Month: February 2016

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Week 32

Forever In My Heart Friday. FIMHF. Week 32. In the blink of an eye your whole life can be shattered. I now know that you never really “get over” grief, you just get better at living with it. No one can always see what you are going through because you put on a front and look so put together. So “Strong”, as they say. But the truth is you are missing a part of yourself, and no one can really see it once you put on your MAC lipstick and your Victoria Secret yoga pants, as you do your hair that day and make sure that your toes and fingernails match. But the truth is a part of you feels very hollow. Because you see, something beautiful happens when you entwine your life with someone else’s. If they go somewhere, even when you cannot follow, a part of you still leaves with them. Then the sadness you’re left with becomes all you have. You hold on to it… tightly. Sometimes you cherish it because it’s a constant reminder so you never forget the one you lost. But eventually the sadness will feed off of your love, your light, and it will consume your soul and you yourself will feel closer to death. You become numb. Because what is Grief really?? Grief is your love, turned inside out and upside down. That is why it is so deep. That’s why it hurts so much. Love knows no boundaries, and therefore the sadness seems endless. You become much more emotional. You may find yourself crying in public for the first time ever, or even feeling sad on days when it’s really not convenient. In return that makes you much more venerable. But it also makes you much more compassionate. I now know that while it’s important to be a good person, it won’t necessarily protect me from bad things. I can honestly say I’ve always been grateful for the things in my life. I really do have a good life. But what has changed is the depth to which I appreciate it all. I treasure the things in my life that I have left, because I now know how easy it is to lose it all. I also understand more clearly the concept of time and its constant need to rob me of the moments I want to hold on to the longest. I am also able to find myself loving unconditionally in those I have a close relationship with. The value of life has now taken on a whole new meaning. I have become the person I never would have thought possible to be, and in this way Myesha’s love lives on in me. FIM <3 F Mommy loves you Myesha!

 

32

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Week 31

Forever In My Heart Friday. FIMHF. Week 31. Weeks, or often months, will pass before you are fully confronted by the depth of your sorrow. I often experience emotions like a wave – the emotion will build, crest, and recede. This shocking reality is that these emotions can be so difficult to comprehend. And sometimes it hits me out of nowhere. It’s hard not to think of the child you lost when everything reminds you of them. The death of a child holds the utmost profound effect on even the most stable of people. This is how it feels, blankness, numbness, nothing.  As if something strange has happened, and you are not really sure what. Numbness is a natural self-protecting and coping mechanism that allows you to go about the other activities in your life. After the numbness wears off you go through anger, grief, and finally acceptance. Each one coming in waves. Unexpectedly. Although there were many weeks of despair that seemed to bleed together, there were days in between however, when I did experience joy and even happiness. Those are the days you cherish and try not to feel guilty about.

But I have to agree with the statement that Grief is Grief. Whether you’re going through the emotions of the death of a loved one, a break-up/divorce, or a change in life as the way you know it. One thing that can’t not be taken for granted is that the human heart is precious. When we truly love or care about someone unconditionally, your feelings are the most vulnerable. When you’re heartbroken and missing someone you used to spend so much time with, you feel so many different and complicated emotions. You struggle with overwhelming feelings of powerlessness; frustration that it’s not within your control to make things turn out the way you hoped for or desired. I have brutally come to understand that these feelings of powerlessness are subtle reminders that I don’t always have complete control, and unexpected outcomes will tear through every layer of even the strongest of hearts. That you must try to find solace in life again, and in yourself. To be able to accept that you have no choice but to carry on with life as it is now, even though you don’t want to without them. To “keep moving forward”, if you will. There will be times you can’t tell if it’s killing you or making you stronger. It’s like a flower that yearns for the warmth of the sun until it blossoms completely. Eventually every last petal will drop. FIM heart emoticon F Mommy loves you Myesha!!

 

 

 

 

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Week 30

Forever In My Heart Friday. FIMHF. Week 30. So I originally had other plans for this week’s blog but then last night happened and my whole thought process changed this morning.

