Wintersong, Again..

I posted this last year and just wanted to post it again.

So far, this Christmas has been easier in the grief department.  At the same time Nathan is very close to my heart at this time of year.

Siblings

A picture came home from preschool of Lauren and I thought she really looks a lot like a picture of Nathan we have (he was 6).

First Violin Recital

I have mentioned before that Lauren is taking violin lessons.  she had her first recital on Saturday and did very well!  A Video is below.

I also got to play with a few other parents and some older students which was a lot of fun.

Here's a far cuter picture of me playing the cello when I was Lauren's age.

And a few more picture of Lauren

Healthy Heart

Three years ago, a few months after Nathan died Lauren had her two year old checkup.  Her doctor referred her to the pediatric cardiologist because she had a very loud murmur.  An echocardiogram revealed  that it was a "functional murmur".  Today she went back for a recheck and her murmur is much quieter and everything looks good.  That was a relief.

Bringing her in, however, had its own triggers.  I remembered the day Nathan fainted after chemo and I had to bring him in there for a stat echo.  I remembered bringing in Julia for an echo that finally helped prove she did have Kawasaki Disease.  I remembered a conversation I had with a just-turned-two year old Lauren the last time we were there in the parking lot.  She saw the hospital and immediately associated it with Nathan.

Also, I had to fill this out:

November Pictures

Yes - I am a slacker.  I have bunches of posts in my head.  Hopefully a real post will happen soon.

Meanwhile...pictures.

Holidays

Andy, Max's Dad, left a comment in which the end said:

"Hope you guys are doing OK with the holidays approaching. We need an angel parent party or something like that, I think (weird, I know, but comforting too) "

Andy, you are so right and the thing is, no one else can understand.  It is impossible for others to understand what we angel parents go through day to day, and even more so with the holidays.  I recently had a friend try to ask me (in full love and the spirit of trying to understand) why Christmas is so hard.  I tried to explain, but there is no explaining.  All I could say was "how would you feel if one of your kids was not there on Christmas?".   That doesn't work though and I never want any of my friends to be in my place, that is for sure!  I can socialize with those I am close to for Christmas Eve and Christmas but we have had invites over the years to join good friends PLUS their relatives or other friends and I just cannot.  I cannot because I will have to put on the fake face for these people I do not know well.  I will feel like I have to push in all my grief and the truth is, I do that too much anyway.  I don't want to have to do that on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.

I know the people who love me are waiting for me to get beyond it or something like.  Things will change eventually, I think.  When my children are no longer small, the sting of Christmas morning might be less.  I don't know, just guessing.  It isn't easier this year.  Nathan would be 10.  It is just as hard as if he would be 7.  It is not easier this year just because another year has gone by.  I am USED to not having him with us for Christmas but it hurts JUST THE SAME.

This DOES NOT MEAN I have no joy and happiness at Christmas.  This is the other thing I think people don't understand.  I have ALL the emotions.  Some of them are SAD though, which is different than that of my friends.  I was told recently I have to get to a place where I can have joy too, but she assumed wrong.  I have joy AND I have pain.

I would love to attend an angel parent Christmas party.  Alas, we are too spread out.  So, for now, and until I feel differently, which may be never, I don't intend to force myself to put aside my feelings of grief at the holidays.

Lauren is Five!

I can't believe my baby is five..here is the proof!

October 2010 Pictures

Halloween 2010

I have three posts in drafts - two are depressing.  I think I will do a halloween retrospective post instead.

First a few from my childhood:

Bullwinkle!

1987

And then the kids....

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

Carol

Partied out

Reader

Julia is has a voracious appetite for reading.  She reads a lot and she reads very quickly and also several grade levels ahead.  This is a good and well but finding her appropriate reading material is somewhat tricky.  I have been getting her some series of books from "A Life of Faith".  Although these characters range from children to full-on adults by the time the each series is done I have assumed since they are Christian books the content is fine for her.

She has to do a reading log some weeks and so she asked me to sign off on last night's reading session.
This is what it says

Arther wanted to get Elsie back for not lending him money even though her dad told her not to lend her money to any one so one day they were walking and stopped at the top of the hill and he pushed her.

I just asked her if that upset her and she said no and I asked if she died and she said that no and that since it is a series she knew she had to be alive for the next book.  She told me Elsie hurt her ankle.

I guess it didn't faze her but I was a bit surprised.

Quilt

I mentioned a few years ago that Luke's mom was going to make a quilt for us out of some of Nathan's clothes.  I just searched the blog for a previous mention and found this post.  I was surprised to learn (I won't say remember) that it was a full year until we did all of that cleaning out of the room.  It is a bit of a painful post to read.

