10 years ago I started this blog. 9 years ago was my last post. I'm not sure why I stopped using this forum, writing has always been a good way for me to process things happening, find the humor in the crazy things that took place in my life, (trust me, they did not stop when I stopped logging in here). It was a place to share fun antics, my humor that is much to be desired at times, and to bring a message to others that you are not alone. Everyone's life it chaotic and sad and happy and crazy busy and all other things. If it's happened to you and you feel alone, it's happened to someone else and sometimes finding that someone else who is willing to be real and honest about it is next to impossible. Enter me...always willing to talk about the hard things because life is full of them. But in the last 9 years I lost myself in the craziness of life, homeschooling, and have spent a lot of time, a lot of meltdowns, a lot of losing my temper, and a lot of soul searching to start finding my way back to me. Now, it's time to write again. I've missed it and to detail all the crazy things that have happened over the last 9 years would definitely require a novel size post. I'm going to try for much shorter today and focus on 2021. It's not been kind.
The past almost two years have not been good to any of us. This is indisputable. We have needed to isolate and quarantine and worry about our health, the health of our loved ones, our kids, make decisions with so much information flying at us that we have no idea how to separate fact from fiction. So it's been crazy and we've all felt the stress of the questions of what is true, what should we do, how do we stay safe. But this is not going to be about Covid and the politics of covid etc. You can find that in a million different places. Besides this blog is about the attention whore that is me. This post is about me finding healing that I don't know how to find and no one can help me with it. So I am going back to a process I gave up 9 years ago. Writing. If your looking for laughs and feel good stories about the wheel falling off my Saturn Vue named Felicity...today is not that day. But that is a good story.. remind me another day to share that with you if you don't already know it. It's a good classic Rebecca moment no doubt. Also there's many new stories about the latest edition to my family, the ever infamous Great Dane Lab mix June.
Today though I'm going into the muck of grief. So if that's not your cup of tea or anything you want to read about....log out now and save your day. This is going to get messy I think. I never really quite know where I'm going when I start typing I just know I need to get some things off my soul and I let my fingers do the work without spending too much time on whether it's "proper" to say or express. Nor do I tend to really worry about it. I'm just me and I don't tend to hide who I am behind a mask because it's going to upset someone. I'm allowed to be me. You are allowed to be you. That's what makes life so grand.
What I know at this time is, I don't know how to do grief. I don't know if anyone knows how to do grief but I know I don't know how to do grief. I don't know how to be ok with someone being gone that I never got a chance to have a closing conversation with. I don't know how to reconcile the pain caused by others during a time I am desperately trying to stay above water with just the heavy weight of suffering the biggest loss of my lifetime.
No one can make me feel anything without my consent. This has always been my belief, but unfortunately when your defenses are down and you're just trying to get through the days of wanting to deny reality it's easy to allow others actions to hurt you and hurt you deeply without your consent. Life is hard and messy and it just happens in our weakness to allow others to hurt even the strongest among us.
On June 10,2021, I was busy bustling about baking cake, cutting fruit and putting together the best gift I could assemble for my best friend and her brand new husband. My son and I were laughing about him having to wait until they arrived to be able to have some of that cake. He takes after his mom afterall....we love our cake. In the midst of the excitement of their arrival, Lane and I were also annoyingly excited about planning our trip to see our very first Bull Riding event proclaiming loudly countless times that day "WE ARE GOING TO THE RODEO!" in real life, on facebook, in text messages....etc etc (run on sentences abound I know but Wodeo Week was that exciting for all of us so they are warranted right now I don't have time for grammar lessons.). It was shaping up to be a great day, and one of the happiest most fun weeks for me and then I got the single worst call I have ever received in 49 years.
