Sighing for love

Julie didn't pass the test for sheriff's position. It was like a mini PSAT and she hasn't done any real math problems like those since high school. She'll try again. I almost told her that "when one door closes another one opens" but I caught myself in time. It sounds pretty but I don't believe it anymore. She just missed one too many questions, that's all. But, she'll get it next time with a little more studying.

Julie and Mike have a temporary custody agreement. One less thing to think about for awhile hopefully. But I never plan on anything anymore. Just one day, one hour, at a time. Breathe in, breathe out.

I tried to write something yesterday but I couldn't put it down on paper. I talked to Tony, love hearing his voice. He is in Seattle and very tired from all his travels. Listening to him I can see Mary standing beside him and I get homesick for her. Does that make sense? Maybe he feels the same when he talks to any of us.

For some reason my feelings are more intense when I talk about Mary. They are sitting on the edge of a precipice of love and guilt ready to fall when the wind blows her to me. Sometimes I go tumbling down and sometimes I manage to hold on to tree roots. I hear myself sighing more lately, like I did in April and May. The hearing for her killer is in 10 days and maybe that's what's causing it. Still don't know if I want to see him. Guess I won't know until I get there.

I'm going to try to go to a meeting of the Compassionate Friends this month. "Try" is the word. We'll see.

We have the kids from Wednesday afternoon till Saturday afternoon until the divorce is final. Now we can plan (love that word!!) for some after school activities.

My shoulders and neck ache all the time. I need a massage but I won't get one because I won't enjoy it. So why bother. I can see sharper division between the public me and the broken me. But I have to have that division to keep going. I just wish I could let the broken me explode once in a while. I do a little bit.


From a child to her mother -

When I asked you one day what love is, you told me
love depends on the sighs of your heart. The more you love, the bigger the sigh!

Heart to Heart 2008

(Click on the picture to get a better view)

This is at the last "Heart to Heart" get together for heart transplant recipients of Emory and Egleston around Valentine's Day 2008. Mary went to every one that Danny went to. Danny only went because Mary would go. We all squished into Danny's little truck (mine now), Mary and I sitting on the fold out chair flaps behind Tony and Danny. The first H to H we ever went to there were probably 20 recipients and 25 staff. This time there was probably over 75 and a one man had his heart for over 18 years.

January 2nd this year when they called us to come down to Emory because they had a heart that looked like a good match, they called Mary and Tony's house first. Danny was up there for New Years and he had just gotten back home around midnight. She was SOOOOOOOOOOO excited. Emory called us and Neile told me she had just gotten off the phone with Mary. While Neile was talking to Danny I was gathering the video camera and other stuff thinking that Mary was getting ready too. A few minutes after Danny hung up, the phone rang again. It was Mary and she said, "Weeeeeeelllllll..... did they call you?" I said yes. She said, "Why didn't you call ME?". I told her I thought she already knew. She said, "But, I wanted to hear it from you. I knew you'd be SO excited."

Saying we were all "excited" doesn't quite mean excited in the way it normally does. Glad the wait is over, yes. Glad Danny will get his active life back, yes. But deep down, the knowledge that someone had died to give us this, pretty much puts a BIG damper on the excitement. All the way down to Emory little tears were rolling off my face. Danny put his arm around me because he knew what I was thinking. Unfortunately, the heart was not meant for Danny. Julie called Mary and caught her coming through Helen and told her to turn around.

Now, I only wish we could understand the feeling of giving life to someone else. That would have been the one and only thing in this world that might have made a difference that night. I tried so hard to talk the people in NC into taking something of Mary. Some little bit of her that would remain alive in this horribly dark world. They didn't have the heart (!) to tell me how badly injured she was until much later.

There will always be "if only's" from now on I'm sure. But this will be one of the hardest to completely accept. Danny getting a new heart was the 2nd most important event Mary was waiting for. Getting married was the first.

One more alternative outcome

#15 - Mary gets by the truck by a few seconds but he hits the next car in line behind her. She goes back to help the people in that car and finds them dead. Realizing how close she came to being the one struck she rededicates her life to her family, friends, and the causes she believes in becoming very close to the family in the car that was hit.

If I allow myself a little dreaming I realize that the above could have happened. So, once again, Mary has given her life to spare the lives of others without even knowing it. She might not have willingly done that for strangers (only she would know) but I know she would have for anyone she loved. It's that old philosophical question about would you save a stranger who is drowning knowing you can't swim very well but you are their only chance?

I MISS YOU....

This is a song Julie found that we like.

Just click on the below sentence.

A song for Mary....

