. The rational part of myself knows this isn’t true. He hasn’t tried to contact me once in the past ten years.
I can’t change any of that, I know, but I can focus on the here and now. I will focus on my daughter, Grace, and I will make sure she never has to go through anything like this as a child or an adult. I will focus on the father I do have in my life and let him know how grateful I am for all the love he has given me and that fact that he has been always there for me. He calls me everyday just to tell me he loves me. He IS my dad and Grace’s pawpaw.
I will chalk yesterday up to a bad day and try to move on with my life.
I can’t change my past but I can let it not affect my future.
by Band Back Together | Oct 12, 2010 | Anger, Feelings, Grief, Infertility, Loss, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Sadness |
Sometimes you don’t even realize what you have been running from, or for how long.
Until the night (why is it always at night?) it knocks you down, sits on your chest and forces you to stare directly into the eye of the storm. The night when you turned your head too casually and found it, there, staring at you from your peripheral. Angry for being ignored, pained for not being nurtured.
It is on this night that you pay for the days, months, (years in my case) of composure, the relief you have culled from choosing to ignore your demons.
And oh, I paid dearly.
Six years ago, I woke up from anesthesia an altered woman.
I have never allowed myself to mourn what I lost that day and how much of my soul has been scraped away since. I have been too busy ‘looking forward’ and ‘moving on’ and ‘being thankful’. I have kept a smile on my face and I have continued to placate myself with thoughts of ‘it could be so much worse’ (it could) and ‘I still have more than others’ (I do). But last night night, I was not thinking of how much worse it could be, but how bad it is, not caring that I don’t have it as bad as others because my situation is looking worse by the day.
And it all fell down. My feelings of frustration and inadequacy. My overwhelming pain over never being able to do what I always thought I would and could do.
It honestly became exhausting to hold down my feelings about losing part of my body, of being let down for the past four years by other parts of it. My arms and my heart gave out from the weight of it all. I have been holding my hand over that little girl’s mouth for too long but last night she was allowed to wail and cry and stomp her feet for what she has lost. For the life she felt promised, but was never and may never be fulfilled. For being the exception to the rule and for being held at arms length from almost every goal she ever set for herself.
Today, yes, I will try to get back to my zen, a place of acceptance and a place where I can build from.
Last night though, was about how much has been lost and destroyed.
