Category Archives: grief

On with the new…

Posted on March 10, 2010 | Leave a comment

Three years ago today one of my closest and dearest friends, the man I termed my life partner for purposes of the bar exam, drowned in his apartment swimming pool.

Today three of his friends, three people deeply affected by his death, joined forces to build a successful business.

I can’t honestly say that we three would have been seated around a table today negotiating the terms for the merger of our fledgling firm with their established one if he hadn’t died three years ago. I can’t say our law school connection would have grown into the bond we have now without that shared loss.

So today, amidst a few tears and the shadow of sorrow, I toasted the future and realized that a decade from now this day will be as synonymous with our success and the brightness of our future as it has been for our shared sorrow over the loss of a comerade in arms.

To the future… and its roots in the past.

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Posted in grief, Law

All Hallows…

Posted on October 31, 2009 | Leave a comment

Halloween, the time when the veil between the land of the living and the land of dead is at it’s thinnest. A time when we celebrate life by remembering death. While others carve pumpkins and stockpile candy I feel the rising of a deep well of sorrow. My ghosts aren’t scissor-handed or covered in gore but their power to wound seems inescapable. I am haunted by those who have left me behind. Tonight I sit, barely able to see the screen through half swallowed tears and I think about them. I miss them.

They say it is better to have loved and loss than to never have loved at all but I am fairly certain they were drunk when they said it. Only someone anesthetized by alcohol could fully mean that.

It’s true that I would never give back the precious time I had with these people. I cherish my memories. I just don’t think it’s entirely worth the trade offs. I am not sure getting hit by the knowledge that they are forever frozen behind me on the path while I soldier on is such a clear plus over not knowing their love.

Maybe it would be better to say Love is beautiful and magical, Death sucks forever, sadly they sometimes come together.

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Posted in grief

Sexcentennial… and Scylla bares it all.

Posted on May 19, 2009 | 13 Comments

This should really be a racier post than it’s going to be with a name like that but I couldn’t resist the double entendre.

It’s my 600th blog post. I have been here since 2006, talking about life, law, and motherhood 600 separate times. I thought all week about what I was going to do to commemorate this occasion. I thought about a retrospective, I thought about a give-a-way, but my heart is not light and airy, and it would have to be for either of those posts. So despite the fact that the internet is forever, what I plan to giveaway today is way too much information. (Aren’t you lucky? I promise none of it involves my uterus so if you are male you can safely stick around.)

Many of you who know me outside of this little space of internet real estate already know what is going on, those of you who read my facebook page may have seen some cryptic messages about bad tasting food and oddly fast weight loss. Most of you don’t know because my husband and I are paranoid, and we don’t tend to share overly personal stories online. However, I am not having an easy time managing this one, so I am going to share it now, and hope that doing so will help me carry it with me. Besides, the insurance companies have access to this information, as do future employers, through other, more direct routes.

I was recently diagnosed with Epilepsy.

It was very out of the blue for me, as I have never had a petit mal or grand mal seizure, and had only begun seeing a neurologist because my left thumb started dancing to its own drummer upon occassion and my GP was afraid I might have MS or something. After a few months my left thumb dance became a left hand dance, then a two hand dance, and my neurologist took a look at the rapid progression and two odd little sleep deprivation EEGs and announced a potential diagnosis. “Focul seizures” and Epilepsy.

(I say potential because without the petit and grand mal seizures a full diagnosis of Epilepsy takes years of abnormal EEGs. She has placed me at about an 80% chance of having Epilepsy.)

I learned that Epilepsy can show up at any point in a person’s life, and that is not a childhood disorder, as I had always thought. I learned that it has a whole range of different levels of severity. I learned that I would have to be treated for it, because while I don’t have seizures that effect my consciousness, and I never have, I will likely start having them at some point in the future if I don’t start treating it now. Apparently my focul seizures, beginning in my thumb, marched into my hand because that is what this form of Epilepsy does. It marches from one small focal location throughout your body until you begin to suffer the more “traditional” symptoms of Epilepsy.