It took another year to actually bring the clothes to Illinois and go through them and make decisions about them.  I think it took many months after that for Kathy to get to the point where she could face making it.  It was also technically difficult for her because she normally hand quilts and the materials in this quilt caused to her to need to machine quilt instead.  She has made the kids and us many beautiful quilts over the years, all hand stitched.  I will have to post those sometime!

All that to say that this summer, Kathy finished the quilt and gave it to us.

I borrowed a picture from her to post here.  The quilt is currently folded on top of the cedar chest in our living room where we store Nathan's things.  I am not sure of its ultimate home.

Thank you again, Kathy - it is better than I could have imagined.

Memorial Done!

I have been remiss in posting about the memorial for Nathan we were working on at the school.  This is the post I wrote about it a year ago.

There were some delays after that in regards to getting the cement slab poured.  The assistant principle ended up doing it himself and also installing the bench and plaque.  The butterfly garden is his pet project at the school.  It was put in this summer and then the plaque was put on shortly after school started.  Luke and I went to see it this summer but then I wanted to wait until the plaque was on to see it again.  Also, it is quite bittersweet and so I wasn't exactly chomping at the bit to go back but we took Luke's parents over there while they were here last weekend.

Here is it - and as you can see Lauren was cold and not wanting to pose!

Thank you to everyone who contributed to his memorial fund.  This is not the only use of the funds but one of the more visible.

PTSD again

I wrote about PTSD recently

I have been wondering about some physical problems I have been having lately and read this:

Re-living: People with PTSD repeatedly re-live the ordeal through thoughts and memories of the trauma. These may include flashbacks, hallucinations, and nightmares. They also may feel great distress when certain things remind them of the trauma, such as the anniversary date of the event.


Well, yes to all of that.

Avoiding: The person may avoid people, places, thoughts, or situations that may remind him or her of the trauma. This can lead to feelings of detachment and isolation from family and friends, as well as a loss of interest in activities that the person once enjoyed.


Yes to some extent.  I have over the years learned to face more of these situations head on and just deal with the pain.  I still do avoid many things though.  I still try to do the things I enjoy.  As I wrote in this post, choir is something I enjoy that I find myself avoiding at times.

Increased arousal: These include excessive emotions; problems relating to others, including feeling or showing affection; difficulty falling or staying asleep; irritability; outbursts of anger; difficulty concentrating; and being "jumpy" or easily startled. The person may also suffer physical symptoms, such as increased blood pressure and heart rate, rapid breathing, muscle tension, nausea, and diarrhea..

Yes to most of these.   I have noticed in the past several weeks that I am often short of breath and have an extremely heightened or overactive startle reaction. Small things create a very large feeling of shock, dread, surprise, or just alertness. My heart seems to be racing too often.    In fact, while writing this Luke hit the keys on his keyboard suddenly and a little loudly, probably deleting something and it startled me way more than it should have.  I probably shouldn't have even noticed it.  I have been nauseous for days.  My family will tell you I am irritable and the difficulty concentrating has been especially bad lately as well.  I don't have problems falling or staying asleep but my night terrors persist.  I came home this afternoon and used an inhaler for shortness of breath but it didn't help. Luke told me that it sounded like anxiety.   I then found list of PTSD symptoms

I am surprised there are so many physical manifestations.   I imagine there are other things that could be causing all of this.  I have a history since landing in the ER a few days after Nathan's funeral of the same set of symptoms about every 3 months that often put me in bed with crippling fatigue, vision disturbances, GI issues, and more.  I need to start keeping a diary of how often it actually does happen (like last weekend) but I wonder if these are all anxiety induced rather than physically induced.

I have been to my doctor about some of these episodes.  She is always trying to treat the current thing so the big pictures has never been discussed.  Last time it was the shortness of breath, the time before was for vision problems.  Perhaps I will be able to talk to her about it all again once I keep track of things for a while.

The body & mind are mysterious things.

Birthday and dreams

I really don't have time to blog this morning but I am going to try to do this quickly.

Yesterday we went up to my brother's house a few hours away. My parents had come in to take care of his kids while he and his wife were away. My kids were out of school and it was my father's birthday. I figure it had been a good 20 years since I had spent my father's birthday with him and it seemed like an excellent opportunity to do so! I made his traditional birthday cake the night before (cherry walnut) and we got up and went yesterday morning. He didn't know we were coming and so it was a big surprise when we showed up. We hung out and spent some time outside in the beautiful fall weather and had a big dinner and desert. It was a really great day.

