waking up

My dreams last night were a little strange. I drank a mug of chai tea at like 1900 to boost me through a Reiki treatment and massage that I gave to my new love interest. It was a successful treatment because sleepy time came for him swiftly! I adore providing healing touch to people, especially love interests. I feel like that is my one sort of super power that I have to offer, I just haven’t found the right man to accept my talents and want to make them a permanent part of his life. I have hope for this one. I have hope for all of them, who I am kidding? I try to give my all every time. Well, as much of my all as I have left after having my heart shattered into at least a million pieces.

Anyway, back to my dreams. I ended up home sooner than I thought I would last night and slightly amped on chai tea and the success of my Reiki and massage treatments. So I decided to write in my journal for awhile and then I blogged for the first time in forever and actually published it. I’ve been doing this thing a lot lately where I write but then I get worried about who might read it and that I might shock or hurt feelings or cause political turmoil at work or whatever and I’m over it. Blogging is so helpful for me. So I’m just gonna do it. As I sailed into sleep last night it was one of those into sleep transitions where I felt myself soaring above for a good long while. I was relaxed and ready to sleep, it’s just the chai tea had me more aware than I would be normally. The dreams that I remember were with my new love interest at his home. This is the strange part: there was a dead body in one of the bedrooms, like someone had died that we all expected to die, like they had been on hospice or something, and he hadn’t called the hospice people yet because he wasn’t ready to. He was waiting for someone who wanted to say goodbye privately. And then my mom came into the picture to bathe the body. Why I wasn’t involved in this I have no idea since I am a registered nurse and have bathed my fair share of dead bodies. I did, however, make the suggestion to add clove essential oil to the bath to help with the smell. My love interest and my mom agreed that was a good idea. My love interest even said that was something that used to be done before modern day chemical embalming… whether or not that is true I have no idea… this was a dream!

Analyzing a dream like this is so interesting. Obviously, my subconscious is sifting through some shit. The smell of a dead body. That was the main concern. Not let’s get the person we are waiting for here sooner than later so we can call the hospice people and the funeral home. The smell is a big part of my trauma with Nick’s death. He wasn’t found until days after he died. The neighbors called a wellness check to the local authorities because of the smell coming from his place. My heart absolutely crushes in on itself every time I think about that. This is definitely something I haven’t worked through completely. I just put it in a box and tucked it away. Time to get it out and work it through. I dreamt about Nick the night of September 11, 2018, which was death day number 3 and what we suspect is the day that Nick died that year. He was found on the Sunday after that, which I think was the 16th. He left a note with my name and contact information on it. I hadn’t attempted to get in touch with him for months except through the court because of how he had behaved the last time he had Pierce and Ryan over, which was Father’s Day weekend that year. He had started drinking again and being very emotionally and verbally abusive. Ryan had called me crying because he was so scared. Pierce had taken over Oscar’s old role of attempting to be the mediator between drunk and unreasonably angry Nick and the younger kids, kid in this case. That’s when I decided to take action and file for a safety focused parenting plan. Nick texted me once around the Fourth of July to ask to have the kids, and I texted back that any arrangements to see the kids needed to go through my lawyer. He never took it further. All I ever heard from him again was that he wanted to push the court date out to October so he had more time to find and pay for a lawyer.

My heart really hurts for how completely fractured our relationship became. When we started out together I was so young and he was so experienced (or maybe traumatized?) and pretending (?) to have hope and see the possibility for joy. Nick never really talked about what had happened to him and his family. His brother Jimmy had been murdered and his favorite sister, LouAnn, had died of suicide a number of years after that. Not to mention whatever happened when he was growing up in a too small house for 7 kids and 2 parents who sort of got along, but not really. He used to say the 7 kids came from Catholic guilt and not love. He would make it a joke. He made lots of things jokes. I think that was his main coping mechanism besides drinking and smoking pot. All of his unprocessed and unresolved feelings surrounding the trauma he had been through came out in all sorts of negative and destructive ways. That is what happens to people when they don’t work through to the bottom.

Now I’m working through to the bottom with Nick. His death has been so hard to process. I think because we were estranged when he died, but also because I have such a deep and profound love for him, still. He is around all the time. I feel him more than I feel Oscar. He always has something to say and he is in my dreams all the time! Maybe the dream I had last night is Nick. And the one they are waiting for is me. I haven’t said proper goodbyes. I hold a piece of him in my mind that is when we first met. I was so enamored by his charm and his brilliant mind. I’ve never met a man like Nick. It was so easy for us to fall in love. Looking back on old pictures on Oscar’s birthday I realized how hard we tried. I’m not sure what went wrong. I guess the active addiction is really what came between us. Neither one of us could relate to the other because we were never in our right minds if we could help it. I remember how he used to hold my hand. And the way that he would look at me. His goofy grin. And the sex was great. We had an excellent time in bed. It’s honestly one of the reasons I stayed as long as I did. It was really hard to let that go. And to learn to live without it has been so tough!!

Nick would make xmess a fun and joyful holiday. He’d always make it special. I don’t have that kind of talent or desire since my people have died. This year my mom and Ryan decorated together, thank God. I genuinely hate all of it. It takes so much emotional energy. I feel like I dip into my already drained reserve tanks every year since Oscar died and especially so since Nick has died.