My sister was calling, I ignored her phone call, as phone calls are sometimes hard with my hearing issues, but also Lane and I were just lost in elation so I sent the call to voicemail. Seconds later, I got a text message from her saying she had news and I should call her if I could or she would just text it to me. Of course this made me pause and thought it must be pretty important. I went out on the deck where I would hold a signal on my phone and called her back, once she answered, my world stopped and then started spinning. The next several days would be a blur from that moment on.
My 47 year old brother, Doug, was found dead in his apartment that morning. All I could do was bend over and then sit down on the ground, my ears ringing, no longer aware of my surroundings or able to think for several minutes.
I have suffered loss in my life. I’m no stranger to loss, my grandparents passed away and that was hard but it wasn't unexpected. They weren’t taken suddenly without warning. I grieved them but I had time to prepare, to visit them, to call them and make sure they knew I loved them. I lost my son for several years and that was a pain I had not felt ever before, but he didn't die, he came back and we have worked really hard to repair the damage to our relationship. It’s not been an easy road for neither him nor me but we are graced with the time to do it and during this tragedy both he and my youngest son showed me that they will always love and protect their mom when she's struggling. Thank you boys for allowing me to be your mom. You make me so unbelievably proud every day.
I did not have this privilege of time to make things right with my brother. It had been three years since I had last seen him and 20 years before that for reasons I will not go into out of respect for his privacy and my family's privacy as well. It was never due to a falling out or angry words...it just was how life turned out. And I regret that. I do not have the luxury of time anymore to right the wrongs, to say I was sorry for all the years I hadn’t taken the time to visit or reach out. We wrote letters occasionally over that time but in hindsight, not often enough. He needed me and whether or not I was equipped to give him what he needed…I wasn’t there and I didn't try. This is something I'm not sure I can ever be ok with. He was taken from us without warning, no goodbyes, just ..... gone.
This is a chapter, a journey in this life I do not know how to do.
Over the years I have sat with grieving friends who suffered terrible losses. I didn’t have any answers for them, I couldn’t take away their pain no matter how much I wanted to. I could not even relate to their pain and I didn't pretend that I could. I like to believe my presence and willingness to always be available to them no matter how long it took for them to start finding healing and peace was helpful to them. I read a lot of things about all topics whether they relate to me or not because I like to read and learn all the things.
Many times we are accused of being on a mobile device for frivolousness but a lot of that time can actually be searching for and reading valuable information. Sometimes we are all too quick to judge what we don't know for certain when we see someone on their tablet, phone, computer etc We could all benefit I suppose from not just assuming we know what someone is doing all the time but I digress.
I knew through some of that researching and reading that grief has no timeline. I never really grasped that, because I had not been faced with a grief that brought me to my knees. One that also didn't come with hope that it could be remedied one day anyway. So for those grieving I felt I needed the knowledge, to at the very least, not say something awful. I'm sure I did, but please know it wasn't intentional and I'm so sorry if I caused you more pain than you were already feeling. I want to be available to people and I try to always be. I want to help not hurt people more going through difficult times. Whether I have been successful in that or not, I don't know but I will never stop trying to support others, offering comforting words that aren't trite and vow to continue to be available. I hope that I was, at the very least, a benign presence rather than someone who brought them more pain because I didn't know how they felt.
I now know that feeling, and I don't want to anymore. A feeling that the English Language doesn't have many words to describe it accurately, but those that come to mind are relentless, never ending, conflicting, defeat, numb, anger, despair, hopeless, indescribable sadness, crippling guilt and a heaviness that is one that I never trained for in order to be able to lift.
Generally I'm a pretty strong person, if nothing else I'm at least strong willed. I don't like emotion much, I don't like crying in front of other people and so I tend to hold things in until I explode. I knew I had to keep moving, doing things, helping out somewhere, and to be as strong as I could for my parents in the coming days of decisions and preparations. In a crisis moving is good for me, being able to be useful is good for me, it's after the fact that I'm not very good for much other than an all out breakdown. When the funeral was over and Doug was laid to rest and I went home with nothing left to do I suddenly couldn't function.
