Easing Pain

It's been an odd few days. I've been working like a mad woman on my art and my crafts. I love it, the creating, the swapping the business of it. I'm never without doing something. Never just sitting...

I've recently become aware that I do this because it's too painful to sit quietly, sit without my hands, my eyes, my mind being busy with counting or focusing on color or pattern or stitch.

I do it to ease the pain that I feel whenever I really 'think' about Mandy and sometimes Danny. It's easy to speak about them, to relate stories about them, but when it's quiet and I sit with nothing in my hands to keep my attention I still imagine her alive... then in an instant I know she isn't and the pain returns.

Maybe it's not that it eases the pain but rather that it denies the pain.

Missing things...

It's snowing this morning, it hasn't snowed much this year at all so far. Although I really don't like the snow and I have an out of town hook in tomorrow that I'm afraid I won't be able to get to, I do have to admit that watching the snow drift down onto the driveway calms me in a way.

I hope Cheryl-Kay is still coming, but probably not. I really want to work in the studio with another person. I miss that.

I miss so many things that sometimes I have to yell at myself for missing things, living in the past, wishing for things that are gone. Instead I should be living in the moment, in the present and allowing myself to feel the joys of what the present has to offer. I've gotten better at it. I have been looking forward to today... maybe it's just a little flurry?

Coldest Weekend...

It's Friday on the eve of the coldest weekend we've had so far this year. It's been warmer than usual this year. I've been able to get out more, which is good for me, for my health and my state of mind. It's not that my grief isn't still close with me or that I don't hurt every time I think about Mandy in any serious manner, but I have not fallen into the dark pit of winter like I sometimes do.

I've been doing a lot on swap-bot. I love having my rug hooking and now I've started a little needle felting. Always something new with me. It's in my nature I suppose. It's the thing that has always kept me going and made me feel alive - the learning - the new experiences... it's all part of who I am and what makes me tick.

As I write this night I ache inside... Salina is in the hospital - there is deep rooted trouble with Brittany and Marlene. I am acutely aware that there is more than one way to lose a child.

It's so cold tonight that I can't get warm no matter how many clothes I put on or how close I sit to the kitchen. But this too shall pass.. the earth will warm again and spring will arrive in all her glory.. summer will follow in lush greens and deep blue waters...

Still Broken

It's been a bit of a hard day. I woke up feeling lost and sad. An old photo of me with the twins was in my feed from four years ago. I never feel the loss of them without feeling the loss of Mandy. Seems like so much reminds me of the loss of Mandy and although I don't cry and weep and lie in my bed staring into space anymore (or rarely I should say) I still feel the aching loss like a subtle backdrop to my life.

It doesn't interfere with my life in some dramatic way, this more subtle aching. Most days I barely notice it at all and when I do I don't pay it much attention. I'm rather used to it, but the times I do pay attention and really look at it in a way that makes me feel it I find that it still crushes me.

In an odd way I continue to feel broken even though I feel that I am healed. Perhaps I am as healed as healed is going to get and perhaps that healing isn't complete. Perhaps it will never be complete and I will always feel a certain level of broken-ness - perhaps in the background similar to the sense of loss that never goes completely away.

Beginning 2016

Guess it's been awhile since I wrote here. Guess it's been awhile since I've written anywhere. I write everyday all day long inside my head, but for some reason never get it down on paper. Afraid, I suppose... afraid that I'll write something that hurts or offends someone, afraid that I'll write stuff that others disagree with, more fearful that they will disagree with me out loud. I don't want to have to further explain or defend what being me in like.

I'm struggling again. I hadn't been so much last spring and summer, but I am again... I'm tired... tired of being stronger than I really feel. Tired of not feeling like its correct or safe to express how hard this really is... this time since Mandy died.

I don't even know what I've posted already and since I doubt this will be read it doesn't matter. Maybe it's okay if I repeat myself a dozen times. Maybe it's okay if I say the same thing a dozen different ways or if sometimes I even contradict myself. Yeah, maybe it's all okay. Well, it won't be by everyone, but not everyone cares to read this crap so it won't matter now will it?

I got in trouble with my Dr. last week. My beloved Dr. B. My legs are really bad. My A1C was 8.0 and I was at my heaviest weight. she want's me to have by-pass. That's a long and painful thought process for me. It's so simple for her. It's simple for those who just want to lose weight - a means to an end. but for me, it means losing... more loss... and more and more losses...

