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To Laura, the day after you try to die...
May. 29th, 2007 | 02:15 pm
mood: 
distressed
My Dearest Lauralei,
I don’t know if you have regained consciousness of not yet. When Mark called me yesterday, you were still out of it. Will you be angry when you wake up and find that you are still among the living? Or will you be relieved that you still have another chance? I know my friend Nicole writes of hope being the thing that gave her the most after her suicide attempt…somehow she got hope that it would be OK, that she could come out of it. I wish I knew how to give that to you. I wish I knew how to make it better. Instead, I find myself feeling very helpless and too far away to offer much to either you or Mark besides my presence and concern during phone calls. It feels like too little and not enough for either of you.
I have all this logical thought that means nothing to you now. I know that and I understand. The worse part is that I know that of you really want to end it all, that eventually you will succeed and be lost to all of us. I do not have the tools to make you want to come back. That the most I can do is wait for you to want to come back to the life you have left and welcome you when and if you do. In the meantime, I dread the phone again. I thank God that Mark is managing to keep you breathing. I find myself so proud that he is able to do it and yet, I know he has no choice. That is what really strength is..doing what you must even if it sucks. I worry about him, about Arlo and Ruby, abut you. And I pray that something starts to work and you find that hope and strength.
Part of me wants to be angry at you. Part of me is. How dare you try to check out! How dare you give up so easily! I want to yell that it is not fair. That YOU do not get to do this. You have had the golden life. Oh I know you do not see it now..in the belly of the beast..and that I tell myself that I do not know your demons, but I know from the outside that your demons are of your own misfiring brains creations..and the look from the outside..wanting to be able to just slap some sense in you will do nothing with your internal battles. I do know this, but still I am angry,,,just a little bit. All the times that I contained the jealously that you had things go just as planned….that your crisis of the moment was a drop of water in the scheme of life…that Karma seemed out to get me and leave you unscathed…and now, when really nothing is wrong…..you are trying to throw it all away.
I use to think that we only get the burdens that we can handle. I would tell myself that as I struggled though, that I had these things happen to me because I could take them on, where you never could
Of course I also use to think that it was better to have all the bad stuff happen when I was younger so that I could get my just rewards later in life…and often now, I am grateful for the life I have and content, but somehow losing my best friend still gets chalked up there with the other shitty things. I am definitely not down with it. And again, it reeks with unfair.
It is unfair that YOU get to do this when with all that I have had on my plate I never have. Oh, I have thought about it many time throughout the years. From the early Goth days of my broken heart from Darrin, to losing Max, to David, to the broken and failed marriage to Pat, to being so poor and so broke that I wondered how I could live and feed my child, to my mother dying, almost losing my house, the whole arrested and fired and blackballed deal with Williams, things with Michael…many times I wondered why I even bothered to wake up in the mornings just to have more pain heaped upon me. But I only thought about it, never acted. Never once even attempted..and now I think to myself OMG what right to YOU have to be crazy? You are the blessed sheltered child..and this, this something that CAN be controlled and fixed with time and medication, is going to break you?
And while that might sound like jealousy, it isn’t because I have no wish to die. But I do know at times when I wanted to I would think about those I left behind and one of them was always you. And I knew that killing myself would hurt those people who loved me..and that was not someone I wanted to be. I would imagine the phone call you would get saying I was gone..and how you would feel, helpless, like you should have known, should have done something, and you would be the one who would have to go though my things and know what was essentially me to pass down to my children. Now, I am the one dreading that hone call and I am angry that you are only thinking of your own pain, your own self, and not the ones that will have to live on without you and with the pain you have thrown all over.
When Marked called yesterday, Michael and I were doing yard work. After I talked to Mark, I spoke briefly to Michael and then went back to my raking. As I bent down, I felt physically sick, like I might just throw up right then and there next to the fence. So I yelled at Michael, annoyed either him for not being able to make it better, walked over to neighbors who, too, were not comforting, and just felt at a loss.
I tried to imagine what it would really mean to me if you succeeded and died. Not talking as often, being 100 miles away, would it really matter? I know that in a certain sense, things are not what they have been. I got use to being displaced by Mark a long tome ago. I stopped caring when you would tell me things like going camping in Woodstock and not getting over to see me when I was right next door practically, or going to Newberg to see Matt and Jen, but not me. Not even being in your top 8 on MySpace..even that was a zinger. These things hurt, but I can bury my feelings, try not care..as making issues of stuff is never been my thing. But still, as I imagined you just not being there..yeah, it did matter. It mattered a lot.
Because still, even with time and distance, you have always been the person I have called My Best Friend. No one has ever taken that role away from you. Maybe it is loyalty…that when I was 13 and a nerd, you liked my shoelaces….that when my family was broken to you I was fixed…that you gave me the strength to find who I really was…and even often I think, that if it wasn’t for you back in the bad years, I would have not fought for myself, not fought to stay breathing, that I would have just died, broken and unloved when I was 16. There were times in my life when I had nothing but you to love me who I was..not my family, not a husband, not a child…just you. You were the person who loved me unconditionally. You.