So, I went in to see a doctor because my left thumb twitched oddly from time to time and I left with a lifetime supply of anti-seizure medication.

Well, there are silver linings. I am spending a lot of time looking at the silver linings these days, because there are some thick clouds gathering on my horizons right now and as I scramble for my umbrella, I am looking toward a sunnier tomorrow for all I am worth.

To begin with, the medication I am on is the leading treatment for migraines. I have not suffered a migraine since being placed on this medication. This pleases me, a twenty-two year sufferer of migraines, greatly. So greatly that I have decided to give this medication a “college try”, despite the other side effects, just to see if I can adjust to it and be migraine free for the first time since I was twelve.

I don’t have a brain tumor. Apparently, the other possible cause of a randomly twitching thumb is a brain tumor. I am happy about this as well.

I can drive. I didn’t for the first two weeks while I waited to see what the medicine did to me, because I didn’t want to endanger myself, my children, and others, but it doesn’t interfere with my ability to drive. Yay for being able to drive.

I am now a really, really, really, really, really cheap date. Really. One drink, and I am basically a step away from drunk. Yay for saving money on alcohol in these harsh economic times.

I have lost fifteen pounds since starting the medication. It’s nearly swimsuit season. I need a smaller swimsuit.

Now, for the things that I am not happy about or that I am really freaked out and scared about.

In clinical studies the medication I am on caused Anorexia in a scary percentage of the adults who took it for Epilepsy. That’s right, not weight loss, fucking Anorexia. So now, instead of just freaking out about having hands that suddenly curl in on themselves and little and begin to dance to their own tune from time to time, twitch twitch, I now have to watch carefully for symptoms of anorexia. I have to set an alarm for myself to remind myself to eat a minimum of three times a day, and ask my friends and family to push food on me. I have lost fifteen pounds already and have been on the medication for less than a month. (Great in theory, freaky in reality.) For example, I got really involved in a case the other day, and Lee came home from work to find the kids devouring a box of saltines and a jar of peanut butter. Monkey had gotten them some dinner on her own, because every time she came in to the office to ask me to feed them, I told her it would be another minute.

I am never hungry. I don’t ever want to eat. Nothing sounds appetizing to me. I have no physical indications that food should enter my body.

In addition, the medication changes the way my body processes carbon, which makes everything I eat taste different, kind of like it was dipped in melted pennies. This is especially true with sweets and fruit. I can’t stand to eat sugar. Grapes and plums are the only fruit I can tolerate.

When I get stressed out, my lower eyelids and upper lip flutter. It’s barely detectable to anyone else, but I can feel it and it drives me insane. The only way I can stop it, is to lie down and breathe deeply for a few minutes, because it’s a stress reaction and freaking out makes it worse. It is so obvious to me that I am positive that everyone else can see it, but I have looked in the mirror, and unless you are standing two inches from my face and looking for it, you can’t.

Parathesia. My hands and feet get numb and begin to feel like that moment right before your limbs regain sensation when they have “fallen asleep”. It’s really uncomfortable and often hurts. Unfortunately for me, it’s not a circulation thing, it’s a way the medication fucks with my brain chemistry, so rubbing them does nothing. This will sometimes last all day.

Sometimes at night I have intense visual trails. This makes me nervous about driving at night, so for the time being I have chosen not to. It also makes me sick to my stomach. It also has tricked me into thinking someone else is in the room, because I will see a “trial” of my own body out of the corner of my eye and scare myself silly.

Lee and I were talking about having a third baby. We really want one.  The medication I am on will cause birth defects. If I get off the medication, the focal seizures will likely continue their march onto other parts of my body. So we basically have to choose between the risk of making my Epilepsy worse or not having another baby. Tears were shed, many, many tears, when we figured this one out. I am sure they will be shed again. So far, this is the very worst part of the diagnosis.

