Peaceful Solitude

A tiny sneak peek of one shot from our Christmas
card pic photo session.  Isn't he sweet?

The sun is streaming through the fingerprint-laden windows of our living room. I have set my timer for 15 minutes to relax. My legs are draped across the couch, and I am surrounded by paper to-do lists. My day has been full of tasks accomplished in 15 minute time chunks. So far I have done two loads of laundry, cleaned out the laundry room closet, cleaned out the hall closet, done mounds of dishes, taken out trash, cleaned the downstairs bathroom, sorted through what feels like hundreds of hats, mittens, scarves, and snow pants, and made some granola 'energy bites' for the kids' after school snack.

My counselor has advised me that one area I need to work on is taking more breaks. I move too fast, barrel ahead without taking time to consider what I've accomplished, and end up exhausted and frustrated instead of satisfied.

With her advice in mind, I use this relaxation break to do some free-writing for my blog. When I take this break, as with all my breaks today, I work on deep-breathing and drinking lots of sips of cold water. The relaxing is harder for me now. The quiet times fill my mind with memories that don't usually appear during my preferred go-go-go pace.

But learning to live and be okay in the quiet is something I'm working on. At times I realize I am even enjoying the solitude of my new life. I don't talk on the phone very much these days. Since Sue died I have dropped down the amount of "minutes" on my cellphone plan because I spend such little time talking.

It's okay, though. I am just busy learning to relax.

Hidden Grief Landmines and Smoothies

In the world of living through grief, there are hidden emotional triggers or "landmines" that can seemingly come out of nowhere. These landmines used to freak me out, because I would be going along, having a normal day when suddenly I was blindsided by something that would remind me of Sue and I'd be a crying basket case, sometimes even in public.  It is scary to walk around not knowing when the next bout of grief-triggered crying might hit.

The good news is that I have gotten used to them.  The bad news is that I still sometimes find myself crying in public.

Today I went to the gym and decided afterward to get a smoothie. Near my gym there is a smoothie place that Sue loved. She pretty much lived on those smoothies for most of the last year of her life. Anybody who regularly visited her knew what her order was at the smoothie place and would bring her one. It did not occur to me as I drove up to the smoothie place that I hadn't been there since Sue was alive and I was buying a smoothie for her.

I pulled up to the drive-thru and started to ponder my choices when I saw IT on the menu. The smoothie she would always order. Just as I noticed it, a tremendous wave of sadness for all I have lost washed over me. I can't order her smoothie and bring it to her, sit down and talk all about life. Her smoothie is there for other people to order, but she won't get one ever again. This realization felt devastating.

I started crying. It was uncontrollable. Just then the Smoothie Place Lady asked for my order. I choked out an order (not Sue's smoothie, I think that would have sent me further over the edge) and drove to the window.

That poor Smoothie Place Lady handed me my order and looked like she was really wrestling with what to do about the crying woman at the window. She ended up deciding not to say anything. I think it was the right choice.

I pulled into the parking lot and let myself cry. I used to feel scared and weird when I would have these grief episodes, but I am learning that it is just a normal byproduct of loving my sister so much. These days I am more able to have a grief incident and go on about my day. I can even have a pretty good day, like I did today. I am gaining peace about the grief process.

It doesn't make my heart stop wishing to be able to bring my sister her smoothie, though.

Honoring Sue at My Birthday Party: My Speech

This is the speech and song dedication I did at my birthday party. I think Sue would have loved it!

I want to thank Frank and Kate, for putting the party together, and Uncle Pete, for being our DJ. I love you guys and this is the coolest party!

I also want to thank you all so much for being here. As you all know, this has been a really hard year for me, and for my family. Life without my sister Sue has been so much harder than I ever imagined, and I've struggled with how to celebrate my birthday with it being the one year anniversary of losing her. I didn't know if I even should celebrate. But I know my sister, and know that she would be pissed if I didn't find a way to have fun on my 40th birthday. So we are going to party!

But first I want to tell you a Sue story. When I was 14 and Sue was 22 we decided, just for fun and to be “cool”, to make up a synchronized dance to a super hot song at the time, Paradise City, by Guns and Roses. As I recall, we spent probably a few weeks perfecting our routine in her bedroom at my dad's house.

A few months later we found ourselves at our mother's wedding. We were out on the dance floor, having a good time, when the first few notes of Paradise City rang out. We made eye contact with each other. We each gave a knowing nod. And that's all it took for us both to know what to do. Without any real forethought or effort, we were performing our routine just as we had so many nights in her bedroom.

As it often happens in these situations, there began to open up a circle of onlookers. We hadn't really prepared for this, as we had never actually imagined performing our dance in public.

