Eight Months, One Week and a Day

I have a bad memory.  That’s a given, and it’s been a fact of my life for a while, but especially of my post-Ella life.  I don’t necessarily like it, but I’m learning to deal with it.  And who knows?  Maybe my memory will improve as my peace increases, if it ever increases.  When it increases.  Maybe the bad memories and my bad memory will sort of meld and merge until they become just plain old memories, have-to-live-with-them-can’t-change-them memories.  Maybe. 

To say I have a bad memory is just a statement of fact, but to say that I’m also ridiculously scatterbrained is a ridiculous understatement.  If a squirrel and a Chihuahua had a love child that had been recently diagnosed with ADHD, that child would probably have a better attention span than I do.  My ability to focus is hampered not only by my inability to remember things but also by a certain level of apathy that settled in shortly after Ella died.  I’m trying to care more about the everyday things like decluttering the counters, cleaning the bathrooms, vacuuming the rugs and the like, but it’s hard.  I’m less of a cleaning machine lately and more a pile mover/rearranger.  I may not be able to focus long enough to clean a whole room, but I can stack the crap out of a pile of junk mail.  In the grand scheme of things, though, it’s just hard to care about that stuff sometimes.  It’s hard not to give in to the apathy that’s crept in and settled in.  Why clean?  She’s not here.  Why bother?  She’s gone. 

But I have to care - or at the very least, try to care - because this life at home is the life I chose.  This life as a wife and mother is my choice, and my choice comes with duties and obligations that require my focus and attention.  Even if I fake it until I feel it, I have to care enough to at least get things done around the house and to properly take care of my family.  I have to care enough about the duties I’ve chosen so as to prevent this home from being just a house.  There may be piles of clutter, but doggone it to heck, those piles will be really neatly stacked! 

Of all of my duties as a wife, I always believed that the most important one was to help my husband get into Heaven.  I understand that Jesus already died on the cross for our sins.  That’s not what I mean by helping my husband get into Heaven.  I mean that I don’t want to be a hindrance, a near occasion of sin, or a stumbling block on his journey Home.  I don’t want to be the one that hands him the apple, so to speak.  [Some might believe that I’m helping him not necessarily to get to Heaven but to at least knock out some serious time earned in Purgatory!  Whatever works, I say.] 

The same can be said for my duty to my kids and for my obligation to guide them Home.  I wish I could be more confident in that department, but honestly I feel like I fail them more than lift them up.  I feel so immature in my own faith, especially after this past year when the difference between my faith in God and my trust in His will became abundantly clear.  I feel like I’m leading more by bad example than anything else – don’t do, say, or act like mom does, and you’ll be a shoo-in for swift entry through the pearly gates! 

I always believed that I should help my family on its journey toward Home, but I didn’t take that belief as seriously as I ought.  Home was way, way over there in the future sometime when we’re all old and gray and ready.  Home was a place I’d get to first to wait for my kids and their kids and their kids' kids.  That’s how it was supposed to go. 

But when your child dies, Heaven is no longer just a nice idea or something to be hoped for at some random moment in the distant future.  When your child’s absence occupies so many of your random thoughts, you can’t help but turn those thoughts to where she is.  When your child dies and you can’t remember things very well or focus on much of anything, you cling to the random things that do pop into your thoughts.  You hold onto them and focus on them, though there’s a fine line between focus and perseveration, I think.  When all you can do is focus on your baby who’s no longer with you, you cling to the random but persistent thoughts that won’t leave you be.  You think about random but persistent thoughts like eight months, one week and a day. 

Ella died when she was exactly eight months and one week old.  She died eight months, one week and a day ago.  Today marks the day that Ella has been in Heaven longer than she was here with me.  I always said that Ella was my child but God’s first.  She’s with Him forever, safe and whole in His arms, but it breaks my heart every single day that she is not here in my arms.  At the same time, who am I to begrudge her Heaven? 

Could I ever really begrudge her Heaven? 

