Monday, September 30, 2013

And So It Was With Grey's

Years ago, I stopped watching Grey's Anatomy because I just felt too convicted watching something that was so damn smutty and immoral. Says the girl with the sailor's mouth and more sins than there are stones to throw. Living, breathing dichotomy here. There's a spin-off from that show, Private Practice, that I also wouldn't watch, for the same reason. Somehow, during the final season, I caught an episode that reeled me in. I figured it was a good thing that it ended, so I could have one less guilty pleasure in my life. Then, Brando died in May and I started recording reruns because it was such a stray from my usual fare, that it totally kept my mind off my reality.

In July, I was in Vegas with family, while my girl was in New Orleans with her Auntie and Grandpa. While I was there, I'd watch Private Practice on my iPad, while I was falling asleep each night. It didn't take long before I realized that I was falling asleep crying every night because people kept getting sick and dying. Every episode. I decided to take a little break from the heartache. Enter the Fall TV season. I see a preview for the Grey's Anatomy season premiere and decide to record it, thinking their craziness would distract me from my own.

And, this is how I ended up in bed last Friday night, saying to the television, in between sobs, why is everyone effin dying, only with much more colorful language. That is where my daughter found me when she got home, in bed crying uncontrollably because people were dying...on a tv show. She's going for the remote to quickly put it on anything that doesn't involve people dying and all I can do is keep my head under the covers and try not to cry out loud. Because in their expertly acted reality, my reality will not go the **** away. In the death of one of their own, I cannot escape the death of my own. They don't actually feel anything and all I can feel is pain so real, so piercing, I think that if I just don't look it in the eye, it won't take my life, too. It's just that scary. Not scary for me, but scary because there are other people I love, there are people who love and need me. Today, and maybe for the rest of my life, I think that, just maybe, allowing yourself to think about the worst possible thing, somehow opens the door. So, how do I stop thinking so that the bad things won't see the door cracked open? I don't know. I try...I try hard...and there it is, out of the blue...in a song, a stray thought, a tv show where I didn't expect it.

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Jeremiah

Today was a hard day. There's so much going on and I'm having a hard time finding the will to not feel defeated. I dragged myself to church because I had to serve today and I knew we'd be at least one body short already, so I decided to go, in spite of myself. It's a hard season in my life to be at a church that is going through a season of lots of newborns and tiny children. I love babies, but right now all I see in them is Brandon as a newborn and all of my hopes and dreams for him just gone-forever. When Brandon was a newborn, he made these cute little sounds that we likened to starting his engine. One baby in church today was making similar noises and it was just ripping my heart out, one sound at a time.

I filled out the prayer request form and decided to try and stay to listen to at least a portion of the message, even though it wasn't my pastor doing the sermon. The book of Jeremiah is where we landed. Almost immediately, I was struck at how closely the message resembled my prayer request. Jeremiah had become disillusioned, which is EXACTLY what I have described. No circumstances could turn my faith to unbelief in the Father, but exactly nothing is how I'd envisioned it being in my life... it's much worse. Jeremiah also simultaneously laments misery and lack of hope, while clinging to the hope that the Father gives us, just as I do.

I am no prophet with a book in the Bible, but I am human as was Jeremiah, with human hurts. God heard Jeremiah and I know He has heard me. He, in fact, addressed my very heart, not fifteen minutes after I laid it out. It doesn't make it all better..I ache with the pains of a woman in labor for years, missing my son, but I am not alone. I feel more lonely than you could imagine, because this particular pain is mine and mine alone, but I am never, ever alone.

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Firsts and Lasts



That's a picture of my first tattoo... it might be my last.  It hurt. BAD.  What I'd give to be able to go back in time and have gotten that for the boy while he was alive.  He'd have been so honored, so proud to see his wimpy mom with a tattoo bearing his name.  Maybe then he'd have understood just how special he was, how much he was needed on this earth.   The lettering below his name reads, in Farsi, half of my heart.  There was a time in my life that I swore I'd never have a tattoo, but I can't think of anything more beautiful to have permanently imprinted on my body!

Today I made a nice dinner for my daughter, something that is still really hard for me to do for just the two of us.  Sitting at the dinner table continues to be a real challenge for me because I can't get past Brandon's empty chair.  When we have guests, it helps that his chair isn't empty,  but then I struggle with someone, even if it's me, sitting where my son should be.  How I wish I'd known, the last time he sat there, that it'd be his last so I could've recorded every second, committed every second to memory or something that really awesome moms do, the moms who have every moment of their children's lives preserved somewhere.  It wouldn't make his empty chair hurt less, but at least I'd have it permanently recorded, so I could never forget.
                                                                                                                                                     
This was the girl's first day of school... her last first day of high school, so my last first day, as well.  I'm not a big fan of lasts, especially when I'm not prepared.  Maybe it's a control thing, who knows, but I'm not a big fan of things ending, even when it's on my terms.  Change just hasn't been much of a friend to me, I guess.  Before I know it, we'll be in her last day of college, of being single, living with mom, last birthday in the teens, etc.

 We just celebrated her last birthday in high school. The first birthday celebration without my boy there.  I wanted to look forward to her day and just relish every single second, but the closer we got, the more I thought I wouldn't be able to cope with the day at all.  My husband had to remind me that it was her day, all about her, but all I could think about was how I didn't get to have my son there and how he'd never celebrate a birthday past his teen years.  Celebrating anything seemed like pure torture. We got through it,  though, and we got through it with some smiles and laughter, amazingly.

I never imagined there'd be a last day of being Brando's mom.  Well, that's not entirely true, I feared it would happen, but I didn't want to believe it would happen, could happen. I needed our last day together on this earth to be as I was going home, never him going ahead of me.  May 16th was, unknowingly, my last normal day on this earth, the last day I was the Lisa I used to know.  Now, I'm stuck in a world of firsts that are a living nightmare, every one of them.  New normal continues to suck, with its lack of reference points, no navigation AND no way out, even if I tried to turn around, other than just trudging through it, hoping I don't get my daughter lost, while I'm feeling around in the dark.