And then, I thought…you are still my home, my touchstone, my collective memory, my past. So often now, I think of our antics, a concert, a past scene, and I can’t remember it fully without your chiming in. My mother is gone, my father is gone, my house is gone..and when I go to Long Island it is to your house I go, my base. Who else knows me like you do? Our stories, our heartaches, our triumphs, our laughs? They are intertwined, woven together, shared…all my thoughts still, even if you are not around. I took off my shoes the other day at work and my feet stank..and I thought of you. Scarlet shows me a Gypsy moth caterpillar and our story comes out.
I am scared now. At times, when feeling morbid, I would think of how my children would know me if, say, I got hit by the proverb able bus tomorrow and ceased to be..and always in my mind, you were the one, like in Beaches, who spent time with my daughter and told her of who I really was. That you would not be afraid of remembering me, of telling the tales of making me human and real. And now I think, will that have to be my job to do for Ruby? Am I the keeper of the memories? Just like I use to fear Cancer and then instead of me, they got my mother…I wonder of this is how the Gods trick you, trick me..they switch the roles about just to keep us guessing.
I think to myself that I just am not ready for more loss into my life. That I have had enough, thank you very much. And then I know that it is not really you that it doing this, for you would not really want to do this to me, to Mark, to Ruby and Arlo..just that you are too deep now in the muck and mire to find a way out. But I know you do not really want this for them for any of us…that you just feel it is too much to handle, beyond your control..and yet is isn’t really. All you have to do right now is WANT to get better, to want to come back, to not sink into the abyss. Keep breathing for another day.
And I know it is tempting. I understand the seduction. I have felt it call to me, but I learned very early on to fear it..to never let it really gain footing. I wish I could get my macheti and hack the tendrils away from you, loosen their hold. But helpless again I am..waiting for phone calls, dreading bad news, scared and crying, imagining what it would be to be the keeper. What can I do to help pick up the pieces.
I would much rather see you lost to madness, I guess, than gone completely. At least then there still is a chance. Yes, you have made mistakes and it has hurt the kids, but they are still young, this could just be a “bad time” and things can become good again, you can come back. Yeah, it kinda sucks not liking the choice that you have made, but at least there is hope. Do you remember when the whole thing with Eric happened and I was so angry? And afterwards you said to me something along the lines of “ Yeah, I am sorry, I was being a real asshole..and if I ever get that way again, just remind me that I was an asshole”?
My dear, you are being a real asshole.
Of course, now I see that as a prequel to this. Post partum depression, and early baby manic phase. I get that. And even this time, I think….wow, you are going to feel so bad when you get out of this…the guilt is going to be terrible and Mark has been so great. But I still think it all forgivable…I know it is not you.
This is not the same you that spent the whole day at the hospital with me during Garin’s surgery keeping me sane and buffering me from Sheeley land. And that was what..not even two years ago. I know this is just not your doing..not really…just some monster who has taken hold.
And I don’t know. I don’t really know what it is like. I have not been there. Oh I have been in so much pain that I could barely breath, that I wanted something to just stop, anything, I have been sick enough that I have shaken for months, and cried myself to sleep for weeks, and gasped for breath, and wanted that bus or cancer to take me. I have not been able to eat for a summer, and drowned myself in work and drink, but no…my brain chemicals have been functioning ok enough on the inside…for me it was always outside stuff that hurt. So I don’t know..so I cannot judge. I can read, I can research, I can listen, I can learn, but I will never really know.
What I do know is how it is to lose your mother. I know what it feels like to have your mother die. I can tell you that yes, as I said, this will royally fuck Ruby and Arlo up. Probably Ruby more than Arlo. Arlo will just perceived it as a rejection on an unconscious base level. Screw up his trust issues, identity to a degree, relationships, probably with women more likely. But Ruby? She is old enough to get it to a degree…old enough to really see the rejection, to get it and understand it. And here is will be different for her as at least my mother had cancer, but still, to this day, it makes me angry that she did not fight harder. In that, she let me down. And I tell you, you have not been fighting that long at all….not really. You are giving up rather quickly. Your children are suppose to be worth fighting for. So they will feel that..they were not worth living for..that they alone did not have that importance to you..and that will effect them.
Ruby will hurt for you every time something new happens..when she has to pick out a prom dress, when she needs an opinion about her hair, when a boy breaks her heart, when she marries, when she finds out she is pregnant, when she worries about anything, when she needs someone to comfort her and understand her and tell her that she is loved and everything will be alright. Every time this happens, throughout her whole life, she will want for you and be angry at you all over again for your not being there. I know this because not one week goes by that I do not wish to be able to call my mother and have her see, hear and just be. Sometimes, even now, 13 years later, dysfunctional or not, I yearn for my mother with a fierceness that overwhelms me.
