Only days after i behan this blog and my world fell apart....
It is true that even me, with my optimistic
streak, does not really believe in fairy tales. I think in some ways it is my
defense mechanism. It is my hope that
somewhere down the road, a reward for all my challenges will be that happiness
I believed I saw in other people. The
optimist believes that if only I am kind to others, give love, take
responsibility, somewhere, sometime, I will reap the reward. But that is an inner thought I keep hidden
from others. I don’t want to appear
greedy because I know in my core that there are so many people worse off than
me. If I really place myself on a
continuum scale, I have suffered little and received much.
But it is true, that the one thing that I want
above all else is for my children to have more than me. I really want them to
feel safer, to feel love, to achieve more.
I haven’t worked out if that means monitory gain. I am 49 years old and my oldest son thinks I
have gone “backwards” in that domain…lol.
He is right I suppose, but as someone who places little value on having
money in the bank, and more on having money to spend, I haven’t decided if I
want my children on my page of a way of thinking or not.
I prayed from the moment my children were in
my stomach for them to be protected in life.
To live, to be healthy, to be loved.
And for me to be able to watch by their sides this come true. It really has been the only part of my fairy
tale I wanted to really come true. As a mother, you want to take away their
pain. You want to protect. When they have challenges that you cannot
remove, you watch and hope with baited breath that they are strong enough
people to emerge on the other side. However, this prayer, in silence to only me
and God for all of those years for fear that in expressing it out loud would in
some way curse it, and me. And so when into the years of my children’s young
childhood when I found myself facing the biggest struggle of my adult life, I
fooled myself for a moment that it in no way really affected my adult children.
But that too is another story. One
wrapped up in this, but for another day.
For today is the day that my worst fear came
to be realized in a form I never expected?
It had never occurred to me that my prayer would not extend to my
grandchildren. It never occurred to me
that we would not raise to the challenge.
The challenge of dealing with imperfection. For only days earlier we had come to discover
that something was not quite right in the development of my precious
granddaughter, the daughter of my first born daughter. The daughter who I knew in my heart to be so
much like me. To think of others, to
have love, to have known struggles, but to want that picket fence as a reward.
And so as we had travelled together in these last few months of discovering
what we might need to do to help my granddaughter thrive in a “not so
perfect”world, I knew that no matter what, we would take her to the top and we
would rise to the challenge.
The day I expected the phone call was
long. I had raced home from work. My daughter was going to call after their
appointment with the pediatrician.
Today we would have some
answers. But although I acknowledged the
fear lodged in my stomach, nothing was to prepare me for the words that my 7
month old, beautiful, precious, granddaughter, the child so desperately wanted,
who had taken so much for my daughter and son-in-law to conceive, was going to
die.
As I heard the words I can remember
consciously masking my facing, becoming stoic so that my daughter who was
delivering the news could not see or hear my heart breaking in two. I knew that the only thing that mattered was
that I was strong for her. And I heard
in her voice the same stoicism, trying to be strong less she fall into a
million shattered pieces. After she
delivered the prognosis, she asked if I knew what that meant. I simply said, “yes”. This was not the time to say anything
else. It was a simple time for “I am
sorry”, “I do not understand”, and to let her know, “no matter what, I am there
for you”, “I love you”.
I remember the pain growing in my chest as we
stayed on the phone. I remember knowing
that as long as I was on the phone I would be able to hold it together. I remember when the call disconnected, the
silence. And then I remembering the deep
roaring coming from the depths of my soul.
The searing guttural voice of pain as I uttered the word, “No”, “No”,
“No”, slowly from the depths. I remember
rocking back and forth, alone on my couch, knowing that I had never, ever felt
this immense grief coming from within. A
grief that I didn’t know if I would recover from.
And it was at that moment that I knew. It was not in the death of my granddaughter
that tore at my soul, it was in that moment I knew that there was nothing that
I could do for my daughter, that I was destined to watch my daughter watch her
only daughter die, to live through the very fear that I had deemed the only
thing I wanted God to protect me from my own daughter would experience. This was the day that I honesty did not know
would bring tomorrow or give me any idea of what tomorrow would look like. This was my beginning into truly the most
amazing, beautiful, sorrowful, painful, wish they weren’t happening, days of my life. This is me…
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