What am I to do with this dream? I don’t want Nick to go. Maybe it is time, though, whether I want it to be or not. I have to let go to let a new man in. It’s that simple. Simple; not easy.

cocoon

Over the past several months I have written and then not published. Because I was worried about work politics or hurting someone’s feelings or some other such similar reason. At the beginning of September I went into what feels like a cocoon. I have been avoiding all social media and focusing on me, the now, my kids, my home, my work. I thought it would be just September that I avoided social media, and, in fact, for the entire month of September I was completely and totally absent from social media. It felt so good I didn’t check it out again until late October. I don’t think I’ve had any personal posts, except to thank people for the birthday wishes, which was hilarious because people responded as if my birthday was recent and not in September.

While I’ve been in this cocoon and considering the break that I have been taking from social media and also from blogging and the reasons for that I have come to the conclusion that I am done censoring myself.

I left Luke’s for a number of different reasons, not the least of which was politics, yet again. So sick of work politics. I tried to go back to the CVOR when I realized for sure that the clinic wasn’t going to be anything but me working as a medical assistant (!!!) and the director couldn’t make a spot for me. Too bad, because they are down nurses now. I ended up interviewing for a spot as a staff nurse to open a new OR in south Overland Park. The commute is about 10 minutes less than to Luke’s. And it is a main OR, so the cases are all super chill. We are like one step above a surgery center as far as acuity goes, so I am on cloud nine compared to CV acuity. I do miss the CV, though. I really really miss my CT surgeons. It really really sucks that the director of the CVOR couldn’t make a spot for me. Oh well. The incredibly awesome thing about my new gig is that I am primarily scrubbing! I feel like a duck to water I love it so much. I am considering pursuing my first assist so I can stay in the scrub role for the remainder of my nursing career.

So, yeah, career is chill. Not what I thought I would end up doing, I guess, but whatever.

My grief feels sort of like it is on ice. Sort of. It has definitely morphed this year. That really started over death day six and three. It was Oscar’s sixth death day and Nick’s third death day. Me and Pierce and Ryan went to Vail to see Death Cab for Cutie and it was completely different. I feel like I came to a new understanding that my years turn on death day, not New Year’s. I have also begun to reach a new distance from the trauma where I see that everyone, well, most everyone, has their own trauma. Most people don’t deal with it as well as I do, though, and it causes them real personality issues. Negative ones. I have shit I am dealing with in my personality, don’t get me wrong, it’s just that what I have been through has really forced me to change so I can get through my days with the least amount of discomfort as possible. My pain, my broken heart, is too much to bear and not be as healthy as I can be. I think the fact that Nick died of suicide three years after Oscar died of suicide is very telling regarding how painful it is to have one of your babies die of suicide.

And then there’s dating. Oh my goodness. What a freaking roller coaster ride. I wish I didn’t love sex so much. For real. I am hopeful that I may have finally met my match. It seems promising so far, but man, I’ve been here before. Countless times it seems like. I am attempting not to have any expectations, but goddamn that is so fucking hard. So, more like reasonable expectations. Still, my emotions throw me around without my permission, like, a lot. Learning how to rise above that noise is one of the hardest things. Bottom line, I try to be responsible. Hopefully this rocky road will finally start to smooth out.

My kids all really inspire me. Ryan has been amazing to learn from and be around and chill out with. He is learning guitar and piano, and writing lyrics, so it is absolutely inspiring to be around him. Pierce is a fucking rock star. I still cannot believe how well he has weathered the storm. Almost done with the first semester of KU. He absolutely thrives. Then there’s my firecracker, Phoenix. He and I are on a nutrition journey together. Finally gave into the PCP’s advice to trial a gluten free diet for him to help with his chronic constipation. He is so much better! Now if we can get his immune system to kick in so he stops picking up every bug from the preschool. We are going to see a naturopath to help us with that. And Oscar. He and I see each other in my dreams. I feel his presence often and we have a relationship even through death. He is wise and guides all of his brothers and me. I feel his energy helping us to see the way. He knows that I am inspired by him to become a better mother, a better person. He is my light. I miss him beyond words. Always.

Xmess sucks. Holidays suck. Half of my family is dead. It is what it is. The point is that I keep going. I keep moving forward. Even when it feels like I am slogging through mud. Some days are better than others. I try to enjoy every moment for what it is and be in it. Fully present.

Hopefully it won’t be so long before the next time I write and publish. I might just go back and publish some of the drafts that I have saved up from over the past couple of years. I’m cocooned, but I’m done hiding.

changes

okay, so it is cliche, but we can all agree that the one constant in life is change, yes?

the changes that have been happening to me because of the changes that were manifested (through lots of prayer and conversation with god) and then acted upon, in regards to my career, are changing me in ways that were not fully thought out. i mean, how can you really think through something entirely that hasn’t happened to you yet? some of the changes are very welcome- i feel myself resonating, vibrating, with a much slower, and relaxed energy. the difference between two minutes being too long to wait for something a patient needs and two hours being a fast turnaround for a request. the difference between having to clock in and clock out and being salaried. the difference between chest compressions and a caring conversation.

sure, there are lots of reasons that my new gig is challenging: politics, learning the tactics needed to move a large bureaucracy toward the changes it says it wants, but that all actions suggest otherwise, the inefficiencies of a clinic workflow that have gone unchecked for years. not to mention adding a new specialty area to my repertoire.

and it would be a lie if i said i didn’t miss the OR.