She will lose her road map to herself, her ability to understand deep secrets about her soul, you will cut out the source of information for her and handicap her. She will doubt her own ability to be a mother, she will worry that she will fail as you did, she will be more quick to doubt her own sanity, she will be shadowed by the same fate happening to her as it did to you. Why do I look for cancer in myself, why do I wonder if I have more that ten years left as my mother didn’t, and why do I have to guess what menopause means to women in my family….you just do not recover ever from losing your mother. This I know.
I know that you, the real Laura ( please stand up), does not want this for her children. As nice as it might be, a few weeks with Auntie Claud in the summer can not, will not, take the place of a flesh and blood real Mom. And I do not want that job. I don’t want to have to get out all the saved notes form 8th grade, and the pictures with half my fuzzy memory, the letters kept from my term in Boston, and keep you alive in spirit to her. How can I explain the toe devil and our earth mother Nina without it seeming like madness?
I do not want to see you as weak. I want to imagine that you have been saving your strength up for this fierce battle for your sanity. That all things were given to you before so that you have the desire and power stored up to take this on and beat it. Because I tell you, I don’t believe that anything is “too much”. I don’t buy that you cannot do this. I don’t get the ideal that this is too much, that it is taking too long, that it’s not worth it. I don’t understand giving up and giving in. I do not believe that some of us are born strong and others weak. Strength is nothing more that doing what we must because we have no choice. Mark has no choice right now but to try and keep you safe from yourself and the children as normalized as possible. I had no choice but to get through everything handed to me. You really have no choice, but to fight this, and get though it. And you will. Just give it time. It will be worth it in the end. But you just have to keep breathing, keep going for another day. I’m sorry, you have no choice. Checking out is not an option. I forbid it.
It has only been really terrible since January. It is June. Six months is nothing in the scheme of life. This could all be chalked up to a Bad year. Just one year…nothing really. A small hump. Now knock it off and get well..at least try. Or I am really gonna be very pissed off at you. You better try harder than this. So its not perfect..nothing ever is. You can get over this as long as you want to. And you should want to…coz what this will do to people…not a good deal. The last funeral I went to was a suicide…one of Michael’s friends..and it was like he had taken all that pain inside him and just allowed it to explode on his whole family..like what was hurt inside him was now just spread all over everyone. It was terrible.
I love you and I miss and I want you back. You can come back. And you will if you try and it is worth trying. I can’t fight for you, but I can be here, egging you on. Waiting. I am good at that now. I can wait for a good long time. But I don’t know how to deal with losing my best friend. And That I do not want to learn.
I know it cannot be easy. But anything worth it is never easy. Somethings you just have to fight for. So fight for you. Fight for your life. Fight for sanity. Fight for your family. Just fight it…don’t give up and don’t give in.
I don’t know if you have regained consciousness of not yet. When Mark called me yesterday, you were still out of it. Will you be angry when you wake up and find that you are still among the living? Or will you be relieved that you still have another chance? I know my friend Nicole writes of hope being the thing that gave her the most after her suicide attempt…somehow she got hope that it would be OK, that she could come out of it. I wish I knew how to give that to you. I wish I knew how to make it better. Instead, I find myself feeling very helpless and too far away to offer much to either you or Mark besides my presence and concern during phone calls. It feels like too little and not enough for either of you.
I have all this logical thought that means nothing to you now. I know that and I understand. The worse part is that I know that of you really want to end it all, that eventually you will succeed and be lost to all of us. I do not have the tools to make you want to come back. That the most I can do is wait for you to want to come back to the life you have left and welcome you when and if you do. In the meantime, I dread the phone again. I thank God that Mark is managing to keep you breathing. I find myself so proud that he is able to do it and yet, I know he has no choice. That is what really strength is..doing what you must even if it sucks. I worry about him, about Arlo and Ruby, abut you. And I pray that something starts to work and you find that hope and strength.
Part of me wants to be angry at you. Part of me is. How dare you try to check out! How dare you give up so easily! I want to yell that it is not fair. That YOU do not get to do this. You have had the golden life. Oh I know you do not see it now..in the belly of the beast..and that I tell myself that I do not know your demons, but I know from the outside that your demons are of your own misfiring brains creations..and the look from the outside..wanting to be able to just slap some sense in you will do nothing with your internal battles. I do know this, but still I am angry,,,just a little bit. All the times that I contained the jealously that you had things go just as planned….that your crisis of the moment was a drop of water in the scheme of life…that Karma seemed out to get me and leave you unscathed…and now, when really nothing is wrong…..you are trying to throw it all away.
I use to think that we only get the burdens that we can handle. I would tell myself that as I struggled though, that I had these things happen to me because I could take them on, where you never could
Of course I also use to think that it was better to have all the bad stuff happen when I was younger so that I could get my just rewards later in life…and often now, I am grateful for the life I have and content, but somehow losing my best friend still gets chalked up there with the other shitty things. I am definitely not down with it. And again, it reeks with unfair.