We had no time to really feel self-conscious, though, because we were concentrating so much on our “moves”.

As soon as the song was over, we triumphantly strutted our awesome selves off the dance floor. Someone stopped us and said, “That was the cutest thing I've ever seen! I'm so glad we got it all on video! Hilarious!”

It suddenly dawned on us that everybody had been watching us. Somebody had videotaped us. The dance had not been meant for the public. What had we done!?!?!?!

We quickly made it our mission to never let anyone ever see that video, ever.

I spent the next five years hiding the video and then re-hiding it every time my mom would say, “what's my wedding video doing under this pile of old towels in the back of the closet?” I have no idea what became of the video. It may still be out there somewhere.

If I could remember the moves to the dance, I would surely teach you them tonight. But, sadly, I can only remember that we would go, 'take me down” (squat down) to paradise city, where the grass is green (hands out) and the girls are pretty, (point to self). I'm pretty sure there was also a lot of head-banging and air guitar involved.

So tonight, in loving memory of Sue, my super cool sister, my weird dance partner, and the one who would come up with these 'great ideas' that I would always later regret,, I would like to play Paradise City. I would love it if you would join me, and dance like you're a dorky 14 year old, or a dorky 22 year old who really should know better! I promise nobody will videotape you!

We Are Surviving and Finding Our Way

I made it through my birthday. I made it through the one year anniversary of losing Sue.

Sam had an assignment to take nature photos and he took this! I love it.

Yesterday was a day I had been dreading for an entire year. I focused on it so much. I feared it, but also felt like if I could just make it there and through it, then I would be okay. There was so much sadness and anger leading up to the day. I had a very, very rough time the day before.

It turned out that the day I had assigned so much power to, was just a day. I got up, I did stuff, I had feelings, both good and bad, and then the day was over.

I am both relieved and sad that it is over. I know that sounds strange that I would be sad to put a day I had been dreading behind me. But the day also marked a milestone of having lived an entire year without my precious sister. I now know that I can make it through an entire year without her. But I never wanted to know or experience a year without her.

So, what do I do now? Now I'm 40, and now I live without my sister. Now I face another year of milestones without her. Now I observe her kids growing another year older without their mother.

We will see what this year brings. I was amazed in the past year, how in the midst of such pain, we also experienced so much joy, fun, and love.

I will stay open to seeing the joy in my life. I will continue to take care of myself (I ran 3 miles again this morning! First time running in my 40s!) I will keep trying my best to be the person I am meant to be.

Sam took this one too! He's pretty good, I'd say.

Thank you to everybody who called, texted, emailed, came to my birthday party, sent me cards or gave me gifts. I know it is hard for all of you, too. Nobody quite knows what to do with the birthday that is also a death-anniversary. You all did wonderfully. I could feel your love in every gesture. 

Thank you so much to the people who gave money to The Red Cross in Sue's name for my birthday. I absolutely LOVED that. And thank you to my friend, Donna, who sent me a picture of herself after running 3 miles for the first time in her life that was captioned, "I pushed myself to make it happen in honor of your birthday"

But most of all, I was so proud of Sue's four kids, who called me last night to wish me a happy birthday. They chattered on about their days, sang to me, laughed, and I was simply amazed by them. Their strength, joyfulness, and love shined through. I felt Sue's love and strength coming through to me by way of her incredible children.

We are all surviving.  We are going to be okay. 

My Birthday/One Year Anniversary of Sue's Death: What it's like right now

I am right in the middle of the tough part.

Saturday night my husband and my sister threw me a wonderful party. It was seriously everything I could have wanted in a 40th birthday party. We had so much fun. I read a story about Sue aloud and dedicated a song to her and everybody danced (I'll share that story in a later post). I really felt great. Somewhere deep inside I think I believed that if I had the most fun party ever, I wouldn't end up feeling down about Sue.

I should know by now that it doesn't work that way.

Today is the day before my actual birthday. Today, one year ago, I spent the day with Sue. I remember that I left her house that night at 7:00, and told her I'd see her the next day. I had planned to show up at noon. Instead I was there at 8:30 am, because she had already passed away. It was the worst day of my life.

I wanted to try to document how this feels, the emotions of the anniversary of her death and also my birthday rolled into one. The best way I can describe it is to say it is like a gigantic roller coaster. Saturday night I was at the very top, SO happy and SO grateful. Then on Sunday I started on a downward ride that has left me where I am now, which is at the bottom.

It took just about everything I had to get out of bed this morning. I am in the depths of intense grief, to the point that I've wondered if all of the work and growth I've experienced this past year has just vanished. I've wondered if this anniversary is putting me right back at square one.  It is intense.