but this new work that i am being called to do, the new spotlight on the areas of my self, of my soul, of the way i walk through the world, it is intense. i feel directed to lean in and do some hard work on how i interact with my environment. to look at the root cause of my impatience, to explore the deepest, darkest parts of my personality and draw those places into the light.

to surrender to the imperfection, acknowledge it, and love it anyway.

and, i think my very favorite consequence of my new job is that i am really sleeping again, dreaming again. when oscar died my sleep left. don’t get me wrong, i still slept “well” because i’ve always been a strong sleeper, but i didn’t dream and explore as much in my sleep as i did before he died. that has been my very favorite change. and one i think comes from my heart being satisfied that i am on the right path.

like my nurse navigator mentor told me yesterday, “you have the heart of a navigator”. that resonates so deeply with me; i feel that. ultimately, it will be my heart that keeps me pushing forward on this new path. and, truly, i would not have the relationship i have now with my heart if i hadn’t spent the last year of my OR career working in open hearts. beyond grateful for my experience in the CVOR.

so, i choose to keep rolling with the changes. learning from life. open to the challenge. baby steps.

last day

I’ve had one other last day in the OR, in 2018, when I left the OR briefly right before Nick died. I made the leap from OR to primary care. As in ambulatory, doctor’s office visit, primary care. I remember really liking it and feeling like it had the potential to be an incredibly powerful platform to reach patients with mental health issues, but then Nick died. He died only several weeks into my transition from OR to primary care. His death by suicide, on the third anniversary of Oscar’s death, which was also by suicide, was more than I could bear and be learning a new specialty area. So back to the OR I went. I was so blessed to have an OR family that welcomed me back with open arms. I hadn’t even been gone for 3 months when I came catapulting back, on the wave of yet another personal trauma and tragedy.

The OR has been home for so long. Over a decade of my life. It felt good to get lost in the rhythm of surgery again. It helped me learn how to walk with the grief of yet another tremendous loss. Still, there was this whisper, this yearning of wanting to do something more, something different, something that would scratch the itch that reared it’s ugly head the moment that I understood Oscar was dead. I explored so many different options. Countless resume submissions to all manner of different fields in nursing: school nursing, occupational/ employee health nursing, case management, I even applied for a floor nursing position at one point when I was exploring the idea of being a nurse educator! I applied at colleges to teach, to be on public health think tanks. Zero of these ever came back with positive outcomes- I never got interviews. These serial application cycles would happen about every 6 months to a year from the time that Oscar died. It was sort of exhausting, but I felt led to do it. To get out into the job market about every 6 months or so and see what other avenues of nursing I might call home, a position that would utilize this new set of skills that I had learned related to overwhelming grief and our experience getting lost in the system. Often, when I look back at our experience the few months before Oscar died, hindsight being what it is, I see how incredibly perfectly all the holes in our slices of Swiss cheese lined up. And Oscar fell right through. Unfortunately our outcome was the worst, death.

A sort of breaking point for me was when I didn’t get promoted past boardrunner/ charge nurse in the OR that had welcomed me back with open arms after Nick died. I wanted to lead that department with such a deep desire, but my director didn’t think I was ready. So, when I didn’t get hired as the OR manager in that department, I decided it was time to do something that I had always wanted to do in surgery: open hearts. I researched programs in our local region. St. Luke’s Mid-America Heart Institute was the only choice hands down. I applied. Was offered a job. And I turned it down the first time because I was SCARED! 3 months went by, I was incredibly stressed and stretched to my limit working 12 hour shifts 3 days a week as boardrunner/ charge nurse for an OR that ran 12 starts daily with, more times than not, 50+ cases. We would be balls to the walls busy from 7am to 7pm (and after) more often than not. When I finished my BSN program at the end of 2019 I applied to the CVOR (cardiovascular operating room) at Luke’s again. Immediately got an interview. Second time around I accepted. Time to face the fear and trust the process; embrace the lifestyle of CVOR nurse.

My time in the CVOR over the past year has been an incredible learning journey. I have learned this amazing specialty. I have learned a lot more about my own limits. I have learned what I really want to focus on in patient care. That has been the most exciting. I have been pushed to learn more about myself as a nurse and what really makes me tick. What makes me excited about what I do and more convinced than ever that I have been called to this profession. I feel, more than ever, that I was made by Him to be a nurse. And just how important my voice as a strong nurse is to the patient care TEAM. The team isn’t just docs. It isn’t just nurses, or techs. It is all of us, each one with a different way of seeing the patient’s experience. I did my best in the CVOR. I learned how to really pray, each call shift stretching me to my personal limits in handling stress in a healthy manner. I participated in some of the most incredible, and life-saving, patient care of my career. I learned to understand how to monitor critical patients and what it really means to have someone’s life in my hands. I will never, ever regret my time in CV surgery. In fact, I believe without any doubt that my time in the CVOR is what opened doors to me to my forever career path: patient navigation.

There were so many conversations I had with the staff in the CVOR that helped me to find my place. From my manager, to my charge nurse, to my fellow staff nurses and techs, to the nurse liaison for our department, to the docs, to the physician assistants, to the anesthesia providers, to the perfusionists. Every single person was open and receptive to me exploring life outside of our department. That meant so much to me. It says a lot about the overall culture at St. Luke’s and why I am so incredibly blessed and proud to be a St. Luke’s nurse. I started keeping an eye on the job site at Luke’s in the fall of 2020. I applied for case management positions and a nurse resource position. No bites. I decided to fully commit to the OR and give my all in my current specialty so I applied to test for my CNOR (certified nurse operating room) certification and began studying OR standards and guidelines. I became involved in a system-wide committee to standardize our malignant hyperthermia preparation and response. All the while keeping an eye on jobs at Luke’s. That was the one thing I was sure of: I wanted to stay with Luke’s.

