michellesmom2

[michellesmom2]

This ties in with my post “8 Months”

[michellesmom2]

8 Months

The 15th of this month makes it 8 months since Michelle passed. I was home alone that day. My husband, Mike, has to work in Ohio during the week only coming home on weekends until sometime in June, July, August? The company can't make up their mind. My son and his husband went camping with friends and left that day, so I was alone. That is the emptiest I have ever felt, but I couldn't cry.

I can't explain why this month hurt so bad. It's not a momentous month in our family. There aren't any birthdays or anniversaries in May that make it special. We do, however, always host Memorial Day cookouts with all the ubiquitous things that mark the beginning of Summer. Maybe it's because Sissy liked the cookouts so much. Anyone that wanted to come was welcome and we would have all the usual suspects; aunts, uncles, cousins, best friends, boyfriends, old friends, new friends, anyone and everyone. The best part for Michelle was it was the beginning of "Potato Salad Season". Actually Easter was the official start of PSS, but Memorial Day was the official start of Summer and put the two together and Sissy was in hog heaven.

This year we are having a cookout on Monday like always, but we will also have a cookout on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, because this year we are using Memorial Day weekend to come together as a family and build a memorial for Michelle. We have been planning since her services. We bought a beautiful Red Maple from a living memorial site and it shows you how to add ashes to the roots and soil so she is literally a part of the tree. We are building a sitting are with a swing and some chairs. There will be some sort of firepit, whether hand made or one bought from the hardware store. We used to have a hand made fire pit in the back yard. It was a good 2 to 3 feet deep and we kept it stocked with wood from the trees we had cut down in the front yard. We were out there every night during the summer and sometimes too far into Autumn for our own good. We sat around it as a family, played music thru the wireless speaker and talked smack about each other, told stories and laughed until tears ran down our faces. We don't do that anymore. I don't know if we ever will again.

I'm not going to be there to help with the memorial. I work in healthcare and the infirm wait for no one, so....I think that's why, when I did cry this week, it was harder to stop then before. As her mother I want to be a part of anything that pays tribute to her. Mike said the last thing we will do is plant the tree and it will not happen if I'm not there and I appreciate that, but not being there to help place her things in the patio that will surround the tree is a hard pill to swallow. We are going to put her favorite books, her Fall Out bobble heads, and many other special things that remind us of her interspersed in a gravel walkway leading to and going around the tree in the center. We are going to put solar lights along the path and epoxy over it so it will be preserved for all time.

Thursday night, the 15th, I had a dream about Michelle. It's the same dream I keep having every month. Sissy is inexplicably back! She is whole and healthy and I can hug her, talk with her, and most importantly, I can hear her voice and bask in the sound of her laugher. I am overjoyed! I am ecstatic! I am whole again. My heart is unbroken. Inevitably I awaken and my heart breaks all over again.

When Mike got home Friday I practically tackled him in the hallway. He was carrying something in from the truck, probably laundry, and I batted it out of his hands, my glasses went flying, and I threw myself at him knowing, without a doubt, he would catch me and I began to cry. He carried me to the couch and we cried together.

We planned to spend the weekend with just the two of us. Our son and his husband were gone for the weekend and we would have the house to ourselves. However, the best laid plans of mice and men and all that.

We ended up hosting an impromptu garage sale while our middle son helped Mike clean out the garage. They delivered some large items we had been storing for my cousin to her and sorted the tools and whatnot that had be haphazardly strewn about over the winter.

Great! We are prepared for the holiday, but at the cost of time spent alone together. I feel like I have been putting my grief on hold during the week waiting for Mike to be home so we can grieve together and it never happens. My schedule makes me work every other weekend so right now I really only see and interact with Mike 4 or 5 days a month, only depending on if he can leave early enough on Friday to make the 4 hour drive, arrive before 8 PM, so we can see each other awake before he passes out from exhaustion.

Sunday was a replay of Saturday with the exception that I got called away to track down my cousin whom no one could seem to find. I was told she hadn't been heard from all day, it was now 5:30 PM and the family was frantic. I live closest to her and I am the BFFL so I was dispatched to she if she had run away, been murdered, or was desperate to answer her phone but trapped under something heavy and couldn't reach it. She was mowing her lawn and couldn't hear her phone.

I knew by now Mike was asleep. He has to leave at 2 AM on Mondays so he can been onsite by 7 AM to start work. My cousin asked if I wanted to go and help to calm her mom's fears, since my Auntie is the one that sounded the alarm. She had a stroke and is in rehabilitation to help with her mobility. Sure, why not? I'm always up for a visit to my favorite Auntie. I underestimated how much I would be triggered by something as small as a rehab hospital.