The sucky, whiney part of all this is that I can’t eat any fucking chocolate to cheer myself up because it basically all tastes like carob. Seriously, it all tastes like badly made carob. Badly made carob dipped in melted pennies. I would push old people down stairs for a good tasting brownie right now.

So, Happy Blogoversary, thanks for coming, please help yourself to a slice of carob cake before you go…

I think the really morbid part of this diagnosis is that I have only known one epileptic in my life, and that was Nick. He died a little over two years ago. So some strange little part of my melodramtic brain is freaking out over here, yelling things like “You couldn’t have left me your fucking Crim law notes huh, or your outlines for Property or Torts? It had to be your epilepsy?” Well, it’s yelling that in between bouts of barely controlled crying.

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Posted in grief, health

Sucker punched.

Posted on September 7, 2008 | Leave a comment

Eight.

Eight little messages represent all that remains of his voice.

I came across them when I was looking through my gmail for some old school contacts.

The memory of him is softening at the edges, melding with other memories. No one wants to talk about him, so it gets harder to keep the picture of him clear. I have a handful of photographs, a sweatshirt, the pillow we chose for the bar exam, and 8 emails.

Well, and the notes he took for me in Bar Prep class, which probably makes me the only lawyer who still has all her Bar Prep materials sitting on her bookshelf.

Damn.

Death. The gift that keeps on sucking.

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Posted in grief

I don’t want anyone else…

Posted on May 21, 2008 | 2 Comments

My husband has been feeling sad lately, as he has his own blanket of grief that falls over him from time to time. I am doing my best to let him grieve in his own way, while still letting him know I am here, I love him, and he is not alone.

So, with that in mind:

Honey, I know you haven’t seen Juno, and I know a song from a movie about a pregnant teenager may seem an odd dedication, but I really can’t see what anyone can see in anyone else, but you. (This sentence will make more sense in a minute and fifty-nine seconds. Trust me.)

So here it is.

I love you.

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Posted in grief

Haunted

Posted on May 1, 2008 | 11 Comments

Have you ever noticed that the signs of depression closely resemble the signs of grief? Have you ever considered that maybe the desire to medicate that feeling away is one that should be ignored from time to time? That upping your body’s feel good vibes isn’t necessarily fully acknowledging your emotional reaction to a traumatic event?

We (Americans) are so messed up about the grieving process, relegating it to a ceremony or two, a few weeks of sorrow, maybe some drunkeness, and then expecting life to continue pretty much as usual. If you look at the ways we deal with grief in our popular media, it’s pretty clear we are not supposed to wallow in it, feel it for the long haul, or even spend much time trying to get over it. We portray ourselves coming across a piece of memorabilia and pausing to gaze at it, preferably in front of a window at twilight with the light filtering onto our saddened faces, while a single tear sneaks past our stoic guise and creeps slowly down our cheek. Alternatively, we drop to our knees, loudly scream “Nooooooo!” in complete anguish, and then run off to exact revenge and overcome the pain with a new life, usually filled with lots of money.

If anyone evidences anything beyond a well mannered grief, we begin trotting out the meds and telling them how depressed they are. I am guilty of that sin myself, telling my mother she might want to take something to help her when she was still clearly grieving her parents death years later. Mom, I apologize. I simply didn’t get it.

I get it now because I am grieving. I lost an important and essential person, one who I spoke with every day, and who I planned on working with for decades to come. A friend to me, my husband, and my children. A man who I could call for professional advice, personal advice, or simply to share some of my geekier law moments with. In the place of him, I have grief. I acknowledge it in the morning, when I wake up and gently remind myself that he is still in fact gone. It sneaks out after the children have been tucked in at night, and I whisper to it, telling it that I know it’s still there, and yes, it can come and sit with me a while.

I have been haunted by memory and grief since his death.

See, Nick was one of those people who sidle into your life, linger for a little while in the ‘cool person to hang with’ zone, and then suddenly become crucial elements of your life. His time in my life, relative to my age, was fairly short, but he had impact. He changed me.