I first noticed the Thoracic Center Patient Navigator position a month before I applied for it. I stalled that long because I had seriously just made the commitment to stay in the OR and I was insecure because I had already been passed over for case management positions. This position kept coming up for me, though, because it was posted under education and the job description sounded exactly like what I wanted to do. It would incorporate my communication and leadership skills and also grow my coaching and education skills along with challenge me to develop a new role for the center. And, I was fairly certain it would build on my relationships that I had already established with some of our cardio-thoracic surgeons. The thing that finally pushed me to apply was a conversation I had with my child, Viv. They got real with me and that made me realize that it was really time to get serious about changing my work lifestyle. I needed to dial down the stress and uncertainty and dial up the consistency. So I finally applied. Had an incredible journey to my job offer and just finished my second week in the clinic as the Thoracic Center’s new Patient Care Navigator.

This change in my career path has been a long time coming. I feel more certain with each day that I have made the right choice and that I do, indeed, have something really special to offer patients. With my combined professional and personal history, my ability to grow through post traumatic stress, along with my ability to communicate clearly, succinctly and efficiently, interwoven and enhanced by the amazing Thoracic staff and our doc champions that keep the clinic humming, I have faith and hope that we will be able to build an amazing, world-class Thoracic Navigation program at St. Luke’s.

Oh, and did I mention I start my MSN in Care Coordination at Nebraska Methodist College in August?!

This is going to be fun! 😉

more than ever

more than ever i feel myself settling into a rhythm with life.

my rhythm feels at it’s base a strong flow of gratitude. i am so fortunate to have the career i have always dreamed of. i get to use my skills to help a patient population that is in critical need. this year i finally came to terms with the panicky feeling i get when i have been at a job in the operating room for any amount of time since oscar died.

the first time i felt the panic i am talking about is the day he was cremated. i remember the day in bits and pieces. i signed the waiver so i could push the button to send his casket, his wooden box that held his body and some beautiful wildflowers, into the oven that would burn his body to ashes.

i was alone in the little adjoining waiting room. pierce and grady waited outside for this part to be over. they make you sign a waiver because it can destroy you to watch your loved one’s body travel into an oven to be burned to ashes. the only other person that witnessed this event was the nice man who ran the crematorium. he positioned himself into a quiet corner where i couldn’t see him very well so i could take the time i needed to push that button. you’d think i would remember what the button looked like, but i don’t. i do remember singing. i sang oscar his death song and i pushed the button and sang and sang and sent every ounce of positive energy i could into that room. i watched his casket, his wooden box, go into the oven through the window that separated me from him inside his box. and the nice man closed the oven door.

after oscar’s box was in the oven with the door closed, pierce and grady rejoined me in the little waiting room that adjoined the oven room. we sat in the little waiting room the full 4 hours or so that it took for his body to burn to ash. grady and pierce played cards. that day started pierce’s card collection. i did so well. i was so strong. and then when we got home i fell apart. i couldn’t keep it together. i felt an indescribable, absolute terror. my boy was gone. he was gone. gone, gone, gone. i remember grady saying something like of course you feel panic, your boy is gone. and that is the root of the panic that i have felt at every job i have had in the o.r. since oscar died.

i didn’t fully realize it though, that feeling being the reason that i always want to run from what i have always wanted to do: be an o.r. nurse. i fully believed the feeling was because i needed to be more involved in mental health. through conversation with my colleagues, my dad, prayer, journaling, and simply sitting with the evidence of my patterns of behavior i made a major break through this year. the reason that my path out of the o.r. has always been blocked is because i am absolutely, 100%, meant to be an o.r. nurse. and the reason i always try to run is because i haven’t integrated the panic from the day of oscar’s cremation into my long-term memory from my survival brain.

oscar’s ashes in his beautiful earth-friendly bamboo urn; his dad picked white roses

my path has taken me over so much ground. to finally be working in cardiovascular surgery, after a long, and successful, foundation in main o.r. is the first part of my professional dream realized. discerning that the panic i felt and the equivalent need i have assigned to it as being a reason for leaving behind a professional achievement would not have been possible if it wasn’t for my current work family. they have all been so patient with me!

so, as i have been integrating this feeling, this memory, with the simple and graceful tool that my amazing psychologist taught me in our earliest days working together (that’s almost 4 years now!) i have been able to steadily put this panic to rest. every time that i feel it i acknowledge it: i know you, you are the panic i feel because i had to cremate my son’s body; then i reassure it: of course you feel that way, your son’s body is no more, of course you feel panicky terror. and it settles. slowly, it settles. i have worked through all of my ptsd catalysts this way: the color white, the smell of formalin, the list goes on.

me at work right before oscar died in 2015, loving the main o.r. at k.u.

and i can open my life to new goals! next up, msn with a focus on education. being an educator has been in my blood since i became a nurse. fits me to a t. i plan to start back to school the fall of 2021.

another part of my gratitude is that if my son had to die, and he did, unfortunately, because a disease process took hold of his brain and killed him, i was able to fully experience every piece of his after-death process. i wasn’t rushed through anything, i didn’t have to worry that the funeral home would be too busy to take care of us. i was able to have a full memorial service for him and not worry that too many people would be there to properly social distance.

i feel the collective grief happening today related to the pandemic. i feel, deeply, the sadness running through our world. even though i understand the process of out-of-order death, i am grateful that i do not understand it with the limitations of our society today.

may god bless all who feel the sting of new death today. may god hold each and every one of their hearts and bring them some semblance of comfort, enough to make it through the next moment. and may each moment stack on another moment to make minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years.

today is my birthday

September 11th came and went. The five year milestone has come and gone.