She was not home yet, it was getting late. Myesha was not answering her phone and I could not GPS it because the phone must have been shut off.  But she never shuts off her phone?  Where could she be?  Who was this guy she was meeting for the first time?  I get on her computer to  quickly find out that she actually met him on some teen chat page/dating site.  I am livid.  She had been on this site before and I made her deactivate the account in fear that she would end of meeting some weirdo or pedophile. But her inbox was full of messages. UGH!  Which guy was it??  Where could she have gone with him??  I’m angry.  I’m worried.  I’m scared.  I pull her phone log and try to research the numbers that she has been constantly texting and talking to over the last couple days.  Sorting out which ones where friends and numbers I knew, and which ones looked unfamiliar.  It wasn’t hard to find the information I needed.  It was now getting dark. I’m freaking out. I call the police.  Suddenly my house is filled with detectives and police officers gathering as much information as possible to her disappearance.  But we now had a phone number to go off of.  That phone number gave a name.  That name gave us photo identification from the inbox conversation on the computer.  The search was on and all I could do was sit here anxiously waiting for any news as to her location.  The police officers and detectives assured me that they would find her and because it was still so fresh, that they would bring her back to me safely.  I waited.  I prayed.  I cried.  Then just a few short hours later a knock at the door and the detective was standing there.  He said they found her.  Oh the since of relief I had.  He came inside and I immediately asked where she was and when I could see her.  He looked at me with this blank look and I could see the distress in his face.  He no longer could look me in the eye.  He shifted his head towards the floor.  “She’s gone.  I’m sorry Ms. Wiley.  We did everything we could to find her in time, but she is dead. We found her body in a car on the side of the highway.”  No!!! NO!!! NO!!!

My alarm goes off at 4:15am and it jolts me out of my sleep this morning. SNOOZE!! SNOOZE!! I’m slapping the buttons as fast as possible to stop the noise.  I have to go back.  I have to go back and get her.  They had the wrong girl.  My daughter was not dead! Damn this alarm clock!  I close my eyes and go back. Back to get her.  No sooner I’m there the alarm pulls me back in to reality again.  I laid in bed this morning with tears streaming down my eyes.  She’s gone.  Myesha, my daughter, is really gone. Although my rational mind knows she has died, the unconscious, the emotions, must recreate the loss repeatedly. References to fate and time are plentiful.

Adjusting to life without my child has been a long and difficult process, and I often struggle to make sense her death. The grieving process includes dealing with so many issues and emotions that I am not confined to grieve in just my waking hours. Indeed, being nothing more than emotionally wounded. I realize these dreams, these images, seem to reflect not only my concerns for her, but also my own suffering over this loss, my own damaged vitality level, and impaired life force.

I remember right after she died I could not sleep.  I was scared to fall asleep.  I would not allow myself to be in a dark room, so I kept my lamp on all night. I would try to force myself to stay awake until my body just collapsed from exhaustion. If you think about it, sleep is the primary way in which we release control. When you experience a life loss, you feel a great loss of control. At a subconscious level, I can say that I didn’t want to lose any more control by sleeping. I didn’t want any of this to be real. I was emotionally exhausted from falling asleep and waking in the same nightmare of a life that was so cruelly placed before me.

When I would sleep, my perceptions of reality were no longer in my conscience control. I would replay her death over and over and over again each and every night.  Not a memory forgot.  Every detail just as vivid as it was in life. The sound of the machine’s flat lining.  The doctor’s words “Potentially Fatal” echoed relentlessly.  That’s when the dream is nothing short of a nightmare, and all you want to do is wake up and make it all go away.  Some days I would wake up and fly out of my bed and run down the hall looking for her the bedrooms.  I would call her phone to see if she answered if I could not find her.  Then it would hit me…Myesha is dead and she was never coming back. I would collapse into my pillow, squeezing it tight, filling it with a plethora of tears.

I eventually hung her class ring on the gold cross necklace that my uncle gave me at my high school graduation, on the lampshade of my lamp on my nightstand. As crazy as it sounded, if I woke from my dreams, it would remind me that I was not stuck in some vortex.  My life was very real indeed.  Instead of running to look for her in the house, I would stare at the lampshade and that class ring.  I would instantly break down.  Crying so hard that I felt my chest would cave in if I couldn’t catch my breath. Throat tight.  Body shaking. Just ugly crying.

 

Then it finally happened one night, I found her! There she was in my dream, but it was such a short encounter I couldn’t remember any of the details when I woke up the next morning.  I was mad at myself.  Mad that when I woke up in the middle of the night, that I didn’t write down what happened so I wouldn’t forget.  Regret.