It is unfair that YOU get to do this when with all that I have had on my plate I never have. Oh, I have thought about it many time throughout the years. From the early Goth days of my broken heart from Darrin, to losing Max, to David, to the broken and failed marriage to Pat, to being so poor and so broke that I wondered how I could live and feed my child, to my mother dying, almost losing my house, the whole arrested and fired and blackballed deal with Williams, things with Michael…many times I wondered why I even bothered to wake up in the mornings just to have more pain heaped upon me. But I only thought about it, never acted. Never once even attempted..and now I think to myself OMG what right to YOU have to be crazy? You are the blessed sheltered child..and this, this something that CAN be controlled and fixed with time and medication, is going to break you?
And while that might sound like jealousy, it isn’t because I have no wish to die. But I do know at times when I wanted to I would think about those I left behind and one of them was always you. And I knew that killing myself would hurt those people who loved me..and that was not someone I wanted to be. I would imagine the phone call you would get saying I was gone..and how you would feel, helpless, like you should have known, should have done something, and you would be the one who would have to go though my things and know what was essentially me to pass down to my children. Now, I am the one dreading that hone call and I am angry that you are only thinking of your own pain, your own self, and not the ones that will have to live on without you and with the pain you have thrown all over.
When Marked called yesterday, Michael and I were doing yard work. After I talked to Mark, I spoke briefly to Michael and then went back to my raking. As I bent down, I felt physically sick, like I might just throw up right then and there next to the fence. So I yelled at Michael, annoyed either him for not being able to make it better, walked over to neighbors who, too, were not comforting, and just felt at a loss.
I tried to imagine what it would really mean to me if you succeeded and died. Not talking as often, being 100 miles away, would it really matter? I know that in a certain sense, things are not what they have been. I got use to being displaced by Mark a long tome ago. I stopped caring when you would tell me things like going camping in Woodstock and not getting over to see me when I was right next door practically, or going to Newberg to see Matt and Jen, but not me. Not even being in your top 8 on MySpace..even that was a zinger. These things hurt, but I can bury my feelings, try not care..as making issues of stuff is never been my thing. But still, as I imagined you just not being there..yeah, it did matter. It mattered a lot.
Because still, even with time and distance, you have always been the person I have called My Best Friend. No one has ever taken that role away from you. Maybe it is loyalty…that when I was 13 and a nerd, you liked my shoelaces….that when my family was broken to you I was fixed…that you gave me the strength to find who I really was…and even often I think, that if it wasn’t for you back in the bad years, I would have not fought for myself, not fought to stay breathing, that I would have just died, broken and unloved when I was 16. There were times in my life when I had nothing but you to love me who I was..not my family, not a husband, not a child…just you. You were the person who loved me unconditionally. You.
And then, I thought…you are still my home, my touchstone, my collective memory, my past. So often now, I think of our antics, a concert, a past scene, and I can’t remember it fully without your chiming in. My mother is gone, my father is gone, my house is gone..and when I go to Long Island it is to your house I go, my base. Who else knows me like you do? Our stories, our heartaches, our triumphs, our laughs? They are intertwined, woven together, shared…all my thoughts still, even if you are not around. I took off my shoes the other day at work and my feet stank..and I thought of you. Scarlet shows me a Gypsy moth caterpillar and our story comes out.
I am scared now. At times, when feeling morbid, I would think of how my children would know me if, say, I got hit by the proverb able bus tomorrow and ceased to be..and always in my mind, you were the one, like in Beaches, who spent time with my daughter and told her of who I really was. That you would not be afraid of remembering me, of telling the tales of making me human and real. And now I think, will that have to be my job to do for Ruby? Am I the keeper of the memories? Just like I use to fear Cancer and then instead of me, they got my mother…I wonder of this is how the Gods trick you, trick me..they switch the roles about just to keep us guessing.
I think to myself that I just am not ready for more loss into my life. That I have had enough, thank you very much. And then I know that it is not really you that it doing this, for you would not really want to do this to me, to Mark, to Ruby and Arlo..just that you are too deep now in the muck and mire to find a way out. But I know you do not really want this for them for any of us…that you just feel it is too much to handle, beyond your control..and yet is isn’t really. All you have to do right now is WANT to get better, to want to come back, to not sink into the abyss. Keep breathing for another day.
And I know it is tempting. I understand the seduction. I have felt it call to me, but I learned very early on to fear it..to never let it really gain footing. I wish I could get my macheti and hack the tendrils away from you, loosen their hold. But helpless again I am..waiting for phone calls, dreading bad news, scared and crying, imagining what it would be to be the keeper. What can I do to help pick up the pieces.
I would much rather see you lost to madness, I guess, than gone completely. At least then there still is a chance. Yes, you have made mistakes and it has hurt the kids, but they are still young, this could just be a “bad time” and things can become good again, you can come back. Yeah, it kinda sucks not liking the choice that you have made, but at least there is hope. Do you remember when the whole thing with Eric happened and I was so angry? And afterwards you said to me something along the lines of “ Yeah, I am sorry, I was being a real asshole..and if I ever get that way again, just remind me that I was an asshole”?