And now the next biggie day during full on grief season: my birthday. This day has been absolutely miserable for me since Oscar died. It just has. There is so much there and I think the main point is how can I still be here and he is dead? Out of order death, especially from suicide, is one of the hardest to bear. For whatever reason the reality and truth of Oscar’s death is especially stark on my birthday.

I have realized since the 5 year milestone that I am ready to start talking more about other things in my life and not focus so much, completely, entirely on my grief and how it has changed everything.

And this morning, miraculously, I woke up feeling grateful. My heart was full. I have an amazing family (my kids are beyond incredible), I have super supportive parents who only want to see me doing the best I can (whatever the best I can is), I have an amazing career, I have a beautiful home, a new car, I have a vibrant dating life, I have a truly fabulous support system of friends and colleagues, the list goes on and on. I love the path that I am on. I am grateful for my journey.

I am grateful I have been doing the work with consistency to stay healthy in my body and mind leading up to this grief season. I have been very focused on exercise, writing, eating well, and sharing in everyday conversation when I have the energy to share. Another fabulous healing modality that I have utilized with regularity leading up to and into this grief season is massage. The energy work that I have been doing has been on a deeper level than I have ever been. And, man, it has been so enlightening!

September 12th I realized exactly what I want to do with my career. I want to work part time in the OR and work part time in private practice as an Integrative Health Practitioner. I am in the process of applying to a graduate program through Drexel University online that would have me beginning my Master’s of Science in Complementary and Integrative Health the Fall of 2021.

Since I had this realization, it is like I have felt a great sigh of relief from the universe. I feel my path aligning for my higher purpose; my ultimate opportunity to give back to the community.

42 isn’t looking too bad.

Grief brain is a thing

So, here I am, nearly five years since my firstborn son, the child who made me a mother, died of suicide at the young and tender age of 15. Can you believe that? 15. He was brilliant. One of my favorite things to do was just talk to him and see where the conversation went. He saw the world in a way that was completely unique. I think it had a lot to do with the way that he physically interacted with the world. He could look at the space around him and see the 3-D aspects of it; by that I mean he could build physical things in a space, say with Lego or other building materials, from his imagination and it always surprised me, and everyone else around him, how sophisticated they were. He could solve any puzzle you put in front of him faster than anyone I have ever known. His brain was truly Mensa material. He thought about the world’s problems and put a fresh spin on possible solutions. Everyone in his life could see his potential for truly powerful greatness.

Emotionally he was behind his peers. This is a very common issue for gifted children. Add to that parents who modeled absolutely, 100%, dysfunctional coping mechanisms and the tail-end of the popular notion that to receive mental healthcare puts you at a disadvantage (you know what I am talking about, right? the idea that if you have a mental health diagnosis you won’t be able to get into the school that you want, or get the job you want… the same reason that addicts are pressured into staying anonymous) and, well, the result was death. Shit. I will not be okay with what happened to Oscar for the rest of my life.

I have thought around what has happened to us from countless different directions. I have researched the science that we do have about suicidality, nutrition, gut-brain health, emotional development, the list goes on. I have also dug deep into my truth, the truth about the choices that I made that lead us on the path that we ended up on, my family: Nick, Oscar, Pierce and Vivian. There is a deep and oh-so-painful admission, an acknowledgement, that what happened to Oscar has more than a lot to do with me. The work that I have been doing since Oscar died has been a deep dive into all of it. Everything from how to cope on a daily with the death of a piece of your soul, to the dissection and ultimate understanding of my behaviors so that I don’t fuck it up like I have before, again.

All of this to say that this time of year doesn’t get any easier. Well, none of it really gets any easier, it just gets different. What I find curious about this time of year is how much closer my grief feels on a continuous basis. In the Spring and Summer I somehow feel more of a separation from it, a chance to grow away from it. To grow stronger in spite of it. And then this time of year hits and I get to test all of the hard work I have put in during the opposite half of the year.

One of the ways I know I am hurting and my grief is getting bigger than me is grief brain. It is a real thing, people. I don’ t notice details like I normally do. Things slip past me that would never usually do so. I have trouble remembering anything short term, so I write even more lists than usual. I also have a strong tendency to hyperfocus on not important things. And it all sort of spirals.

Last week, for the first time since this time last year, I legit couldn’t keep the tears in. Don’t get me wrong, I cry a lot. Most days of the week I have tears here and there when the pain momentarily overwhelms my ability to keep perspective on the here and now, but this was complete tsunami. And, of course, it happened at work… Luckily the schedule was light and I had already finished my case, so when I went to my charge nurse to find out if I could leave early and the tears started flowing, she said of course, and gave me a big hug. Then I was lucky to get hugs from everyone in the near-vicinity, which made the tears more, but by then I knew that they needed to overflow.

So, yeah, this path is utterly and horribly painful, beyond words painful. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I don’t want people to even try to imagine it.