I don't want to lose food and in particular I don't want to lose soda... I have switched over to diet coke. I don't like the after taste, but I'll get used to it rather than go without soda again... that is a huge part of why all my plans fail... because I can only go so long without soda. Maybe many weeks or even a few months, but eventually, it's a deal breaker and I end up back in trouble over and over!

the other day Marlene pointed out that maybe it was just too much to lose and sometimes it does feel that way, like how much am I supposed to lose in this lifetime?

I know I can't do anything about the people I already love and care about. I know that I might lose them and I can't do anything about that, but I don't have to form all kinds of new attachments. Brigid and Onyx died a couple years after Mandy - Brigid first in the back bedroom. I heard her fall and got there just in time to watch her take three last breaths, then silence... death. Less than two weeks later Onyx had to be taken to the vets... something was wrong, horribly wrong. Sure enough Ted had to leave him there and at seven that evening I got the call... "Massive tumor in his stomach area, did  I want xrays and blood tests even though he was sure it was cancer. He had lost half his body weight in less than three weeks - cancer is the thing that does that."

So I said, "is it time to let him go?"

He replied, "I believe so."

I said, "Go ahead."

"I can put him on an IV and try to keep him alive until morning so you can be with him."

I cried, "Goodness no! Why would I want him stuck with needles and left in a cage all night. No, just do it and I'll have Ted pick him up in the morning and pay the bill."

And so, both of them died in November... just a few days before Marlene dying of cancer moved into the back bedroom.

It's been three years and I still don't want any pets. I don't want a cat or a dog or even a goldfish. there are different reasons depending on the day you ask me, but really the deeper truth is that I just don't want to face any more losses right now.

I know I can't help that I still have parents and siblings and a husband and a son and that I could lose any one of them anytime, but I'm not setting myself up to lose another pet.

I don't even know how to think about the twins. The loss of them. I'm angry about that. I'm angry because they don't deserve anything that has happened to them including being taken from me/us without notice or closure or care for what is in their best interest. It hurts. It hurts like loss does. It sucks the air right out of me if I think about it for more than a second at a time.

I don't feel like I can talk about these things to the people in my life. I think they just don't know how to listen and be okay with how I am.

Two Years Four Months

(From my journal and recording of my grief 10/2012)

Two years four months…

Its two years and four months almost to the day, a Tuesday. She died on a Tuesday.

Suddenly last night as if it was that day I asked Ted, “Did they have to wait for a coroner?”

“What?” he seemed confused.

 “For Mandy? Did you have to wait for a coroner to come?”

“Oh, yes.” He said, “They couldn't move her until one came. It took a while; they got there soon after I left.”

“You left?” I was surprised, not upset really, but surprised.

“I wanted to get home for you. I was afraid that someone would call and you would find out that way.”

“So did the emt’s pronounce her or how does that work?”

“Yeah, they pronounced her, but then couldn't move her so they called the coroner and waited.”

“So people were like walking around her the whole time?”

“They covered her up.”

“Yeah, I know, but people walking around her must have known they were walking around a dead body.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Tears and hurt welled up and spilled down my cheeks. I hadn't really thought about her body until then, until two years and four months later. Once it started my mind couldn't help but follow her body on the rest of its journey. From the ground in front of the interstate rest area into the ambulance, or did the coroner come with one of those long black cars. Did they put her in there and take her somewhere?

I am glad that she wasn't really there, that she was already gone from her body, but I do wonder if she was still attached enough to see or know or watch what happened.

I guess I don’t really know where they took her, someplace where they take bodies and put them in a cold place, cold enough so to preserve things, at least temporarily. She wasn't there long, wherever that was.  Not more than a couple hours because I got the call that they would not be doing an autopsy, that there was no legal or medical reason to do one, but they did want to know how I felt about that.

I told them how I felt. I told him that something was wrong with her and that she was on her way home from Boston, from seeing a specialist because something was wrong inside her head, that she kept going blind and that her sed rate was over 100 and that maybe that is what happened to her.

He was very kind and very polite but he said, “Yes, but that doesn't matter. It still isn't a legal or medical reason to do an autopsy so the state won’t authorize one in your daughters case.”

What do you say? What can you say? I was crying, a voice inside my head was screaming, ‘what do you mean? She’s thirty-five years old. She dropped dead in a parking lot. What do you mean natural cause? No legal or medical reason to find out what made her die?’ but being the well-mannered, laid back conformist that I am I just muttered, “I understand.”

“… with her size and her hypertension…”

What hypertension? I didn’t know about hypertension? I did know about her size, of course I knew how large she was. I knew about her asthma, her breathing difficulties, the fact that she used oxygen. I knew a lot of things about her condition, her life, her medications, but I didn't know about hypertension, was that blood pressure? Why didn't I know about this? How could I not know?