My dear, you are being a real asshole.
Of course, now I see that as a prequel to this. Post partum depression, and early baby manic phase. I get that. And even this time, I think….wow, you are going to feel so bad when you get out of this…the guilt is going to be terrible and Mark has been so great. But I still think it all forgivable…I know it is not you.
This is not the same you that spent the whole day at the hospital with me during Garin’s surgery keeping me sane and buffering me from Sheeley land. And that was what..not even two years ago. I know this is just not your doing..not really…just some monster who has taken hold.
And I don’t know. I don’t really know what it is like. I have not been there. Oh I have been in so much pain that I could barely breath, that I wanted something to just stop, anything, I have been sick enough that I have shaken for months, and cried myself to sleep for weeks, and gasped for breath, and wanted that bus or cancer to take me. I have not been able to eat for a summer, and drowned myself in work and drink, but no…my brain chemicals have been functioning ok enough on the inside…for me it was always outside stuff that hurt. So I don’t know..so I cannot judge. I can read, I can research, I can listen, I can learn, but I will never really know.
What I do know is how it is to lose your mother. I know what it feels like to have your mother die. I can tell you that yes, as I said, this will royally fuck Ruby and Arlo up. Probably Ruby more than Arlo. Arlo will just perceived it as a rejection on an unconscious base level. Screw up his trust issues, identity to a degree, relationships, probably with women more likely. But Ruby? She is old enough to get it to a degree…old enough to really see the rejection, to get it and understand it. And here is will be different for her as at least my mother had cancer, but still, to this day, it makes me angry that she did not fight harder. In that, she let me down. And I tell you, you have not been fighting that long at all….not really. You are giving up rather quickly. Your children are suppose to be worth fighting for. So they will feel that..they were not worth living for..that they alone did not have that importance to you..and that will effect them.
Ruby will hurt for you every time something new happens..when she has to pick out a prom dress, when she needs an opinion about her hair, when a boy breaks her heart, when she marries, when she finds out she is pregnant, when she worries about anything, when she needs someone to comfort her and understand her and tell her that she is loved and everything will be alright. Every time this happens, throughout her whole life, she will want for you and be angry at you all over again for your not being there. I know this because not one week goes by that I do not wish to be able to call my mother and have her see, hear and just be. Sometimes, even now, 13 years later, dysfunctional or not, I yearn for my mother with a fierceness that overwhelms me.
She will lose her road map to herself, her ability to understand deep secrets about her soul, you will cut out the source of information for her and handicap her. She will doubt her own ability to be a mother, she will worry that she will fail as you did, she will be more quick to doubt her own sanity, she will be shadowed by the same fate happening to her as it did to you. Why do I look for cancer in myself, why do I wonder if I have more that ten years left as my mother didn’t, and why do I have to guess what menopause means to women in my family….you just do not recover ever from losing your mother. This I know.
I know that you, the real Laura ( please stand up), does not want this for her children. As nice as it might be, a few weeks with Auntie Claud in the summer can not, will not, take the place of a flesh and blood real Mom. And I do not want that job. I don’t want to have to get out all the saved notes form 8th grade, and the pictures with half my fuzzy memory, the letters kept from my term in Boston, and keep you alive in spirit to her. How can I explain the toe devil and our earth mother Nina without it seeming like madness?
I do not want to see you as weak. I want to imagine that you have been saving your strength up for this fierce battle for your sanity. That all things were given to you before so that you have the desire and power stored up to take this on and beat it. Because I tell you, I don’t believe that anything is “too much”. I don’t buy that you cannot do this. I don’t get the ideal that this is too much, that it is taking too long, that it’s not worth it. I don’t understand giving up and giving in. I do not believe that some of us are born strong and others weak. Strength is nothing more that doing what we must because we have no choice. Mark has no choice right now but to try and keep you safe from yourself and the children as normalized as possible. I had no choice but to get through everything handed to me. You really have no choice, but to fight this, and get though it. And you will. Just give it time. It will be worth it in the end. But you just have to keep breathing, keep going for another day. I’m sorry, you have no choice. Checking out is not an option. I forbid it.
It has only been really terrible since January. It is June. Six months is nothing in the scheme of life. This could all be chalked up to a Bad year. Just one year…nothing really. A small hump. Now knock it off and get well..at least try. Or I am really gonna be very pissed off at you. You better try harder than this. So its not perfect..nothing ever is. You can get over this as long as you want to. And you should want to…coz what this will do to people…not a good deal. The last funeral I went to was a suicide…one of Michael’s friends..and it was like he had taken all that pain inside him and just allowed it to explode on his whole family..like what was hurt inside him was now just spread all over everyone. It was terrible.