Last night I dreamed of Nathan. It was a long drawn out dream where I spent a lot of time with him. As is usual with my dreams, his health was frail but this time the knowledge of his death wasn't there, it was just that he was not robust and I was transported back to that time. He ran around a bit and then all of a sudden it was his birthday and we were celebrating that and he was smiling and happy and it was just wonderful. His last birthday he was doing pretty horribly but in this dream birthday last night he was that age but it was a wonderful birthday. The dream was so vivid that it almost feels like I spent time with him last night. Wonderful.

Why I might not be in choir on Halloween

It has nothing to do with Halloween, but I found out we will be singing my most hated choir song that day.  I could not get through it tonight as I was laughing (quietly) to the point of tears.    If you subject yourselves to this video please play the end and witness the lovely hand clapping to go with "the trees shall clap their hands".

The combination of the trees clapping, the 60's? vibe and the hand clapping is just too much.  Yes, it is horrible of me, but I just don't think I can do it.

Here is a video and this is not my choir.

: (

So - I wanted to put a picture on my facebook profile of me and my kids (all of them) on my birthday and I unfortunately came to the realization that no such picture exists because it never happened!  Lauren was born in 2005, 6 weeks after my birthday and in 2006 Lauren, Nathan and I were in New York and Julia and Luke were home in Colorado.  In 2007 Nathan had been dead for 2 months.

I'm not going to let this ruin my birthday today but it was a downer to discover this.

I'll throw some picture out here anyway.  Interesting because it looks like it was hot last year too.  It is supposed to be record-setting hot today.  Also, I made my own cake last year and will again today... not because I have to, because I want to!

2000

2002

2004

2005

2009

Lucky Thirteen

Luke and I celebrated our 13th anniversary yesterday.  We started early on Friday night with a dinner outside in the beer garden at a german restaurant.  Just a side note that we have been having record heat here and so it was a warm night out side in a sleeveless shirt no less.  Yesterday we snuck off to lunch while Lauren was at preschool and after the kids were in bed we had some champagne, raspberries and chocolate fondue.

Thinking back over the years...with pictures on or near the day.

Year 1:  Luke and I had just moved to Colorado a few weeks earlier and were renting an apartment.  We went out to dinner at a local steakhouse.

I can find not one single picture taken in 1998!  The whole year.

Year 2:  We were in our new house and planning on starting a family.  We went out to dinner for fondue.  It was snowing!

Year 3:  We had a three month old baby.  I am guessing we had a quiet evening at home

Year 4:  We had a 15 month old baby and I was 5 months pregnant with Julia.  Back then we never had a babysitter so once again I'm sure we did nothing much.

Year 5:  We had a 2 year old and an 8 month old.  I remember thinking that 5 was a milestone.  There is a good chance we had fondue or something after the kids were in bed.

Year 6:  We were in Denver for Nathan's transplant.  He was three and Julia was 20 months old.  She was at home with my mom.  I do believe Luke and I snuck away for a late dinner together.  The transplant unit there felt strongly that parents not spend the night.  There was no where to sleep in the room either.

Year 7:  Nathan was 4, Julia was 2.  I just went to read the caringbridge journal  the beginning of the entry talked about the frustrations I had that day trying to schedule scans...here is the end.

Once again today it was quite hot out and the kids had some fun playing outside with our new neighbors who are the same age as they are. That was the one fairly smooth part of the day. Dinner involved Julia throwing a fit about the meat I put on her plate (though it was really a control issue). She screamed in her room the whole dinner and then finally calmed down and ate all her meat. 

The kids are happy to go to bed but are being just awful lately with coming in and out of their room for one excuse or another. EVERY night we have to yell at them after repeated request for help with toys they have dropped or other trivial things.

Have I complained enough? I guess so....we all just need a few good days so we can recuperate. I think it is not the acts themselves but the cummulative effect which is wearing away at Luke and I. We did toast to our anniversary with a glass of wine at dinner (to the lovely sound of Julia screamining). We will celebrate without kids soon, we hope. 

Year 8: Nathan was 5 and Julia was 3, I was 7 months pregnant with Lauren.  We had a fairly tame day at home.  Nathan was in the middle of battling his first relapse.

Year 9:  Nathan was 6, Julia was 4, Lauren was 10 months old.  Nathan, Lauren and I were headed to  New York City, the next day.  Luke and I (and baby Lauren) went out to lunch while the other kids were at school.

Year 10:  Julia was 5, Lauren was 22 months,  Nathan was gone.  We weren't in the mood to celebrate.  I went to choir rehearsal.

Year 11:  Julia was 6, Lauren was almost 3.  We got to go out!  Here is the entry.  I think Julia took our picture.

Year 12:  Julia was 7, Lauren was almost 4.  I just read the blog entry from that day.  I wasn't in a very good place.

Thirteen years of marriage in a nutshell.  The one sure thing in this bumpy ride is my love for Luke and his for me.  That has not and will not change.