When he died, my heart broke. There was a resounding CRACK from deep within my chest and I can visualize the deep, red, dark chasm that now resides in the place of his existence. I can feel the emptiness in that one spot. The rest of my heart feels fine, it revels in Otter snuggles and Monkey stories, it rejoices in my family, my friends, my work. It gets pumped up to industrial music and thrills when I drive too fast with the windows down. My heart loves and beats as it did before, just not in that one empty spot.

Why was he so crucial? Sadly, the reason was something I didn’t fully understand, until it was gone. I loved him when he was alive, and I thrilled in our friendship, but I didn’t know exactly what made him so special until a few months after his death. You see, Nick was a believer, he was the ultimate cheerleader, a constant morale boosting inspiration. There simply wasn’t anything I couldn’t do in his opinion. Every idea I had, every crazy notion I spewed from my mouth was received with optimism. He was like that with everyone. He simply believed in people. He had endless capacity to cheer them on.

He also loved me for exactly who I am. He knew I could be flaky, selfish, and stubborn, that I love to argue with anyone and about anything. He emboldened me, championed my true self. With him I could simply let go and be thrilled with learning something amazingly hard. We gorged on knowledge together. I never had to apologize for thinking endlessly about the law, trying to find it in every conversation, every experience, because he was doing the same thing.

We called each other every time we saw a sign that a lawyer had been at work. The highway sign by the correctional facility that read “Do not pick up hitch hikers”, the street sign in Jersey that read “Bridge freezes before road surface”, the “extremely hot beverage” warnings on to go mugs. Every time we saw something, we called, or sent a text message, sharing the inside joke. Every time I see something now, I still want to call him, or send him a message.

So I still grieve, fourteen months later, for the person who used to loom so large in my life. Frankly, I don’t know if I will every stop feeling that empty place in my heart. I am haunted by the little traditions we created, by the support I am missing, and by the unconditional love that came from such an unexpected source.

It turns out there are people you simply can’t replace. He walked into my life, created this Nick shaped space in my heart, and no one else fits in the hole he left behind. I am just going to have to get used to it being empty.

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Posted in grief

AFGO

Posted on August 26, 2007 | 5 Comments

Sometimes life kicks you in the teeth. Then it smacks you on the head, thwacks you in the bum, and punches you in the gut.
I know, I know, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” (Unless, as Lee adamantly puts it, it F&*%ing cripples you.)
Well I would like a little less strength of character, and while you are at it, fewer character strengthening opportunities. At least for a little while.
Why am I ranting about life being evil and cruel? Let me tell you!
The last time we came to Denver it was on the heels of the death of my close friend, and the near death of Lee’s mother.
This time, it was for a happy visit and a wedding. Oh, and the near death of Lee’s mother.

Yes, Mom is back in the hospital, this time in the burn unit at University, having been pulled from a fire in her apartment. (Yes, she is the woman who was in the apartment fire at the senior facility that has been all over the news today.) She is not well. We will not know if she will pull through. The doctors say we should know more about her chances in the next 72 hours. She has burns on 30% of her body. Her quality of life will be incredibly diminished if she survives this. She will likely experience chronic pain. We will go see her tomorrow, we couldn’t face it before going to the wedding today.

We don’t know what happened. There are rumors being bandied about that the fire was started by a cigarette, but she was an avid anti-smoker who suffered from COPD. I had seen her earlier in the week, and as an ex-smoker myself, I can tell you there was no trace of the smell of cigarette smoke on her during our visit. I just can’t see her picking up the habit now. So really, who knows how the fire started. I hope we can get some answers from the Fire Marshal.

It’s just so sad. I am so sad for my husband, and for his mother, and for the people who were hurt trying to help her. I am so confused as to what happened, and what will happen now. I am worried about her. I am worried about him.

So I find myself, once again, facing tough choices and hard emotions. As my dearly departed godmother would say: It’s an AFGO. (Another F&%$ing growth opportunity.)
Personally, I feel my friends and family have had enough of them this year.