I am doing my best to stay focused on my self-care. That day last week that I came home early because my grief was a monster I went for a run. That helped. I know running helps. I know blogging helps. I know journaling helps. I know reading my bible helps. I know praying helps. I know letting the tears come when they need to come helps. I know that giving myself grace helps.

I am trying to be gentle with myself. I have no idea what I am doing on deathday this year. The only thing I know for sure about the day is that I am starting it at 8 am with a therapy session with my amazing psychologist. Vivian keeps teasing me that I am treating deathday like a holiday. And, well, it is. It is a holy day to me. The day that I sang my son to the light. All of my kids have a birth song and I hope that Oscar is the only one that I write a death song for. It is a haunting, sweet, and lilting melody. And those first weeks after he died it is the only music I could tolerate. I could tolerate so little. Every stimulus was too much, and so I would hum his death song to myself. This year is special because it is the first year that deathday is on the same day of the week as it was the year he died.

And so it will be whatever it needs to be. That is my hope.

I love you, Oscar, and I miss you beyond words, beyond time, beyond death.

time

There has been this pervasive thread of discussion throughout my life: time. My relationship to it, how my relationship to it affects others who weave in and out of my life, and it seems to be a popular subject no matter the season of my life. I called it pervasive because it usually comes up for others who observe me in my life and think poorly of the way I interact with it. I don’t go slow as a matter of course. There have been many times in my life that I fit the cliche about fools rushing in. As I grow into advanced age I feel that there are not so many times now that I jump based on feelings and intuition, at least compared to how I used to be. Someone looking at me now that doesn’t know me would probably think, “holy sh*t, if this is even half as much as she used to jump in then I cannot imagine what her life used to look like.” Ha.

Time is a funny beast. Sort of reminds me of grief in a lot of ways. Time has a sort of ever-changing nature a lot like grief. Certain moments can feel overwhelming and like they are going so so fast and you wonder what happened to those past three hours and then in other cases it feels like it doesn’t move even when you will it to.

Lately I have been enjoying the quickly changing nature of my life. I have said for several years now that you know you are an operating room nurse when two minutes feels like an hour. And maybe that is one of the reasons I was initially attracted to the OR- time is very much on purpose. It matters that things move as quickly as possible. As much as perhaps I have a natural affinity for moving quickly, the OR has also influenced and reinforced my continued development of this particular personality trait.

And it drives some people nuts.

Seriously, it was one of the reasons I knew deep down, before I committed to the decision, finally, that Grant and I weren’t going to make it. No matter how hard we tried. No matter how much work we put into our romantic relationship. I move too fast. I just do. It is a deeply ingrained part of my personality and because it is reinforced in my career it is a super strong piece of who I am.

Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of times that it is important to slow down enough to see the details. Like just now, I sent a text meant for the man I am dating to Grant by accident. Oops. But those little mistakes because I am not going slow enough are so much better made in my personal life than at work when a little mistake like that could mean a truly life-altering mistake. Like wrong procedure or wrong medication. So I take it as it comes and try to learn, always.

Since I made what seemed like a fast and furious decision (it was actually a decision that I had been struggling with for weeks) to stop trying to make my romantic relationship with Grant work I have seen so much growth in myself! I have been focused on caring consistently and deeply for my body by running regularly. I have been finding myself in a sort of “do it and get it done” mode. I haven’t been one for sitting and writing and it has been difficult to maintain my Bible reading daily because I simply feel the need to do! I feel all action right now. I have been funneling that energy into taking much better care of not just my body, but my kids and my home. I have been decluttering and reorganizing my space. I have been making it make sense for who I am today, not who I was four years ago when I moved into this space.

I have also been funneling that energy into dating. Some would say it is much too soon to be dating again. But I move at the speed of life. And when my brain finally completely acknowledged what my heart and soul had known for years, people, years, I felt an amazing finality to what had come before. I feel like I worked through all of the big important issues about me in relationships and had come out on the other side with the understanding that I needed to be cognizant of my attachment style and also the attachment style of those that I choose to date. Truly I felt ready to start dating again right away. Oh, and I am not getting any younger, honey!!

I had some really great conversations with lots of men right off the bat, thank you FB dating. I had probably a dozen conversations going for a short time. One by one they all weeded themselves out. Some went way too fast wanting to meet me after introducing themselves, and some going way too slow. I felt like Goldilocks! Somehow out of that chaos I met someone really special. Our initial connection was super fun. He made me laugh. And then we would alternate between super fun conversation and pepper it with super serious conversation. He thinks about the same stuff I do, he doesn’t like sports for similar reasons (what?! come again?), he cares about his physical health, and he has an amazing vision he brings to life through art.

We met last Monday. It was truly magical for me. I sent him flowers the next day! I have never done anything like that before. I find myself doing lots of things I have never done before with him. They are all good things. I catch myself wondering if this is what a healthy relationship feels like. Throughout all of this acknowledged super fast development I have kept myself grounded by maintaining my self-care and also staying focused on secure attachment. He boosts me in ways that I didn’t really understand I needed, or perhaps I understood I needed, but stuffed it down because I was convinced it was never going to happen for me. He makes me feel sexy, desirable, heard, and comfortable. It is early yet, but so far he is able to tolerate the big, scary, immense impossibility of my grief.