There are so many things I just wasn't prepared to learn, to feel, to know when I went home to quiet. Things that I am now working hard to protect myself from going forward in this life and to not be caught so off guard at least by similar things.
I wasn't prepared to not have anyone hug me after I learned the news. For six days.
That first hug came from my sister. I finally felt comforted and less alone for a brief moment, even though I had been surrounded by people. Thank you.
I wasn't prepared to realize I had no one in my life who would take the initiative and sit down next to me and let me lay my head in their lap and cry until there were no more tears left. No talking.. just time for me to fall apart and feel safe doing it.
I wasn't prepared for local family and many friends to not reach out. To not call, or send a card, or flowers or even bring food to the house for my son who was home alone for about two weeks during the days while I was back in my hometown. I wasn't prepared for this tragedy to not be acknowledged by them and to feel like I had to keep quiet about it to spare them and their feelings.
I wasn't prepared for the people who did reach out quickly after the news was made public to be those I haven't met in real life. Who says facebook friends aren't real? Without saying anything I was met with several messages from people who have experienced what I did and they made it known that they understood and they gave me a place to talk about my pain without feeling selfish and they listened.
I wasn't prepared to feel like I was grieving alone though in my physical world. I wasn't prepared for how angry and how much hurt that would pile on my already unbearable emotional state. My world suddenly grew so much smaller.
I wasn't prepared for the people from my past I never dreamed would reach out with messages that did and I'm forever grateful for them.
I wasn't prepared for the statement "let me know if you need anything" and how much anger that welled up in me, how I wanted to scream I don't know what I need, I cannot make one more decision for you to feel good about yourself. People who know how to reach out in times of trouble. People who know what to do, because I have seen them do it. I felt like it was just a nicety that required zero effort because they didn't really want to do anything or didn't really have the time so they did their due diligence I guess. I don't know but it became a phrase if I never heard again it would be too soon. A phrase I have said myself in the past. I now know better going forward.
I wasn't prepared for people to not notice that I wasn't doing well. I wasn't handling anything well and I wasn't ok. I wasn't expecting my grieving family members to be ok and able to help me but where were all the people I've been surrounded by for years. People who called me friend, people who claimed to love me, people who said they would always be there for me no matter what. People I had been there for, people who I never doubted their loyalty and their love for me. People I would have said prior without a doubt they would show up for me, I know it. Suddenly there was much clarity in who I thought were in my tribe and who just took up space.
So I found myself grieving the loss of my brother, which is far plenty and more than I could bear all on it's own but now grieving the loss of so many I had believed to be my friends and a family that I thought I was a part of for the past 21 years, regardless of the trials that come with any family. I wasn't prepared to learn about all the friendships and relationships that were not as solid as I had always believed them to be. There really are no truer words than you find out who is with you in times of hardship.
I wasn't prepared for the hurtful things that were said to me by people who seemed to forget or never noticed what I had endured or went through. As if it was some kind of competition who suffers the most pain. I wasn't prepared to hear about the struggles of others but no recognition of the struggles I experienced. And I wasn't prepared to feel like I couldn't voice them at best but at worse that no one ever noticed or remembered that I was there too for a lot of things. And those were pivotal times in my life that shaped who I became as an adult.
I wasn't prepared for the statement "you are just going to need to get back to a normal routine"
I wasn't prepared for my first thought when my alarm went off in the morning to be "my brother died" and to be expected to just pick up life as if it never happened.
I wasn't prepared for that to still be my first thought every morning four months later.
I wasn't prepared to feel so............... weak.
I wasn't prepared for the sudden silence from people I had talked to every day for years. Suddenly they were not reaching out anymore, they were busy....no time to chat.
I was prepared for My best friend to listen and never act like she was tired of hearing it. She never tried to change the subject and she said the most comforting thing anyone had after I continuously would type to her all that I was feeling like a broken record and that I didn't understand why I felt some of the things I felt, or why I wasn't starting to feel better after some time had passed. Her reply being simply the truth "let me tell you why you feel that way. It's because your brother died."