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Posted in grief

Tagged

Going under…

Posted on August 13, 2007 | 4 Comments

Grief is such a very hard emotion for me. As a young adult I was always the happy, chipper one. I always had the quick lines and comebacks, and the cheerful silver lining comments to hand out. Any major grieving I did was done alone, in my room, door shut, loud music playing, and my face crammed into a pillow to muffle the sounds of crying.

As I got older, there were times when I would grieve in front of others, but it is still a hugely private thing for me, and it is still hard. I guess I expect to be able to pick myself up and move on with life whenever it demands, sans grief.

This time it is not working out that way.

Today and yesterday I was surrounded by loving, amazing friends and family. I am so incredibly blessed to be cared for by so many intelligent, funny, and neat people. I loved being able to see everyone, and being able to talk to everyone. I have scheduled time to see my family in smaller groups, have plenty of time left for my friends, and am overwhelmed by the love I have available in my life.

Yet here I am, at high tide, thinking about Nick and how much I miss him. It’s as though my grief is like the ocean, the tide of sorrow will ebb long enough for me to really enjoy myself, long enough to feel almost normal, and then will come back in, submerging me in it’s waves, wiping out the footprints I left during the day.

I know it’s only been five months since he died, and that my time since then has been full of new baby, moving, and family life. I know that I am still flush with hormones, that these hormones are probably enhancing or intensifying my emotions. I know I haven’t given myself the time needed to grieve fully, and recover. It’s just I am not sure I can ever grieve fully and recover. I feel as though there will always be this well of sadness waiting to wash over me in my quiet moments.

Today, at my mother’s birthday party, I was speaking with my cousins about Otter’s tendency to lie in his crib, point up at a spot in the ceiling, and talk and smile at it. They said their kids had always done the same thing, and they had always figured the babies were talking to angels or fairies only they could see. Suddenly I thought of Nick. Is Otter talking to Nick when he coos at the spot in the ceiling? Is my friend introducing himself to the baby he was so excited to meet? Is he out there, watching over me and my family in death, as he was so apt to do in life?

It was then that the waves came in, washing the now familiar feeling of sorrow over me, settling into my bones. So it was that I sat, surrounded by so many people who love me, thinking about the one I will never see again.

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Posted in grief

Tagged

The third person

Posted on July 18, 2007 | 1 Comment

I believe I have hit upon the reason mom’s refer to themselves in the third person. For example:
“Mommy is busy right now honey, please wait until I am done.”
“No honey, Mommy can’t turn the t.v. up right now, Mommy is in the shower.”
“Mommy is still in the shower honey, I can’t get to the remote right now! Please wait until I am out of the shower!!”

It is in part do to the interaction with the infant, but I think it is really because mommies have three personalities, therefore Mommy is personality number three, the third person.

My first person is a young woman who loves to go dancing, stay up until dawn, smoke cigarettes and toss back one too many tequila shots. Sadly, she was put into a coma about 6 years and 9 months ago, so the chances of anyone seeing her again are slim. However, she occasionally invades my consciousness with a sweet memory and the smell of freedom, often when I am driving in the rain and turn the music up a little louder than I should.

My second person is a serious lawyer ready and able to save the world. She is dedicated, tireless, and armed with the tools needed to wreak havoc on opposing council. She wears sexy yet serious business suits and sensible heels. She is witty at cocktail parties and political functions, and still amazes her husband with her intellectual prowess and social capabilities.

My third person is a mom. She is always there for tears, problem solving, lunch making, real and imagined insults, boo boo kisses, and upset tummies. She cleans the house, buys the groceries, prepares the food. She showers at night because she is usually showered in baby spit up several times during the day. She is a napkin, a washcloth, and more. She doesn’t sleep, hasn’t worn make-up in months, and lost her ability to put together a decent outfit ages ago. She is an expert in getting smiles and giggles, diffusing kiddo stress and consternation, and removing stains from laundry. She can change a really messy diaper in under three minutes with only three or four wipes.