I love you and I miss and I want you back. You can come back. And you will if you try and it is worth trying. I can’t fight for you, but I can be here, egging you on. Waiting. I am good at that now. I can wait for a good long time. But I don’t know how to deal with losing my best friend. And That I do not want to learn.
I know it cannot be easy. But anything worth it is never easy. Somethings you just have to fight for. So fight for you. Fight for your life. Fight for sanity. Fight for your family. Just fight it…don’t give up and don’t give in.
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Strange and Mournful Day..Nov 30th
Nov. 15th, 2006 | 10:34 am
location: home
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera
More details here..check it out!...November 30th..mark your calenders!!
WEAR A RIBBON..support a mom, support yourself, honor your feelings, out of the dark!
More details here..check it out!...November 30th..mark your calenders!!
WEAR A RIBBON..support a mom, support yourself, honor your feelings, out of the dark!
Link | Leave a comment | Add to Memories | Tell a Friend
Something that is NOT getting published, but I like it
Jan. 31st, 2006 | 11:23 pm
mood: 
accomplished
Ever had the horror if losing your child at the store?
You think he is right there next to you, and you get distracted by the sizes annoyingly hidden in the sleeve of a cute top, so you dig a bit because it’s on sale and then you turn around with a quick look over your shoulder expecting to see Jr. still contently playing with Elmo, but instead there is empty space?
The top, sale or not, is completely forgotten and you look everyway and back in fear, calling the child’s name with just a slight edge of panic in your voice, but you don’t hear that reassuring answer back. Then you start to freak, all the bad thoughts begin to run rampant though your brain, your voice still calling, getting louder and shriller. Maybe now someone senses your panic and you have another strange voice calling and looking under racks of clothing. You hear yourself saying “He was right here! I only turned away for a minute” trying to make sense out of the impossible, you lost your child.
It happens so quickly and before you know it, another stranger comes up with child in tow and you run for an embrace, both relieved and angry at him and you and that stupid top. Gratefully, thankfully, you thank the helpers, gather up your child and leave the store, the top forgotten, lectures on staying by Mommy flows from your lips and a great wave of relief runs through your veins though your hands still shake and will for the next hour.
It was terrible wasn’t it? And it all happened, beginning to end, in just a few minutes, but it feels like hours.
I lost my child once. Distracted by things I thought more important, I turned my back and I let him slip away. It took me over sixteen years to find him again and I am still waiting for the reassuring hug as he slowly comes back into my arms almost two years later.
But what is usually a trial of motherhood horror story, something to tease incorrigible children with as they get older and make them feel indebted and maybe grateful for all they have put us though, was actually sanctioned in my case and was considered to be a good thing. I call him lost, but it is more PC now to say he was “loving placed” for he was in a safe so-it-was-assumed and good place, he was with his parents being raised. My son was adopted at 2 days of age. I am that kind of woman who gives away her baby.
Not a drug addict, not a whore, not too much more angst than the normal 19 year old damaged by a dysfunctional “broken” home and never a danger at all to my child’s well being, I was taught to think of myself as “brave’ courageous, so strong, loving, wise, and an angel” for keeping my focus on the distractions of life and things that seemed of great importance to a girl of my age, by my proverbial “cute top”.
The top, I was told, was very important for me, and I would never have another chance to get one like it on sale. My son, on the other hand, would be OK as he was going to a place where they had already completed their shopping and had many, many cute tops to choose from just hanging in their closets. In fact, they had no need to shop anymore and would not be distracted at all and would never take their eyes off my son. Of course, we all know that “cute tops” like opportunities in life, are a dime a dozen and there is always more shopping to be done. Children are the totally opposite and not replaceable, completely unique, and one gets over a missed sale much quicker than a lost child.
For the first ten years or so, I didn’t do more than glance every so often in his general direction and reassure myself that, while there was nothing but empty space where he should be, he was OK. Though I couldn’t see him, and didn’t really have any idea where he might be, he was playing with Elmo, or as time allowed, his bicycle, or Playstation as expected. Besides, I was wise, strong, loving, courageous and an angel. And I had a right to have as many cut tops as the next avid shopper.
Then, one day, I began to really look around. The cute top had lost it’s appeal, sales were boring and simple cotton was more comfortable and easier to wash. I had another boy and another and a girl who I didn’t take my eyes off of, who were suppose to fill that empty space. Their spaces were, instead, next to my first born’s area, they didn’t overlap. The hearty weight of the second, third and fourth circles of life made the empty space completely more obvious in comparison and it became deafening. The panic began to rise in my throat. Someone was missing.
By time I had begun to call out his name out loud, I was found by others who knew that the cute top had no merit, no real value, and was made of cheap itchy fabrics. Trying to rationalize my need to obtain, they called foul in truth and, like the helper’s in the store, I could see in their eyes, the horror that I had lost my son.