“It’s being considered natural…”

“I see, okay.” I heard myself saying into the phone.

He continued, which surprised me. He wanted to know which funeral home we wanted to use. I told him the name of the only one I knew. “Alright then,” his voice continued, “You’ll be hearing from them shortly, probably tonight.”

“Alright, thank you.” I said, then he was gone and I pushed the off button on the phone without actually finding out where she was.

I found out from the man at the funeral home that her body had left the big city in New Hampshire and was being transported to Claremont, New Hampshire, just twenty minutes from us, “then,” he said, “We’ll be going over later tonight to bring her here.”

He asked about seeing us to make arrangements and questioned whether we will be wanting to see her.

Ten o’clock Wednesday morning was set for me to see her body, for us to make arrangements for her remains – remains that which stays here after the essence, the spirit, the soul has left. I knew about remains and that they need to be taken care of. More than ten years earlier we had to make decisions about Danny’s remains.

The journey of her body didn't end that Wednesday morning. Wednesday afternoon it traveled back to Claremont where it waited for three days to be cremated. In the state of NH a body can’t be cremated for three days, then on Friday, according to the certificate of cremation her body was cremated on that day then traveled, now ash in the urn back to Vermont where we held her services on the following Monday, after which we carried her ashes in the urn home which still sits on a shelf in the living room. Danny’s ashes are on the top of the roll top desk along with photos and a few mementos.

Speaking her Name

Speaking Her Name

Last weekend Mandy’s graduating class celebrated their twenty year anniversary. I didn’t know until the day of the parade that they had painted a large sign which they attached to the float:

  

“SHS ‘94’ Remembers Mandy Foster”

They spoke her name. They spoke it all the way through the streets of town and in that I felt somehow comforted, somehow validated…

Mandy didn't actually graduate with her class. School was a nightmare for her. School, which, I've always thought of as my great savior, the one thing that was safe and constant, the place where I knew the rules and could count on them. The place of great adventure where letters and numbers made sense, more sense than anything had before that. School, the place I loved and revered was the very same place that was a place of fear and torture for Mandy.

The only good year she had was the year that she was in the group home. I visited her school program once while she was there. It was a special off site school where Mandy thrived. The teachers, the kids they all loved her. She was popular. She was able to succeed both socially and academically.

I wished we lived in Burlington so when she came home she could still attend school there, but we didn't and she couldn't, so when she left the group home it was back to public school in Springfield where after some brief success in the special program in middle school she moved on to the high school where she fell apart all over again.

But, here they were -  the class she grew up with claiming her and remembering her. I felt Mandy come to me in the moments when I first heard the news. I felt her in my chest, not on the left side like usual, but just off center and to the right, a tiny little tickle. She was pleased, not so much for herself, but for me – she was pleased that I was pleased.

I suspect that they have no ego’s in the afterlife. It feels like that to me, like Danny and Mandy are pure spirit and that it is connection to spirit that makes me able to feel her at all. It’s that little tickle in my chest, other times a warmth or fullness in my heart or that secret smile that I feel in my throat that lets me know how close they really are.

She doesn't really speak to me with words, but rather with signs and physical reactions. I can feel her in a hundred ways, but that took almost two years and even then the occasions were far and few between. Over the last two years her presence in my life is more regular, more constant.

The theme on the float was Disney castle. No one could have known the significance of that, but it is… very significant.

Early on in Mandy’s life she conjured up a castle in her mind. It didn’t look exactly like the Disney Castle but was very close to it. She called it her Safe Place. She went there whenever things became too threatening or too overwhelming for her, which was quite often.

She wrote about it with regularity and described it as a place where children could go to play and grow. It was safe for children because nothing could hurt them there, nothing at all could come through to harm or threaten them in any way.

She described green fields, rainbows, large stone castle walls and plenty of animals including a unicorn or two.

Besides the sunny playful place for children there was a place inside, a room where she could go to find peace and comfort and safety.

Over the years some professionals and some relatives thought it was a bad idea to encourage the belief and escape to the Safe Place, but I never had the heart or the stomach to try and take it away from her. Why would I? How could I?

In my early thirties I found the Safe Place for hurt and damaged children inside myself. It too is a castle and came about while working on my first book Kunda Mountain – a not so fictional work of fiction that is in a constant state of editing.

Like Mandy I know for sure that the castles are not here in the physical way – however real in the way meditation and visualizations are.  For Mandy, the castle was her safe place and I always supported that. I even made her a fabric wall hanging with a castle in the middle. I still have it. I packed it with some of her other precious things.

Even though I know the Disney Castle float was not the replica of her safe place castle, it was close enough to make me smile inside.