Holidays Always Suck

So, there is really no doubt how very bad I am at this blog thing.  Or, I guess I’m really good at repressing – always have been.  The only thing that’s been constant over the last 7 years is that no matter how hard I try to live my everyday life as a normal, undamaged person, I get a gigantic sucker punch in the gut right about now every year.

I talked to my cousin Kyle last week, way, way later than I should have.  He was working in Texas, and his mom and brother had both told me that he might still be here on Thanksgiving, so I was calling to invite him to spend the day with us.  Had I called him a week earlier, like I should have, I would have already known that he was going to make it home for Thanksgiving after all.  Until I heard his voice, I had forgotten just how bad that first holiday season was (and the next, as it was the first without my dad).  Kyle lost his wife this past year to breast cancer, and today is his first Thanksgiving without her.  I’m so bad about reaching out – as I have mentioned over and over, repression and avoidance should be my middle names.  I asked him how he was, and I could almost feel the pain packed in around his answer of, “I’m fine”.  I told him I knew he wasn’t fine, and that there is no way around it – this year, the holidays are just going to suck ass.  People forget (seriously, they do) that you might still be grieving – the rest, they just don’t want to pry or, are frankly too uncomfortable to talk about it.   I told him that there is absolutely nothing that is going to fill that giant hole right now – either he can dive in and start to deal with it, or he can zip it up in a giant baggie and swallow it (like I did – not entirely recommended).  We talked for a long time – it was good to talk to him.  Sadly, it’s somewhat comforting to be able to talk to someone who has felt the same level of pain that I have.  Twisted as it is, sometimes misery loves company.  We talked about how stupid and insensitive some people can be, among other things.  Sadly, I didn’t have very good advice when it came to talk about dealing with grief.  Obviously, my way is probably not the healthiest.  I did tell him about finding Maya and Rockstar Ronan, and how I stayed up that entire night reading their story, and about reaching out to her.  I also told him I have been writing (if you want to call it that) myself, and that little by little, I have found that some of the tiny shards of glass in my heart seem to have been repaired.  Although reliving this experience sometimes causes me nearly as much pain as it did the first time around, I think I have to do this in order to figure out how to heal.  I encouraged him to look through the blogs and find someone whose situation is similar to his.  Unfortunately, there are a lot of us out here.  However, it is helpful to find someone who has been where you are now, and find out that they aren’t in that place anymore.  I feel so bad for him right now – I know that his heart is shattered right now.  Anyone’s instinct, including mine, is to hug someone and tell them that everything will be alright.  However, unless you’ve walked in these shoes, those words don’t mean a lot to us.  I know that he has to find his own path, just as I am still trying to find mine – I just hope I can help steer him in the right direction.

Brian’s mom and one of his brothers is visiting us in Texas for the Thanksgiving holiday this week.  They flew in last Sunday and they are going home this Sunday.  It has been a really nice visit, especially for Brian.  I’m so glad that the kids have been able to spend some good, quality time with Grandma Babs too – I know she misses them a ton.  It can’t be easy for her to see them so infrequently, especially when my mom gets to see them  everyday.

For the few of you who have hung on with me through my crazy long absences, I’m not sure that I ever finished our story – the hard part of it, at least.  I know that I described our very short time with Colin, which is probably one of the hardest things I’ve done.  Living those moments again were excruciating – I think I can only do that to myself every once in awhile. I’ll try the abbreviated version of what followed, but no promises.

After Colin died, we were in such a strange, horrible place.  We had just lost our first born child – we needed to grieve, to mourn him, to plan his funeral.  However, we had his very tiny, very precious twin brother still residing in the NICU.  Therefore, no time for any of the above.

We spent the next few weeks standing guard at Riley’s side, at the new hospital.  I was such a tangled, messed up weave of emotions.  Unfortunately, I still had to see the same doctors that had been at the previous hospital, as they rounded at this one too.  Tolerance is probably too generous a word to describe my attitude toward them at the time, but I did have to rely on them to save my son if he needed them to.  As for the surgeon who refused to transport Colin (when he was stable enough), I  felt nothing but complete disdain .  I wanted to scream and yell vile things at him; I wanted to stick a scalpel in his eye.  But, I settled with evil stares and allowing all of the hatred to seethe inside of me.  However, there was some refreshing light in that very dark tunnel.  The nursing staff in that NICU was phenomenal.  They were  professional, kind, and empathetic to say the least.  They gave us just what we needed – never too much.  The entire hospital seemed to be run by professional adults; whereas, the one we had just left seemed like a clinical site for a community college by comparison.  Obviously, this definitely didn’t help with my feelings of self blame when it came to choosing the damn hospital in the first place.  I’ve carried that guilt with me for a long time, and at least a little bit of it will probably always be with me.