However, she is the hardest personality to acknowledge and accept. She is much more disheveled than the other two parts of me, much more emotional, and seemingly less capable, though really, she is just dealing with more. After all, how often does a lawyer have to handle complex billing negotiations with a screaming baby vomiting on their suit? How many young and carefree women have to schlep children through the grocery store?

Anyway, the reason I think I refer to this third personality in third person is simple, it places distance between the sleepless, pale, disheveled mad woman in the mirror and myself. After all, carefree woman and slick lawyer are rarely interrupted in the shower by anyone for any reason, much less a six year old needing help with the television.

I really am still the young carefree woman and the slick lawyer. They are just currently hidden behind a river of baby spit up and burp cloths. Until I can see them again, or at least small parts of them, I will likely still continue to refer to the rest of me, that tired, spit up covered woman, in the third person.

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Posted in frustration, grief, Motherhood, Motherhood/body image, Stress

Alien refuses to leave mothership…

Posted on March 26, 2007 | 3 Comments

Still no baby here, though his family is certainly enjoying the alien moments created by his wiggles. He loves to give me crooked belly, and alien belly, and stick his foot out, etc. I can only be pregnant for so long before he gets here, so I am trying to be mellow about it all.

This weekend I was teasing Monkey by telling her that chocolate milk came from dark brown and light brown spotted cows from Wisconsin. She did not believe me and used the following phrase to create a majority over her father and I: “All of my stuffies and toys that have two eyes agree with me, so I win.”

What could we say against that? It was a fairly compelling argument.

Today I went to the outlet mall with Ellen and Tiff and spent an obscene amount of money on a new summer wardrobe for a certain tall beauty whose most recent growth spurt rendered her current clothing stockpile virtually useless. She was appreciative. Oddly, while she is hugely independent on everything else, she is fine with me picking out her clothes. I guess they simply don’t matter they much to her, or I have really good taste. I will go with the latter.

She and I both had a hard time with Nick’s death today, I spent the early morning hours awake again, pacing the house and trying to stop dreaming about him. No nightmares this time, just dreams of the time we spent together before he died. Sadly, they wake me up as much as the nightmares do, since even in my sleep I seem to realize something is wrong and that realization pulls me from rest. I am becoming very friendly with the hours between 2 and 5 am.

Monkey spent the last half hour of her school day in tears, crying about how much she misses him. Unfortunately, she had a substitute, and she really didn’t know what to do. I explained the situation again when I got to school and then made hot cocoa when we got home and we snuggled a little. Still, it is hard to explain this to her, because at 31 I don’t know when I will begin to feel normal again, so how can I set expectations for my 5 year old?

I still feel like some kind of friendship amputee, I can still feel my friend, I can hear him, and I keep waiting for him to call me. He is never far from my thoughts, and it is very hard to get through a whole day without crying, or really wanting to, at least once. I haven’t slept well in days. So how do I explain to Monkey that missing him is okay, feeling sad is okay, but being happy and forgetting about him is okay too? That she shouldn’t be completely morose about his death? She doesn’t have to remember him all the time in order to mourn him?

Hard conversations at our house lately. Tonight she asked if Nick was a ghost, I told her I didn’t know. She said “I hope he is, because I really want to see him again.” I suggested she talk to him, and told her some people believe people can hear us after they have passed away. She is currently in her room talking away, shedding some tears and hopefully learning how to cope. She is too small and too young to have to cope with this. He was a wonderful friend to her, I wish she had not lost him so early. Really big feelings are very scary and hard to deal with when one is so small.

Of course, this is hard to deal with even when one is big, so I can only try my best to answer her questions honestly, and be open to talking about him. That is the hardest part, whenever I seem to be having a day when he is not constantly on my mind, she brings him up, and there I am again, feeling like I could almost touch him, or hear him, and having to remember he is gone.

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Posted in grief, Monkey, parenting, pregnancy