But then 1 week later she came back. Myesha came back to see me again. This time even more vivid than last. She looked so beautiful.  I could see her so clearly as if she was standing right in front of me in real life.  Her voice was her own.  Her smile was infectious.  She spoke to me in such a casual manner as if nothing had ever happened.  There she was just standing in my bedroom.  “Hey Momma!!!” she said.  I was speechless.  I began to cry.  She said, “Momma don’t be sad.  I’m okay.  I’m with Dad now and everything is okay.  So please don’t be sad and cry anymore.  I am always with you.” Before I had a chance to respond she lifted up the side of her shirt and with the enthusiasm of a child on Christmas morning she showed me her new tattoo that she got in Heaven.  It wrapped around her rib cage and down her side.  It was green ivy and vines. While it was incredibly beautiful, it was not something I would expect her to get a tattoo of.  “Why that?” I asked.  Her response, “Because I thought it was cool!”  Yep that was Myesha.  Impulsive and without fear or recourse.  I laughed and shock my head.  And before I had a chance to say anything else, she turned and looked up towards the ceiling, then quickly back at me.  “Momma, I have to go back now.  But I want you to know how much I love you!” And just like that she was gone.

I woke up instantly and looked over to the mirror where she was just standing. She was not there.  I Iooked up at the lamp shade.  Neckless still there.  Reality confirmed.  But she really was there.  I felt her.  I saw her.  It was all so clear.  I truly believe she came back to tell me that she was indeed okay.  To tell me one last time that she loved me, and of course to show off yet another tattoo that she had done without my knowledge or permission. Lol.

This dream was my gift. I try my best to remind myself that still seeing her in my dreams is a beautiful thing. I’d rather have these moments where I’m keeping her memory alive, because in those moments I feel so appreciative that I was HER mother, and she was MY daughter.

I guess you could say our dreams help heal our grief. Dreaming is as real as waking life to our minds and hearts, experiences like this allow for many possibilities of completing the “unfinished business” that comes with loss. The dreams allow us to acknowledge our loss at the beginning of the day, and remind us that our love is still very much alive. They bring all these struggling emotions into balance. Even the painful ones teach us where we are at the moment. They help us to accept our loss. They light our path toward a new life. Let them sit with you; let them show you the way to your heart and your grief. Sometimes the way in is the way out. FIM <3 F. Mommy loves you Myesha!

 

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Week 29

Forever In My Heart Friday. FIMHF. Week 29. Those that have never had a child die speak the truth when they say, “I can’t imagine what you’re going through.”  There are no words that can fully express that gut-wrenching anguish and sorrow a parent feels searing through their mind, body and spirit when you watch your child die right before your eyes. There is no cookie-cutter approach or right way to learning to live without your child’s physical presence. No parent ever wants to cope with a child’s death, but in reality it happens every day around the world ~ children die.  You ask yourself “How am I ever going to go on?” My daughter’s death was the end of my life as I knew it. It was the end of my future as I wanted to live it.

 

Unfortunately, there is no way around grief – one must go through it in order for ‘healing’ or reconciliation and integration within your life to occur. We all want to believe that we can control our lives, and if we do not, then we have the irrational belief that we betrayed the standards that we set for ourselves and “let everybody down.” The sadness (depression) in this phase many times leaves the grieving person with the absolute thought that they “will never be happy again.” This is part of the intense feeling of being heartbroken.

 

But as difficult as it is to do, you do have the power to forge your own way of ‘healing’ in a healthier and more constructive way. When you start to care for yourself, grief finds its place and no longer takes over your life. Instead of that heartbreaking sense of loss hanging on for days, it only lasts for minutes, and you can go on to enjoy major events in my life. It’s really amazing when you get to this point, but it’s kind of hard to fully embrace it sometimes. I can now say that I myself have come back from emotional death. I’m not sure I’m there yet, but I’m closing in on it. Grieving fully brings your life back to you. That’s why you do it no matter how long it takes. Perhaps the one good thing that will come from this painful experience in my life is that I will be able to share with others some of what I’ve learned during the shock and grieving process of my loss.  Myesha’s death taught me this: The truly wonderful things in life are so simple that one is often not aware of their wonder until they are beyond reach. What is most important in life is all too often what we take for granted. Anyone who has lost a loved one knows this. Mommy loves you Myesha.