I’ve been thinking about this day since shortly after Ella died.  I can’t explain why this day has occupied so many of my thoughts.  I can’t explain the fear I felt that I might let this day slip by without remembering it.  I actually got out of bed earlier this week to calculate exactly what date this day would fall on, and then I recalculated it that night and double checked my numbers the next morning.  I didn’t want to let it pass without some sort of what…remembrance?  acknowledgement?

 

Eight months, one week and a day.  I never thought she’d meet Jesus before I did.  I never thought she’d go Home first.  I knew Ella had a very sick heart, and I knew her life, however long it would be, would include more suffering than many people realize.  But I honestly never thought she wouldn’t pull through.  I never thought she wouldn’t be here today.  I never thought she wouldn’t be a main feature in all of my future.  And I certainly never thought I’d outlive her.

 

I want all of my family to go to Heaven.  I want them to live better lives than I have, to make better choices than I have, and to want eternal life with Jesus more than I have.  I want Heaven to be real to them now.  I want life in Heaven to be their goal, their final destination after their journeys are complete.  I want them to want it because they want to be with Jesus forever in Heaven.  I want them to want to see Ella again.  I don’t want it to take a tragedy to make Heaven real for them, and though I have the attention span of a gnat nowadays, I don’t ever want to lose my own focus on my journey Home. 

Eight months, one week and a day ago, my sweet little girl took up permanent, glorious residence in paradise.  For better or for worse, my Ella, my sweet little saint, is the reason why Heaven is really real for me, and for the rest of my days, I’ll be counting on her intercession to get me through this life until I can see her again in the next.

 

St. Ella, pray for us!

Bad Memory

My 8yo does not like Granny Smith apples.  He says that they are too tart and sour.  My husband and I like them, though.  My husband eats them whole and unpeeled while I eat mine peeled, cored, and sliced – the better to dip them into the peanut butter jar!  I have a Granny Smith apple a day with lunch, so apples are always in the house.  But my kiddo much prefers the sweeter red delicious variety.  He asked me to buy some for his school lunches, and since I want to encourage healthy snack choices, I said I would get some.  He asked me to buy those red delicious apples several times over the course of a few weeks.  It only took me three trips to two different stores to finally remember to get them. 

I’ve never had a fantastic memory.  Even way back when – before marriage, before kids, before Ella – my memory was average at best, and then after kids came into the picture, I just started blaming my bad memory on them!  When I try to recall life events, I have to first remember where I lived when the event took place and then figure out the year and/or grade I was in to help connect the dots and fill in the blanks.  Maybe this is a problem all military brats deal with – having to catalog memories by which duty station or state you lived in at the time?  Anyway, for childhood memories, I can at least rely on my sister’s excellent memory to help me out.  My sister can very clearly and specifically remember events from when she was a toddler.  She even remembers when I was an infant, and she was only two and a half years old at the time!  I, on the other hand, can barely remember last week…or yesterday, if I’m going to be honest. 

I can’t remember to buy the apples my son asks for.  In the time it takes me to walk the 17 steps from the first floor of our home to the second, I forget why I’m making the trip.  As soon as I step away from the computer, I can’t remember to respond to emails or messages.  If I don’t write it down, type it as a note on my cell phone, or make a list and then make another list that I’ll actually read, then I just plain don’t remember anything anymore.  My memory has always been just slightly less than good.  On a scale of one to ten, my memory was meh.  But since Ella died, it’s gone from bad to wait….what was I talking about? 

My memory is shot to hell, yet I can remember every blasted detail of Ella’s last days and of the weeks that preceded and followed her death.  It’s a slightly cruel twist of fate that those memories are the ones in the forefront of my mind and in such bright and vivid Technicolor.  It’s unfair that all of the good memories of her short life are overshadowed by the overwhelmingly bad memories, the painful memories, the whyGodwhy? memories.  It’s just crap that so many tears follow so closely on the heels of such fleeting smiles when I do try to recall some good times.  It breaks my heart that, though I can’t quit staring at her pictures on the fridge, in the bedroom, on the computer, or on the visor in the car, I feel guilty for wondering if my trying to remember the good times does more harm than good, and if all of the reminders – the sweet, gorgeous, beautiful reminders – just amplify and intensify the pain that would be there anyway. 