Tomorrow I will be 40. Tomorrow my sister will have been gone for one year. She never got to know me in my 40s. I never wanted to be a person writing a blog about grief. I never wanted my birthday to also be the anniversary of the worst day of my life. I never got to choose. I also would never wish this particular birthday/death anniversary of a treasured loved one combination on anyone. It is hard to explain how difficult and painful it is. I wish this had never happened and that I was back to being the person I used to be, the person who had two wonderful older sisters instead of one.

I knew this would be hard, but I didn't know that it would be knock-me-down-sucker-punch-in-the-gut hard.

But here's what I need to do (and it's simple really): keep going.  I just need to keep getting up, keep taking my next breath, keep taking care of my kids.  And I will, because it's what I do. I keep trying and keep working at making it through.

But it is so, so hard.

Working to Choose Gratefulness

It has been a week of annoyances. I have been stressed about running our household by myself because Frank was out of town from Monday morning until last night. I had too many extra commitments and not enough down-time for my liking. I pulled something in my shoulder, and have had on and off stomach problems all week, which have impacted my running workouts. And there is still the ever-present stress of the flooded house, which is still going on and, I believe, will be going on until the end of time. Toss this all together and cover it with grief-sauce and you get an idea of how my week has been.

I've been stressed, bummed out, sad, disheartened, crabby, and just plain sick of it all.

I'm really, really grateful for these people!

This morning my internal dialogue was set to "extreme crabbiness".  I did a not-so-great workout and then sat down to find a recipe for Shepherd's Pie.  I went looking on a website called Southern Plate that Sue had sent to me a few years ago in an attempt to get me to make her some pumpkin cupcakes (it worked, I made them for her, they were good too!)

I found a recipe for Shepherd's Pie, but when I started poking around her site, I found that her blog post for today was about gratefulness.  That stopped me in my tracks because I have been stuck in a mode all week that hasn't left room for any gratefulness.  In other words, I've been poor-meing it for days.

Her post begins like this:

We often lose sight of the incredible blessings we have because the small hitches and drawbacks of life tend to overshadow them in the daily requirement to deal with them. (When we have a problem we must address over and over, we can’t help but keep it at the forefront of our thoughts.)

That is why it is important to actively call out our blessings each day. To pull them from the back of our minds, from that area we don’t think about because it hums steadily along without much need for attention.
(you can read the rest of her post here)

I felt like she had posted this for me today, like she was very nicely pointing out that I've been acting like a baby and I need to get over myself and cut it out.
 
Message received!  Right now I'm officially starting this day over. I am pulling forward all the blessings that I take for granted and spending my time being grateful. 

Here's a very small list of the first few things I thought of when I decided to be grateful:

1. My wonderful family, both immediate and extended, those who are still with us and those who aren't.  I wish I could post a full paragraph about each of my kids, my husband and in-laws, my sisters, my nieces and nephews, my parents, my grandparents, my aunts, uncles, and cousins (and I have a LOT of cousins!) to tell you why each of them is special and unique, and has had a positive impact on my life.

2.  My awesome friends.  In short, I have the best friends available, anywhere. Each one is a treasure I have been lucky enough to find.

3.  Everyday opportunities. We live in a safe, comfortable house, our kids go to great schools, Frank has a very good job, we feel safe where we live, we have enough food to eat, we have clean clothes to wear, we drive cars that are comfortable and that work, we have access to excellent medical care, we have clean water to drink and we can take hot baths/showers whenever we want.

Today I will go out into the world with gratefulness rather then crabbiness in my heart.  Have a great day.  I think I will now, too.

You know what else? I am grateful for you!

Three Miles!

The week started off pretty rough, remember? But things got better. I keep learning that same lesson over and over: when things are hard, I need to just wait a bit because it gets better.

Now, look what happened on Wednesday:

please don't look at my sweaty wrinkly forehead, thank you.

I stood in my driveway, covered in sweat, unshowered, and held up three fingers!

Okay, there was actually a little more to it than that...I stood in my driveway covered in sweat, unshowered, and held up three fingers because I had just RUN THREE MILES!

With 20 days left before my birthday, I met my goal. I need to take a little time to think about that because I tend to do something I should be proud of, but then just quickly move on to the next thing without giving it much thought. This time I intend to spend a bit of time feeling proud of myself.

Today I ran three miles again.

And I am going to take this thing a step further: I'm going to feel proud of myself all weekend! I think you should join me. Think of that thing you've done recently but didn't really allow yourself to feel proud. Spend the weekend feeling proud of yourself every time you think of it. It will feel good and we deserve to feel good.

Have a great weekend!