So, why do I write about this? This thing that is happening for me romantically ties right into time. This pervasive thread that runs through my life. I want to LIVE! I want to make the most of the time I have. Right now, especially now, I feel strongly that the time I am putting into this spark of a romance is time well spent. I am learning so much about myself and about what it means to be in a healthy partnership. The future is unknown. I fully understand, and accept, that it could be next week that I am writing about how this spark of a romantic relationship has already burned itself out. But for right now, while the ember is still hot and I see flames starting to take hold I am going to enjoy it. I am going to nurture it and show my gratitude through transparent communication and a commitment to my own health. One other thing that I have made a commitment to do differently this time is be mindful of my attachment style and mindful of his. Secure attachment can happen even for those of us who have been anxious or avoidant in past relationships, if you can keep perspective and awareness of your emotional responses.

Time. I am doing my damndest to make the most of what time I have. Tricky at times considering my experience as a bereaved mama and suicide loss survivor. It would have been tricky enough as a recovering addict and abused wife. Tragedy and beauty, loss and joy can co-exist. That is what the past nearly five years have taught me. Oscar’s memory glows inside me. He is a driving force for all that I am, all that I do, and all that I will become. I feel his blessing on me.

countdown to 5 years

So for the past few weeks I feel like I have been getting ready for a storm.

This has meant going through a sort of temper tantrum about my living space and feeling like I needed to move. That was an interesting weekend. I was so upset- I felt like I needed to stretch and I was being held down. I was ready to move! To get out of my current living space. I looked through pages of rental homes looking for a better fit than where I am now. I had an impassioned conversation with my folks and my Lane kids and Grant about it. I was truly angry for about 24 hours that no one but me thought we should move and then I emerged on the other side of all that goofy pain and decided to redecorate.

There was a lot going on right about that time. I was more and more sure that I had made a mistake trying to have a romantic relationship with Grant again, my Lane kids and I found one more of the boxes from Nick in the basement that was full of memories of Washington, and I was still trying to get my self-care routine back on track.

Back in 2016, when Nick left Washington, he had packed up several boxes and taken them to my folks (this was right before they moved back to KC from WA themselves). Nick told me that said boxes had “everything that was important” in them. Those boxes went straight to my basement and I didn’t start unpacking them until this summer.

Nick died nearly 2 years ago. He died on the same day that Oscar did, but his body wasn’t found for 5 days. So this countdown to 5 years since Oscar’s death is also a countdown to 2 years since Nick’s death.

I thought we (me and my Lane kids) had been through all of the boxes that Nick sent, so you can imagine my surprise when we uncovered one last box. And not the good kind of surprise, but more of a deep dread. I briefly acknowledged the feeling as it occurred, looked at Pierce and said, “let’s do it, let’s get this done.” So we did. And in that box were so many of the most precious memories. Nick’s wedding ring (that he told me he threw away), the lock of Oscar’s hair that Nick had requested from the funeral director when we had our viewing of Oscar’s body (I thought Nick had it with him when he died and that it had gotten disposed of with the rest of Nick’s belongings because of the smell), and the hospital ID bracelets from when the kids were born. My heart broke a little more.

The strangest thing about all of that was I wasn’t able to talk about it for days. That is not like me in my grief. I am able to talk about things and get them out in the open right away. This was decidedly not like that. Thank goodness I had a sympathetic ear at work who I was able to confide in. She actually noticed that I had been a bit off and asked me about it. Grateful for her.

Since I realized I needed to redecorate I have been super diligent and focused on revamping my living space. I am happy to say I am almost done with the major transitions. The space feels amazing. I believe the changes I made have helped clear energy blockages that have been keeping me in old patterns and dysfunctional rhythms of behavior. That is probably the most exciting part of preparing for the coming storm.

Big changes this past week, especially. I was finally able to come to the conclusion that Grant will not be able to give me what I need or want romantically and that is okay. Many different things have helped me reach that conclusion. The therapy that we did together was key- listing my expectations and the realization that even when we want to be on the same page we can’t quite get there. It is like we can both be looking at the same color but he sees violet and I see purple. It is sort of maddening and maybe a bit hard to explain. My individual therapist also helped me realize and understand that my attachment to Grant is our son, Phoenix. I had an excellent conversation with another friend who helped me understand that I have been clinging to Grant from a place of fear. Base bottom line is that I need to stay true to myself and what I need to take excellent care of my soul. (Also sex is not necessarily needed to have a great sex life!)

I am excited to date again and I am hopeful that through the work I am doing to understand myself better that I can experience a healthy romantic relationship for the first time in my life. Wouldn’t that be grand?

I understand my grief well enough to know that this next season, the Fall, will be somewhat unpredictable as far as my emotional response to life. I have already started feeling the subtle ways that grief f*cks with me- not noticing details, lack of consistent short-term memory, having to really search for words- all of these symptoms remind me that my grief is right next to me and ready to overwhelm at any moment. The only way at this point in my grief journey that I have found to strike a balance with her is to focus on being kind to myself through excellent self-care and the occasional doughnut and warm blanket.

