Beautiful things

The past couple of days have been quite the bouquet of emotions. Our front door has been a revolving door with people coming and going all day long, staying only for a brief hug or to drop off a meal, or staying to chat for hours and clean our microwave. It's been exhausting (especially so for Reid) to tell the story over and over again but at the same time it's been healing (she said sagely after two days of grieving (I'm sure more grief is coming)).

We probably had a hundred people stop by yesterday (and that's no exaggeration).

My favourite vignettes from the past couple of days are:

Thursday night and Grandma's passing

When Reid and Emily arrived home from the hospital last night they were somewhat somber.

Shortly before they were about to leave the nurse informed them that Karen's potassium levels were causing her heart to beat arrhythmically again (they had managed to get her potassium levels under control when she was first admitted), which was a sign that she was preparing to pass on. Reid asked if he should stay, but the nurse told him to go home to get some rest. She would call if things seemed to be getting close to the end.

Josie asked my mom if they could stop by to see her before going home and before we knew it, Miriam (who at 9:30 was just coming downstairs to brush her teeth, the little bedtime evader), Josie, my mom and I were heading to the hospital.

When the nurse came to see what business we had at the ICU so late at night, I explained that Reid had sent us to say goodbye to Karen. "Oh, by all means," she said and then bent down to reassure Miriam, who was staring with panic at the sign that said 'no visitors under the age of 12.' "We make exceptions for children under these circumstances."

These circumstances.

I hadn't seen Karen since Saturday night when she was awake and talking (somewhat) and still looked like herself more or less. When I saw her last night the change was jarring. She didn't look like herself at all, but we bravely filed into the room anyway to say goodbye.

"Hi Karen," I...blurted.

I don't know that blurted is the right word. It was a blurt and a choke and a sob all rolled into one.

Telling the children

When Reid told me that Karen had fallen in the wee hours of the morning on November 1st, I had a distinct impression in my mind: "This is how we lose her."

That thought caught in my heart and I worried and worried until finally Karen emerged from her bedroom, calling out to Zoë and Alexander to come see her, just has she had done every morning for the past year.

"Where's my baby? Alexander!" she'll call and he'll take off like a rocket from wherever he is, trying to get to her as fast as he can. Zoë is no different and as soon as she hears Grandma calling will quickly drop whatever she's doing to greet her.

"Oh!" I said in surprise when I saw her face. "That's actually not quite as bad as I was expecting, though I'm sure the bruises will darken over time."

Inside I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

What had those words meant? That one day we'd lose Grandma after a fall.

But not this day. This day she was fine. She was up and at 'em. She was cuddling her grandbabies.

Her pain, however, intensified throughout the day and she finally decided she had better get checked out. I offered to drive her to the InstaCare, but she said she'd have Reid take her and it's a good thing, too, because they were sent from the InstaCare to the ER, which is where they found the pneumonia.

A small case of pneumonia. Nothing to worry about...until she couldn't wake up and this whole nightmare started.

Those words have been running through my mind all week.

This is how we lose her. This is how we lose her. This is how we lose her.

I denied those words; how silly they seemed. I think I even used a Christmas word on them and accused them of being stupid. She fell. I get it. But she's not going to die. Don't be ridiculous!

I bargained with those words. Fine, she would die of sepsis at some point but not this time because this time she was going to be alright. This time she was going to come back to us. Later on, years down the road, a similar event would happen and then she would go. Just not today. Please not now. Don't take her away yet.

But as the hours and days dragged on, I accepted those words. Oh. I see.

This. Is. How. We. Lose. Her.

Alone together

I have many heavy things to write about so first I will write about some lighter matters. Actually, it will probably be a mix of heavy and light because I tried to jump right to the funny bits but I couldn't do it. I'm so, so deeply sad. I was grasping at words for this sadness—it's bereavement, isn't it? That's the only word that encompasses these feelings.

I am so ridiculous that I made Andrew keep a light on when we went to bed last night because I just needed the light on whenever I opened my eyes. But also I can't sleep with the lights on so I wore a sleeping mask so that it would be dark enough to sleep, but so that all I had to do to be in the light again was to lift the mask.

I'm not a complicated person at all. Why do you ask?

Tears seem unstoppable in the dark.

I'm so very lonely, you see. The house is so quiet, so very empty. I'm not used to being the only adult around. I'm used to chatting with Karen during the day. I'm used to setting Alexander down to accomplish a task (laundry, cooking, dishes, whatever) and having him crawl off to find Grandma because—lucky boy that he is—he knew that if Momma wouldn't hold him that Grandma would. It was very helpful for me and those two were as thick as thieves, Alexander and Grandma.

The house has felt like it's swallowing me so I've been grateful for people who've stopped by to make me less alone. Sister Fenn came by yesterday just to chat with me, and then I took the kids to visit Aunt Linda, and then we went to a baby shower just so we didn't have to be home alone.

Today Uncle Jacob, Aunt Shayla, and Carter came over so that they didn't have to feel alone alone and the kids and I didn't have to feel alone alone. They came so we could feel alone together.