Alternate Outcomes

Alternate out comes:

1. Mary lives but is in a vegetative state and eventually donates her organs to many people.
2. Mary lives but is in a coma for years.
3. Mary lives but is brain damaged and has regressed to early childhood.
4. Mary lives but is a quadriplegic for life.
5. Mary lives but is a paraplegic for life.
6. Mary lives but is burned and completely disfigured.
7. Mary lives but has so many internal injuries that she needs a transplant of some kind.
8. Mary lives but has so many injuries that she looses her legs or arms.
9. Mary lives but has so many internal injuries that she needs tubes and bags attached to her for the rest of her life.
10. Mary lives but has such brain damage that she relives the crash over and over and needs psycho therapy for the rest of her life and is unable to make love attachments to those she loved before the crash.
11. Mary lives but has so many internal injuries that she can’t have children.
12. Mary lives but doesn’t remember anything at all before the crash.
13. Mary lives but is in such physical pain from injuries that she doesn’t want to be a burden to her family and disappears into the world.
14. Mary manages to miss the truck and turns around to help the man when his truck crashes.
    

Numbers 2 through 12 could continue to “but transforms her life into something so beautiful she inspires the entire world to be better people." Would this make those outcomes easier to accept?

I only wish number 1 could have happened. Number 13 doesn’t sound like Mary but with mental stress, you never know.

Number 14 sounds like Mary, doesn't it? That's exactly what she would do.

Actually you never know what’s going to happen one second from now.

Writing these hasn’t really helped me because although I would never want Mary to suffer, I surely don’t want her gone. So, what to do?

I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations - one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it - you will regret both. **Soren Kierkegaard**

I love you Mary

As I was reading an email from The Compassionate Friends group about their memory tree they create every Christmas I realized I can't do what they do. I was reading about them memory book they put together listing all the children they've lost and the poems they've written about them. Many struck me as if they had resigned to the fact their child is truly gone. They want to keep their child's memory alive, not keep the child alive. Now, this is hard to explain. I'm not even sure if I can without sounding hurtful and unfeeling. It was like I knew although Mary is not in the same realm with me, she is definitely NOT dead, she is alive and going strong in another realm that is very close by. I don't even like saying the word dead. I will yell off the mountain tops that she was killed by a heartless, thoughtless, !#*&^@% idiot who was driving drunk so maybe someone, just one someone, will stop and think before they drink and drive. But she isn't gone from my universe. And I won't talk about her "passing" or "leaving" because she didn't. The more I read the more this conviction grew. Maybe I haven't gotten to where these people are in their life, or maybe I've gone past them. I don't know. I understand that this group doesn't represent all families that have lost children, just the ones who need the support of others in the same situation. I haven't attended a meeting yet. Maybe I will. I understand what they went through and where they came from, I just don't understand where they are now. Some of them lost their children over 25 years ago and the children are all ages.

I think I'll have to go to one of the meetings to understand them. But I'm slightly afraid if I go I won't be able to hold myself together. And that's what scares me most.

My mind is so confused and feels like one gigantic mud hole. I promise till my last breath, Mary, that I will never let you die. You will be beside me forever, with me in every single thing I do, working or playing, crying or laughing. I cannot live without my WHOLE family and I will not do so. I love you Mary.

Conundrum

So much stuff swirling around in my head I get dizzy. Part of me doesn't want to move past March 30th. Wants the world to stop with me and react the same way I am. Can't see any possibility of good coming out of life anymore. And part of me tries to make every single thing I do, I do for Mary, to honor her life, to keep her going. So, life has to go on if I do that. It's such a conundrum and it's driving me crazy. I do all these things for Julie and the kids because I know Mary would have and would want me to. I would have done them anyway but there's more power behind it because of Mary. She's right there beside me. Holding on to all of us. She's everywhere, with Tony, with her friends, with the rest of us, all the time.

And the next part of me knows I have to go on with things that have nothing to do with her, which is the hardest thing in the world to do. Pick up where I left off with my work, my house painting, my whatever I was doing before. Work is the hardest. Going there feels like nothing ever happened. And I don't like the feeling, I can't accept it, it's very hard to do.

Lastly there are the new things in my life I need to do carry on her legacy. I am only beginning to get a grasp of what I can do and it's pretty overwhelming.

The seminar I attended at Emory is an example of everything being pushed together. I volunteer my time now for both Danny and Mary and I was doing pretty good that day until at a break someone asked me what my bracelet was for. Out came the tears and Mary's program, the hugs from strangers, and the silence of not knowing what to say to me. All of a sudden I was changed from one person of 100 people to the center of attention (albeit a small group) and it was weird. I was transported back to March 31st. Then as instantly as it happened, the seminar started again and I was whisked back to "reality".

I'm in a very confused state right now and I can't figure out how to straighten it out, if I even want to, or whether I should try or not. The only time I don't feel guilty for living my life is when I'm writing or thinking about Mary, or doing something with all her things, or telling people about her. And doing those things stops me from living, I'm just existing.