Frantic now with worry, panic, unable to believe that, indeed, I let my son slip away while I tried to find the perfect fit of cheaply made ideals for myself, the true horror began to hit me full force. When I had gathered up my strength to really find him, I ran up and down all manners of internet isles, looking under every Google rack in my view, for three days and nights until, I too, could breath that great sign of relief. I had found him. Alive and safe. A few more months later and I heard the reassuring sound of him answering me back.
He called me mom and was happy to be found.
You think he is right there next to you, and you get distracted by the sizes annoyingly hidden in the sleeve of a cute top, so you dig a bit because it’s on sale and then you turn around with a quick look over your shoulder expecting to see Jr. still contently playing with Elmo, but instead there is empty space?
The top, sale or not, is completely forgotten and you look everyway and back in fear, calling the child’s name with just a slight edge of panic in your voice, but you don’t hear that reassuring answer back. Then you start to freak, all the bad thoughts begin to run rampant though your brain, your voice still calling, getting louder and shriller. Maybe now someone senses your panic and you have another strange voice calling and looking under racks of clothing. You hear yourself saying “He was right here! I only turned away for a minute” trying to make sense out of the impossible, you lost your child.
It happens so quickly and before you know it, another stranger comes up with child in tow and you run for an embrace, both relieved and angry at him and you and that stupid top. Gratefully, thankfully, you thank the helpers, gather up your child and leave the store, the top forgotten, lectures on staying by Mommy flows from your lips and a great wave of relief runs through your veins though your hands still shake and will for the next hour.
It was terrible wasn’t it? And it all happened, beginning to end, in just a few minutes, but it feels like hours.
I lost my child once. Distracted by things I thought more important, I turned my back and I let him slip away. It took me over sixteen years to find him again and I am still waiting for the reassuring hug as he slowly comes back into my arms almost two years later.
But what is usually a trial of motherhood horror story, something to tease incorrigible children with as they get older and make them feel indebted and maybe grateful for all they have put us though, was actually sanctioned in my case and was considered to be a good thing. I call him lost, but it is more PC now to say he was “loving placed” for he was in a safe so-it-was-assumed and good place, he was with his parents being raised. My son was adopted at 2 days of age. I am that kind of woman who gives away her baby.
Not a drug addict, not a whore, not too much more angst than the normal 19 year old damaged by a dysfunctional “broken” home and never a danger at all to my child’s well being, I was taught to think of myself as “brave’ courageous, so strong, loving, wise, and an angel” for keeping my focus on the distractions of life and things that seemed of great importance to a girl of my age, by my proverbial “cute top”.
The top, I was told, was very important for me, and I would never have another chance to get one like it on sale. My son, on the other hand, would be OK as he was going to a place where they had already completed their shopping and had many, many cute tops to choose from just hanging in their closets. In fact, they had no need to shop anymore and would not be distracted at all and would never take their eyes off my son. Of course, we all know that “cute tops” like opportunities in life, are a dime a dozen and there is always more shopping to be done. Children are the totally opposite and not replaceable, completely unique, and one gets over a missed sale much quicker than a lost child.
For the first ten years or so, I didn’t do more than glance every so often in his general direction and reassure myself that, while there was nothing but empty space where he should be, he was OK. Though I couldn’t see him, and didn’t really have any idea where he might be, he was playing with Elmo, or as time allowed, his bicycle, or Playstation as expected. Besides, I was wise, strong, loving, courageous and an angel. And I had a right to have as many cut tops as the next avid shopper.
Then, one day, I began to really look around. The cute top had lost it’s appeal, sales were boring and simple cotton was more comfortable and easier to wash. I had another boy and another and a girl who I didn’t take my eyes off of, who were suppose to fill that empty space. Their spaces were, instead, next to my first born’s area, they didn’t overlap. The hearty weight of the second, third and fourth circles of life made the empty space completely more obvious in comparison and it became deafening. The panic began to rise in my throat. Someone was missing.
By time I had begun to call out his name out loud, I was found by others who knew that the cute top had no merit, no real value, and was made of cheap itchy fabrics. Trying to rationalize my need to obtain, they called foul in truth and, like the helper’s in the store, I could see in their eyes, the horror that I had lost my son.
Frantic now with worry, panic, unable to believe that, indeed, I let my son slip away while I tried to find the perfect fit of cheaply made ideals for myself, the true horror began to hit me full force. When I had gathered up my strength to really find him, I ran up and down all manners of internet isles, looking under every Google rack in my view, for three days and nights until, I too, could breath that great sign of relief. I had found him. Alive and safe. A few more months later and I heard the reassuring sound of him answering me back.
He called me mom and was happy to be found.
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musings after the pumpkin patch...
Jan. 7th, 2006 | 10:44 pm
musings after the pumpkin patch...
ORIGINALLY WRITTEN:
Thursday, October 21, 2004
I just got back from Pumpkin picking with my two little ones and a very dear friend.
We had a lovely lunch in a sweet café, even though I told her that I was scared to bring my kids to such a nice place and we really should consider Friendlies instead, she insisted, childless and naive, that it would be fine and true to the laws of nature, I said it would be a disaster and my kids did the opposite and behaved perfectly! I can’t believe we got away with it!