By this time, Brian had started to go back to work, at least for partial days.  He still spent a lot of time with us in the NICU, but I was there by myself a lot.  I had a lot of time on my hands, which wasn’t necessarily good.  I spent a lot of time just staring at Riley, watching him sleep, making sure he was still breathing.  I don’t think 5 minutes passed that I didn’t have an uncontrollable sense of panic that he was going to die.  I’ve never felt so helpless in my life.  My sweet, tiny, precious boy – if I lost him too, I was pretty certain that I would walk out of the hospital, up to the highway and right in front of a semi.  Looking back, I was so close to the edge, it was a miracle I didn’t fall in.

One of the nurses claimed a very special place in all of our hearts.  I will call her Ann, because she was clearly the angel we needed in our lives at the time.  Ann was one of the first people we met when we had Riley transferred the night Colin died.  She was very professional and direct, but she was also kind and gentle with us.  She saw how lost and scared we were, and gave us all of the support and guidance we needed.  She never took offense to the fact I was hovering over her every time she was with my son.  I oversaw every blood draw, every residual check, every diaper change, every IV change that I could.  I dropped the ball before – I’d be damned if I would do it again.  At least, that’s how I saw it back then.  Not much can fuck you up more than thinking you checked out of the hospital only to leave your fragile preemie in the hands of a stupid, incompetent person whose incompetence probably killed him.  The only time I was not in that NICU was during shift change (no one was allowed during those 30 minutes).  If  Ann was on duty when I returned, she dutifully gave me a full report.  God bless her – she was just what I needed.  I was a total pain in the ass, as I will be every time one of my children is sick and their well-being is in the hands of another.  Sorry all future docs – someone else’s fuck up created a nightmare parent for you!  The only time I left, other than during shift change, was at the strong urging of the neonatologist – he had to place a PIC line into Riley’s heart because his veins just couldn’t take the TPN (his IV nutrition) anymore.  I was really, really pissed, but I think I might have been a tiny bit grateful (though I never would have admitted it) – I think watching that procedure might have just pushed me over the edge.

Back to Ann.  I think she could read the fear on my face like the cover of a book.  I was so scared that something was going to happen to my baby – the only one I had left.  At that point, I think my fear was preventing me from touching and bonding with my son.  She encouraged me to start kangaroo care with him.  Basically, it is skin to skin contact between the newborn and his mother or father.  I had learned about it in nursing school, and knew that it had produced amazing results in even severe cases.  My tunnel got a lot brighter the day she placed my Riley on my chest.  I did have a baby!  I was a mother!  I think we spent most of the afternoon that way.  Finally, I was able to bond with my son.  This leads me back to my frustration with the first hospital.  That NICU was so crowded and the nurses we so busy, we were rarely able to hold our boys at all.   Most of our contact with them took place within confines of their beds, as they were attached to wires and tubes.  The nurses just didn’t have the time, and they made that clear.  I will always hate each and every one of those bitches for that.  I truly hope that they remember what they took away from me.  I never, ever held my babies together, at the same time.  This sounds so stupid, so selfish, but I hate that they couldn’t give that to me.  I feel broken.  Did I really have twins?  I think I did.  I have the ultrasounds, the medical bills and stretch marks to prove it.  I also have a grave stone in Indiana with my sweet Colin’s name on it.  But what I don’t have is one fucking picture of me holding both of my boys.  Isn’t that like the first picture every parent with twins has?  A picture of the new mother, beaming and holding both of her babies.  Well, I don’t, and I never will.  This might seem so simple to people, but it is such an amazing loss for me.  Those stupid, bitchy, inexperienced nurses couldn’t take 10 fucking minutes so that I could hold my baby boys together.   Seven years later, I still hate them just as much for it.  So, when Ann took the time to find a privacy partition, find me a gown, unravel all of Riley’s cords and place him on my bare chest, I wept.  I wept with grief for my loss – I would never, ever hold Colin this way.  But I also wept for joy I was just now finding with my Riley.  She gave me an amazing gift that day – she reminded me that I was a mother, and that  my sweet boy needed me.

I think this is all I can do for now.  Baby steps . . . I’ll just try to start putting them closer together 😉  Please be thankful for your blessings – not just today, but every day.  We never know what tomorrow will bring.