I used to keep Oscar’s ashes in the hand-me-down hutch that I had inherited from my folks who had inherited it from my mom’s mom. It wasn’t quite the right fit for him, but it was all I had energy to figure out until this year. The featured photo is his new digs and the following photo is of the hutch where I used to keep him.

for the mouth speaks what the heart is full of

Right now I feel like writing all the time. Certain topics seem to bubble up more easily than others. I know I need to keep writing about my time with Nick, but every time I think about it or look at it I think about how drained I was after the first, and only, time that I wrote and I push it away. Writing about my dreams was as close to writing about Nick as I have come since that first installment of my not-a-memoir. The blog that I wrote about those dreams helped me quite a bit. Mostly reminded me that I need to give it up to God. Turn it over as I first heard in 12-step. So I started praying about it. And I feel better. I felt a little bit self-conscious about my last post. What keeps resurfacing for me is that blogging is apart of my process, I find it cathartic, and transparency is one of my hallmark personality traits. I do question, though, whether or not my blog could be considered gossip. I didn’t understand until very recently that gossip is a sin. And I have been a gossiper my entire life. I had no idea that what I was doing was a deep sin, but now that I know that to be true, I can see how this part of my personality must be surrendered to God. I know Jesus will help me to understand where the line is if I can get quiet enough to hear Him. Also, I am not making anyone read this stuff.

Lately I have been thinking a lot about Oscar’s death, well I always think about it, it is hard to explain, but lately it has been surfacing in a more vibrant fashion. It ebbs and flows, like all things in this existence of ours. The thoughts have mostly been details about finding his body. And my screaming. I have never screamed like that. I hope to never again. Blood curdling, “NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO,” as I was pumping on his chest too fast for CPR because my adrenaline was hurling through my veins. My sweet, beautiful boy. I remember his eyes after he died. How badly I wanted life to flicker back into them and for him to gasp for air and say, “Mom, Mom, I am so sorry, thank you for saving me.” Alas, that was not my reality that fateful morning. My experience finding Oscar dead has been kind of on a constant playback in various forms and various intensities since it happened. Visions of the basement and how it looked. What he was wearing. The way his body was positioned. It hurts. It is the deepest, darkest pain that you can’t ever imagine. I still cry a lot, well, at least I think it is a lot. I remember when I first saw his body lying there and immediately thinking, “Oh honey, I probably won’t be able to get you out of this one.”

I have been off my self-care game lately. I had gotten into this amazingly vibrant routine that included running at least once per week, but when I was really on it I was running three times a week three miles per run, regular journaling and reflection with my Silk + Sonder, reading my bible daily (my mom and I are reading an incredible plan by the BibleProject that will get us through the entire book- you can find it on YouVersion), and deeply studying the bible at least once or twice a week. And by deeply studying I am referring to a mix of weekly online church services at Vineyard Overland Park, Vineyard Institute classes, Esther Dorotik materials (this is where my focus on gossip has come from, I have deep gratitude for Esther, I am sure I will mention her more in future posts- you can find her shop, EstherDorotikShop, on Etsy), and a program called Churches That Heal by Dr. Henry Cloud. I have been generally surrounding myself with Christian resources- I even joined Nurses Christian Fellowship. These activities have become my spiritual foundation. If I take good care of my spirit I can take good care of my life. When my self-care routine is not on point my spirit suffers and so do the people I love most.

I blogged about it my first blog back a week or so ago, but the reason I am currently off my self-care game is because Grant, Phoenix, and I spent most of June together. Since Grant decided not to move in and we have started couples therapy I suggested that we go back to following the parenting plan and slowly start seeing each other more, but with stronger intention of actually seeing each other, as in on dates, instead of him and Phoenix spending loads more time here like he has already moved back in. There has been some discomfort around my insistence on this tack, but I feel really good about it because I am getting my alone time again! Oh how I missed taking good care of myself and my spirit. As we continue to heal our relationship we will need to find ways for me to consistently and regularly get time alone to spend on journaling, exercising, and bible study. I think finding alone time is a common problem for mothers today, but in my case it is absolutely devastating if I do not get the time I need for self-care. It just is. I think those of us who have a strong and prevalent history of trauma need more time for self-care. Looking back over the past nearly five years since Oscar died all the times that were the most chaotic and turbulent can be directly correlated to a lack of consistent and regular self-care. It just is.

If I don’t take care of myself with a diligent self-care practice my heart fills with the dark memories associated with Oscar’s death and with Nick’s death, for that matter. Grief begins to take over my path. I have been working hard for the past almost five years to be able to walk next to my grief. It has taken a lot of effort to deeply understand that even though grief will be a constant companion for the remainder of my life, it does not deserve to overwhelm my life.

This is the statement that Jesus made at the end of Luke 6:45, “For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.” The entire verse is as follows, “A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.” This is such an amazing observation, isn’t it? This is the kind of stuff that makes me so excited to understand the bible better and to become closer to Jesus. I love this idea, that the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. When I write about my grief experience and the memories that fuel my negative reaction to the events that have happened in my life, like my memories of finding Oscar dead, it is because that is what my heart is full of. Sharing my experience helps to release it from my heart and actively hand it over to God. I also hope and pray that through sharing my experience as a bereaved mama and a suicide loss survivor others will feel less stigmatized to share their experiences. We need to open up about suicide and suicide loss in our culture. We need to make this conversation that nobody wants to have into a conversation that can be easily discussed. It is simple to share our truth, not easy. I want to encourage all of my fellow suicide loss survivors to share the truth of your experience!

The picture is of me and Oscar I think about two years before he died. My sense of time since 2012 is a little skewed, and it is hard for me to remember when certain events occurred. We were at my parent’s house on Foster in Bremerton, Washington. I miss those big eyes. You can see how sad he was. Looking back with hindsight being what it is I wish I had done so many things differently. I pray a lot about those things and the only relief I have is when I let God carry it for me.