January 17, 2019

January 17, 2019

Dear Anna,

Today was a better day than yesterday.  Yesterday I was really mad and really sad about all of the friends that I felt like I “lost” because of your death.  I’m going to miss my therapy friends and my hospital friends.

And the sun was even shining!  But I had what was probably my worst day in awhile.

I’m glad that I have lived enough life to know that I will get through this, too.  In fact, because of all of the crap that happened in 2014, I know that I will adjust.  I will make new friends.  I will continue friendships with others.  Things will change, but we are resilient people.

I took a page from your book and tried to find things to be thankful for yesterday.  Here’s what I came up with … church and church friends, no migraines, massages, resilient kids, good memories.

Once I figured out why I was so sad, I decided to find ways to fill in some of the holes in my life.  It’s the weekend and daytime holes that are the hardest right now.  So we found some fun things for your siblings to do in the coming weeks and I’m working on building up my repertoire of daytime friends.

We will adjust.  There will be good days and hard days.  But I’ll enjoy the good days for what they are and give myself grace on the bad ones.

Yesterday ended well because we received a pile of cards again along with an awesome package from my cousin, Natalie.  She went back through our blog and found some of our favorite family things to send us.  It was incredibly thoughtful, practical, and meaningful at the end of the day I experienced.

Today was good because I make a batch of waffles to freeze.  I didn’t even tear up when I thought about how much you liked them.  But I still had that thought.

I also finally took down most of the Christmas decorations.  And I had another massage.  And Megan and I are going to a concert tonight.

I really am surrounded by good people.  And I thank God for that.  And I thank you for helping me to develop some of these relationships during the last 11 years so that they can help sustain me.

Jesus loves you and so do we.

Mom

January 16, 2019

January 16, 2019

Dear God,

I’m really pissed off and angry today, not because I miss Anna (which I still do every day), but because I have finally realized that Anna’s visitation and funeral were probably the last times I was able to see many of my friends.  I’m in the “angry” stage of the grief process, but today I’m grieving the holes in my life instead of Anna.

This is NOT fair.  WHY did this have to happen to ME?  I’m NOT being selfish.  This is MY life, too.  In fact, this was probably more MY life that got screwed up than Anna’s.

I LIKED my life before Anna had cancer.  I LIKED my life this past fall.  Why does MY life always have to change?!?!

In 2014, I missed my friends.  It took a long time to reshape some of those friendships.  But, I made new friends.  Every time Anna was transferred from one area to another, I had to reshape those friendships yet again.

Then, after Anna was discharged, I missed my hospital friends.  Sure, Anna and I went back every month for her chemo visits and then again for visits, but it wasn’t the same.  Those friends slowly faded from my life, too.

So I made new friends.  Leah, Dave, Shelley, nurse Jaime.  They were good friends, with whom we had a history.  But, eventually, they left, too.  I missed them.

But then I made new friends.  Therapy friends, doctor specialist friends, special education friends.  The school friendships were pretty awesome.  These were all my kinds of people … friendly, intelligent, wanting to help others.

I LIKED going to CI.  Anna’s therapists were my friends, too.

And slowly, slowly I found a new rhythm to the friendships I had prior to Anna’s cancer.  My church friendships definitely underwent some changes, but some of them became deeper because of Anna’s cancer.  I was able to reconnect with McFarland people and enjoyed the relationships that were developing.

Now not only is Anna gone, but many of those friendships are gone for good, too.  Everyone else’s life moved on.  The holes in their schedules filled in fast, but mine haven’t.  I’m not READY to enter another sphere to make new friends yet.  I have too much crap to deal with for me.  But it’s lonely.

I KNOW that I will adjust in time, but this week it has really sunk in that all of the “we should get together sometime” talk was just that … talk.  Other people have busy lives and they don’t want to carve out a new space just to make me feel better.

This sucks.  I’m tired of my life being screwed up.  I don’t want to put for the effort that it takes to start over.

Me.

January 8, 2019

January 8, 2019

Dearest Anna,

Today was supposed to be your MRI day.  How you looked forward to these days!  You and I always were able to spend some time together just the two of us while we waited for the nurses and doctors to have everything set.  Your favorite part was “taking a three hour nap”.

Once upon a time, anesthesia did not agree with you.  But in the last few years, we had found just the right cocktail of medications to ease your way into and out of anesthesia.  When I would be called back to your side, we would start by listening to quiet, calming music.  Then, I knew you were coming back to yourself when you asked for different music.  I also knew when our time in the Campground was coming to an end because you would start asking to play games again.

You were always such a good sport about the MRI days.  You never complained about having to wear a diaper; the IVs didn’t bother you; and you thoroughly enjoyed the special time with me.

I don’t know what the doctors will ever say about your cause of death, but I believe in my heart that something would have shown up on this MRI.  I was so afraid of having to make any more hard decisions regarding your body.  If the scans had shown a secondary cancer, which I think they would have, you and Dad and I would have had to decide how it would be treated.

I didn’t want to go through that again; I didn’t want YOU to have to go through that again.  Although we would have done whatever was necessary, it would have been much harder than it was the first time.  It would have been harder because we would have known more about what we were doing to your body, your mind, and our family.  I believe that we were all spared from having to make any of those decisions.

But I miss our MRI days.  I enjoyed them, too.  The older you became, the fewer opportunities we had to hang out together, just the two of us.

Jesus loves you and so do we.

Mom

A different time.

And now for something entirely different.

Last year I did a lot of writing.  Letters.  Some sent to others.  Some kept for me.  Journal entries.  Random thoughts.  A family journal.

Most of these writings I kept private.  I was not ready to share some of my deepest thoughts and fears with others outside of my family, making myself vulnerable to the world.

But, with the different time we live in now, I thought these writings might offer a nice change of pace for reading material.  As I started rereading some of them in preparation for posting them, I found the different topics a refreshing change from the fast-paced, fear-inducing words that are prevalent now.

Many of these words were written a year or more ago.  I am farther along in my personal journey than I was at the time the words were written.  And yet, writing them down at the time helped.

What I will post in the coming days and weeks are not all-inclusive of my writings from last year.  Some things will remain private, most notably anything regarding Matt and the kids.  The choice to make personal writings public is an individual choice.  I will not take that choice away from them.

But my choice right now is to share some of my personal journey in the hopes that it helps someone else.