Jacob helped me clean the bathrooms and floors and get ready for the open house we have planned for Grandma. Miraculously, Alexander let Jacob hold him. Shayla has been a low-ranking member of the short list of people Alexander permits to hold him. Jacob has been a high-ranking member of the long list of people Alexander screams about whenever they enter the room.

But not today.

Today Jacob just went over and picked Alexander up and Alexander let him do it.

Jacob and Shayla even took Alexander downstairs to play (Alexander was napping when they arrived and Carter was not-so-patiently waiting to play with Baby Xander) without me.

It was amazing!

It seems like yesterday...

In the entry way to our house stand four spooky gingerbread houses.

Grandma constructed the houses, carefully carving each piece from a graham cracker and pasting them together with royal frosting. Then she patiently helped the kids decorate their houses.

I have no pictures of this because it was the Tuesday before Halloween and I had taken Miriam to BYU for her organ lesson (and then went to gamelan). I had left Zoë, Benjamin, and Rachel behind with Grandma—just for a little while—even though she wasn't feeling great because that was literally the only time we had left to decorate gingerbread houses before Halloween. Andrew left campus around the same time that Miriam and I arrived, so she wasn't alone with them for very long. Just long enough to finish decorating their houses by the time Andrew got home.

Since Miriam had missed out on decorating her house, she rushed home from school last Wednesday and asked permission to do her house. Grandma helped her set all the candy out again and warmed up some frosting for her to use and then left her to it.

 

I don't want this sadness

I have watched Death creep

Inch...by inch...by inch... 

Until, finally, 

It makes its move,

Bringing grief, 

But also relief.

I have seen Death rob

Cradles, wombs, wedding beds.

Striking randomly, 

It leaves in its wake

Anguish, sorrow,

Pain-filled tomorrows.

I have known Death from afar,

As a fact of life, as clinical.

It has taken—family, 

Friends, strangers—

Slowly and sudden, 

This angel unbidden.

I hear Death knocking

At my door—not for me—

For one I love.

I don't want this sadness.

It's time to learn, Death says.

Come in.

My mom is doing NaBloPoMo this month, which has been great because she's already shared so many wonderfully interesting stories. Today she said that it was amazing to her how writing daily has spurred ideas in her mind. 

I haven't committed to NaBloPoMo publicly (until now), but I did so privately. Unfortunately, I'm having the opposite experience. Though I have a lot to write about my words are seizing up inside of me, instead of flowing out in a verbose river of prose, they're leaking out in poetry, quite unsure of themselves (and whether they'll be able to stay the flood of emotions behind them).

I am not a poet, but words are good for my soul (so I'll keep trying to write something every day).

For an update on Karen, see here.

(Is that link a TLDR link? Let me sum up: her status as not changed. She is critically ill but in stable condition.)

Halloween 2018

Wednesday was a rather busy day and with orchestra in the morning I didn't have time to snap a picture of Rachel before school. I also didn't get around to snapping a picture of Zoë before her preschool Halloween party because she was in such a sour mood that we were running late by the time I'd convinced her to put on her costume and head out the door.

But I did manage to take pictures of the other three! 

Here's Benjamin dressed up as Neville Longbottom—notice the earmuffs and the mandrake:

Alexander's first words!

Alexander, still not walking, has at least finally started talking. He mostly communicates by grunting and pointing. He will occasionally say "momma" (or variations on that theme). But other than that—nothing. 

When he had his check up not too long ago, the doctor asked what words, if any, he was using consistently (other than "mama" and "dada," which should be a given (but which really aren't for Alexander)). I was like, "Yeah, none, so..." 

But on Sunday when we were leaving to go to church, with half our brood because half of us were too sick to go, Alexander both waved goodbye and said bye-bye.

I wouldn't define it as "clear as a bell." Rather it was a garbled, "Bluh-bluh," but we'll take it!

And then this morning he was playing on a toy cell phone and he put it up to his ear and said, "Eh-o?" which I can only assume was his attempt at, "Hello?"

Good news: Benjamin found his lunchbox

Want to see what a bagel topped with cream cheese looks like after several weeks of neglect?

I'm curious about where this lunchbox was hiding because I know it was not in the lost and found when we first looked. And Benjamin swears it wasn't in any of the lunchbox buckets (each class has a big bin to carry lunchboxes around in). It just...turned up one day looking like this.

We're glad to have it back, anyway.

Usually I (try to) make him finish his leftover lunch as part of his after school snack. In this case I did not.

Dare to be up and doing

There is a line that runs through my mind occasionally, but I don't know where it comes from, at least not precisely. Part of me wants to attribute it to my Grandpa C because I know that he recited poetry often (according to his personal history he was a Tennyson man), though I don't recall him ever reciting poetry to me (of course, I only knew him after his stroke, so...). It is a line from a poem, but it is also a line of scripture, so perhaps that's why it pops into my mind occasionally, though in my mind it is wrong.

"Dare to be up and doing" is the line.

It doesn't quite come from Longfellow's A Psalm of Life (1838), which states, "Let us, then, be up and doing," nor is it quite from Alma 60:24 (translated in 1829), which states, "begin to be up and doing."

Perhaps it's just my mind smashing a bunch of well-known and oft-quoted lines together?

I don't know where it came from, but I like it.