Then we went to a real farm where the pumpkins are still on the vines. A perfect fall day, slightly overcast with a view of the fields and mountains awash with color. We trudged through the fields, over mounds, tripping over vines, stopping to check out sunflowers and different weeds, in search of the perfect pumpkin. Laughing at my young one who was consistently shocked and amazed every time he came across another broken rotten pumpkin, “Look! Nother one boken one!!..and nother one here!!” Then hiking back to the car with our orange treasures in tow.
Once we loaded up from one field, Yella and I sat on the open hatch back of my car and finished our coffee while my monsters ran back and forth to the apple trees picking and eating endless apples. They were amusing. They were cute. They were having a wonderful time. I know these are the days that childhood memories are made of.
All and all a very perfect and lovely fall day.
This is why I hate adoption.
There will be no memories of perfect pumpkin days with my oldest son. Yes, I am sure his parents are great and he has the proper days in his past, and if I am lucky, maybe someday I will get to see the pictures, but never will I feel his cold cheeks against mine after a day in the field. Never will I brush the dirt off his tiny hinee after he loses his footing over a “punkin too big”. Never will I be presented with the gift of a half chewed apple and truly be touched. These moments belong to someone else and my chances of being part are gone, gone, gone.
17 trips to the pumpkin patch
17 handmade Halloween costumes
17 over exited Christmas Eves
17 crack of dawn groggy Christmas mornings
17 Easter egg hunts
17 handmade mothers day gifts
17 birthday parties
17 times to teach to heirloom stuffing recipe for Thanksgiving
6205 kisses good night
678 boo-boos kissed
2,160 bed time stories
2,340 tickle fights
85 trips to the doctor
18,367 hugs
408 nights of interrupted sleep
68 pairs of shoes
12 back to school shopping trips and 12 first days of school
48 celebratory good report card dinners
468 instances of monsters under the bed
555,165 times to say “stop teasing your brother!” *
Did I know what I would really be missing? No, I didn’t then. But as I watched my children playing in the fields today something inside me hurt. I know what I am missing now. You just don’t know what motherhood is like until you live it and by the time I figured it out, I had already given up my first chance.
18, 615 smiles for me……..gone.
ORIGINALLY WRITTEN:
Thursday, October 21, 2004
I just got back from Pumpkin picking with my two little ones and a very dear friend.
We had a lovely lunch in a sweet café, even though I told her that I was scared to bring my kids to such a nice place and we really should consider Friendlies instead, she insisted, childless and naive, that it would be fine and true to the laws of nature, I said it would be a disaster and my kids did the opposite and behaved perfectly! I can’t believe we got away with it!
Then we went to a real farm where the pumpkins are still on the vines. A perfect fall day, slightly overcast with a view of the fields and mountains awash with color. We trudged through the fields, over mounds, tripping over vines, stopping to check out sunflowers and different weeds, in search of the perfect pumpkin. Laughing at my young one who was consistently shocked and amazed every time he came across another broken rotten pumpkin, “Look! Nother one boken one!!..and nother one here!!” Then hiking back to the car with our orange treasures in tow.
Once we loaded up from one field, Yella and I sat on the open hatch back of my car and finished our coffee while my monsters ran back and forth to the apple trees picking and eating endless apples. They were amusing. They were cute. They were having a wonderful time. I know these are the days that childhood memories are made of.
All and all a very perfect and lovely fall day.
This is why I hate adoption.
There will be no memories of perfect pumpkin days with my oldest son. Yes, I am sure his parents are great and he has the proper days in his past, and if I am lucky, maybe someday I will get to see the pictures, but never will I feel his cold cheeks against mine after a day in the field. Never will I brush the dirt off his tiny hinee after he loses his footing over a “punkin too big”. Never will I be presented with the gift of a half chewed apple and truly be touched. These moments belong to someone else and my chances of being part are gone, gone, gone.
17 trips to the pumpkin patch
17 handmade Halloween costumes
17 over exited Christmas Eves
17 crack of dawn groggy Christmas mornings
17 Easter egg hunts
17 handmade mothers day gifts
17 birthday parties
17 times to teach to heirloom stuffing recipe for Thanksgiving
6205 kisses good night
678 boo-boos kissed
2,160 bed time stories
2,340 tickle fights
85 trips to the doctor
18,367 hugs
408 nights of interrupted sleep
68 pairs of shoes
12 back to school shopping trips and 12 first days of school
48 celebratory good report card dinners
468 instances of monsters under the bed
555,165 times to say “stop teasing your brother!” *
Did I know what I would really be missing? No, I didn’t then. But as I watched my children playing in the fields today something inside me hurt. I know what I am missing now. You just don’t know what motherhood is like until you live it and by the time I figured it out, I had already given up my first chance.
18, 615 smiles for me……..gone.