Three weeks before Michelle died she was discharged from regular hospital to a rehab hospital to help regain her strength. She was weak due to being in the hospital for months and she needed physical therapy to help her regain the ability to stand and to walk on her own. We had created a routine for her bedtime. She liked her covers a certain way, she required 7 pillows, exactly 7, to sleep comfortably and only I could place them in the right position. We had been doing this since June and we had it down to a science. She was so tiny in the middle of all those pillows you could only see her nose poking out. I laughed and told her she reminded me of that spider from a viral YouTube video years before. It was a sand spider in it's habitat and it was trying to hide by digging a hole, flattening himself out, and throwing sand over itself. It has a hilarious voice over in a French accent saying, "Ha, ha, ha! I am such a good spider!". I told her she reminded me of that video. I took a picture of her. It was the last picture I took of her alive.

So I am at my Auntie's rehab room and I'm doing ok. I am chatting with her and my cousin and everything is normal, or as normal as it can be. I notice my cousin is tucking her mom in for bedtime. She is arranging her blankets just so, moving things on her bedtable so she can reach them, and then she starting adjusting her pillows. My blood ran cold. I was there in that room with Michelle in the rehab hospital not knowing in 3 short weeks that she would never wake up again. I was there again, but now with the cruelty of hindsight. I stopped breathing. I don't remember starting again. I guess that's why God made it an autonomic response. I held it together until we got back to my cousin's house but I couldn't hold it in any longerH. The pain squeezed my heart so hard I didn't think it would continue to beat. I think I was hyperventilating because I can remember her saying, "Breathe, you have to breathe". I cried harder than I have since she first passed.

Somehow I drove myself home, remembered to text that I had made it home safe, and fell into Mike's arms. He was asleep, but I just needed to be touching him. I woke him up and he asked what was wrong. I told him. I apologized for waking him. He shushed me. He held me and he cried with me. It was exactly what I needed. We slept, cried, and talked on and off until he had to get up at 2 AM. He's in Ohio again. We talk several times a day. He always calls and says goodnight, I love you. My grief is on hold again. I don't want him to worry while he is so far away. I do my best to keep it together. My son and his husband are home from camping. They are keeping an eye on me. I worry them, too. I go back to work the day after tomorrow. It will be another week of numbing myself so I can focus on work. It will be another 10 days until I can be in the same house and be awake at the same time as my husband. He works 1st shift, I work 2nd. I don't know how much longer I can keep doing this.

It boils down to this: I want my daughter back. I don't want to live another day without her. I want to see her smile, not see it only in a photo. I want to hear her laughter, not search for it in the videos on my phone. I want exist in the same place she is. I'm only 56. I have approximately 30 years left. Michelle didn't even make it to 30. She is forever 27. Living 27 years without her is a whole lifetime.

I can't live another lifetime of Potato Salad Seasons without her.

[michellesmom2]

Losing Everything

I lost my beautiful, vibrant, sassy, pain-in-my-ass, means-the-world-to-me, too-much-like-me, just-like-her-Dad daughter on September 15th, 2024. It shouldn't have happened. It shouldn't be like this. Is this even my life now? It can't be. She's at work, right? She's upstairs taking a nap and she'll be down for dinner, right? She's not gone. There is no world in which I could exist if she's not in it.

How am I still breathing? Am I breathing?

Why is the sun shining? Why do I hear birds chirping and children laughing? Don't they know the World has ended? MY WORLD HAS ENDED!!! Why aren't they crying? What do they have to laugh about? Michelle is gone!!!! There is nothing funny anymore. There is nothing to look forward to. Time has stopped for me, but the world spins on.

I ask myself why Her? Why my baby girl? Why not her piece of shit husband that pushed her to that brink? Why isn't he in the ground instead of her? He should be. I want to put him there. I have a gun and a shovel and I sure as fuck won't miss him. I doubt anyone would.

I am numb. I know what day it is because my phone tells me. I have no sense of time or space. She died an hour ago, or yesterday, just last week or maybe its 233 days. I have no idea and I really don't care. Counting the time since she left us is moot. I died that day, too. I move and I breathe, and I walk and talk, but I am just a shell. My soul is with my daughter.

I feel selfish. I have other children that are still here, who love me and need me. I know that. But it's not enough to make me want to stay. I have family and friends that would be hurt if I left, too, but I don't care. Michelle's Dad, the love of my life, would be devastated if I left, just like I would be if he left. I don't care. I want to be with her. I want to hold her hand, see her face, hear her laugh, make her laugh, but I'm still here. I stay only because I believe that suicide is not the answer. It is not natural and I would have to come back to Earth to learn the lessons I had not yet learned in this life. I wouldn't get to see her. It would make seeing her again an even longer journey than the one I'm on now. So here I am, trudging thru my so called life.

I miss her.

I love her. I always will.

I will tell you about her, to keep her memory alive, so I feel alive and I can smile when I remember her.

In memory of you, my love, Michelle.

Love, Mom