My day-to-day memory is shot all to hell, but my Ella-centric memories are beyond intact.  I remember the specific names of the eight different things that were wrong with her heart, and I could point out or even sketch where they would be on a diagram of a heart.  I remember all of the medicines that Ella was on throughout the months of her care, and I even remember some of the dosages.  I remember the room numbers of all of the rooms Ella was in for the 5+ months she was hospitalized, and I remember the patient code I had to use to get into the PICU.  I remember the names of all of the doctors, nurses, therapists and support techs that took care of Ella.

I remember the not-so-calm before the storm, the time before it really hit the fan.  I remember when the decision was made to try intubating and sedating my Ella.  I remember trying to catch my breath while crying and telling a doctor to not leave Ella’s side while I quickly took a restroom break.  I remember the look on one particular nurse’s face when she and I made eye contact in the hall as she hurriedly grabbed something from (what I guess was) the crash cart, the strained, shocked look of holy shit - NOT this, not now, not her!  I remember looking into the doctor’s eyes when she said that the medical team was doing compressions and that though the doctor wasn’t crying, her eyes were moist and red-rimmed.  I remember the crowd of doctors and nurses in the hall because there was only so much space in Ella’s room.  I remember walking into her room and seeing that she was surrounded by so many doctors and nurses.  I remember hearing someone say loudly, “It’s the mom!  Mom’s here!” and sensing that they were making way for me while I focused on getting to Ella.  I remember the weight of her when I scooped her up into my arms, not waiting for anyone to clear lines or clean up.  I remember that in the middle of Last Rites during the Litany of Saints, the doctor who had placed his stethoscope on Ella’s chest looked up and shook his head.  I remember just kissing her sweet head over and over and over again and feeling her temperature slowly slowly slowly cool. 

I remember so much.  I remember it as though it were yesterday, as though I just left the hospital a moment ago, as though I just buried my sweet baby girl.  I remember every moment, but I can’t remember to buy a bag of damned freaking apples. 

Earlier this year I read a couple of posts by Catholic blogger Jennifer Fulwiler.  She wrote about witnessing her neighbor’s grisly and fatal motorcycle accident and about learning how to handle and process that incident.  In her piece Therapy and the Spiritual Life, Fulwiler explained why she chose to go to therapy.  She had been against the general idea of therapy for a long time but had gotten to a point in the post-trauma grieving process when something had to give.  I read the blog post with great interest because I could relate to the information she presented about how the brain actually changes due to trauma.  It just made sense that the brain would store traumatic memories differently and process them differently than it does the “normal”, non-traumatic memories.  The information that Ms. Fulwiler provided shed some much appreciated light on why my memories of everything involving Ella’s death have yet to make the leap from present tense to past.  I haven’t made the decision to transition from cheap therapy to professional therapy for a variety of reasons, but my eyes and my mind have certainly been opened to the benefits offered by the latter. 

I have a bad memory except with regard to the stranglehold my brain has on all of the bad memories.  But for as wretchedly painful as it is to relive the events of Ella’s death, I’m not sure that I’m ready to let them go.  I’m not sure I could let them go without feeling like I’m letting her go all over again.  I will be ready one day, I think.  I’ll be able to see pictures of her sweet face with a tear-free smile on my own.  I’ll be able to watch the video of her saying “mama” without desperately keening for her.  And instead of being resentful because of the short time I had with Ella, I’ll be able to be grateful for the time I did have with her here on earth - the eight months and seven days I had with the most awesome baby on the planet. 

One day I’ll be able to live with the bad memories because I’ll be able to make my peace with them.  I will truly be able to make peace with God’s will in all of this because His will is perfect though my understanding of it is not.  In the meantime, I’m hoping and praying for a peace that surpasses all understanding, but I have to admit…some days I’d settle for a resignation that numbs even a little bit of this heartache.

St. Ella, pray for us!