All I could respond with
" I don't want him to have died". And she just said " I know."
It's all I was looking for. Someone to acknowledge what happened and that I wasn't abnormal in what I was feeling. That I was allowed to feel everything I was feeling and didn't need to stop feeling it or talking about it and that it was real. I could not have made it through the last four months without her. She wasn't in town to be able to come over but she was there every time I picked up the phone and messaged. She listened and because she knows me better than anyone she seemed to know just what to say that would get me to get up and live another day. She never judged me, she never made me feel like I was being anything more than a grieving sister who wanted to turn back time and change everything. She understood I was beating myself up daily from guilt and that I just needed someone to come in and fix it. She knew, I knew no one could fix this. but she let me feel everything I felt and she let me express that in anyway I needed to. She never made me feel guilty for being angry that some of the people who should have shown up for me didn't and she never made excuses for them or that I should just be ok with it. She never said hurtful things to me because I was hurt just so she could feel better. She was just who I've always known her to be. My best friend who knows me, who knows I'm a person who feels deeply even though I try to hide it and pretend I'm strong, she knows that I never try to hurt anyone and that my feelings, while they may seem selfish she knows why and where they come from. Because she listens to me to know me and understand me, not to just respond to me from her perspective.
Thank you for that Melissa. You are the perfect best friend for me. You were there. You showed up, you didn't disappear, you didn't expect anything from me, you didn't expect me to make concessions for the people who didn't reach out and who still haven't four months later. You never yelled or said hurtful things to me because I was hurt by their lack of presence in my life and I couldn't get over it. You knew what to say to show me that what I was feeling was completely normal and ok. You were the only one who did exactly what I knew you would do and I am grateful for that constant normal in my life. There's no surprises with you and I didn't need anymore surprises. This was the only thing I was prepared for and it kept me from falling deeper into the darkness that consumed me.
The healing process is long and seems never ending. It is dark and bumpy. Some times the mountain feels insurmountable. Some days it seems like the sun is coming out to shine only to have the darkness take over again when you least expect it. I think I am getting stronger one minute and the next thing I know I am sitting on the kitchen floor again with tears spilling down my face because a song started to play in my hearing aid or a memory hit and I'm back to that lonely feeling of knowing I am the only one who is going to get me down this dark windy path.
I will get through this. God is going to get me to a day I will feel strong again and have unbridled joy again. I don't know when that will be, I don't know who will still be standing with me when I get there. But I do know I will get to that day because I do not buckle and give up and I know that it will be a far different and much smaller crowd of people than I had always believed it would be, I will be more confident and I will be more secure and I will know beyond a shadow of a doubt, who stood and who will always stand the test of time. Who thought I mattered enough to understand, to show up, to not judge, and who allowed me to feel weak and imperfect, and emotional and who said through their actions I won't let anyone kick you while you are down or mar your character while you are putting yourself back together yet again from the cruelty of life.
I will get there. I am after all a force to reckon with when the devil knocks at my door. But losing a brother is a process I have not gone through before so I'm learning as I go. And if you are going through your own grief, how about we get through it together. It may not be today or tomorrow that we are whole again. I don't think we can ever be after a piece has been taken from us and I don't think we'd want to be. Through these times is when we grow and the scar tissue that seals the wound, will tell a story of survival and hopefully that gives us the compassion and willingness to sit with someone else going through all the things they were not prepared for when life threw a sucker punch like it all too often does. I am a warrior though, and I will still be me when I get to brighter days and learn to live with this. The me who doesn't go looking for confrontation but isn't afraid of it either when someone needs to be spoken up for. The me who doesn't desert my friends or family because it's a little uncomfortable. The me who my people know they can count on. The me who knows who my people are. This much I know is true.
