“I noticed this ugly wooden chair amongst some of the furniture for sale. I guess it just looked the way I felt, on the verge of snapping in some places. Much like grief, I was just going to have to live with this chair for a while. It’s become such a fitting analogy. At the end of the day, it was still just a broken place to sit.”
“I knew. She looked like me. I cried and stared in disbelief. I didn’t contact her but in a weird twist, about a week later, my son phoned me up from his friend’s house and asked if he had a sister.”
“He had blood-soaked gauze around his head. ‘Is that a bone sticking out of his arm?’ Sean had been in a motorcycle accident. I sat beside his bed listening to the ventilator push air through his body. I need you. Your boys need you. I know you’re in there, but you have to show these doctors that. I’m going to go home. When I get back in the morning, you need to wake up.'”
“21 weeks pregnant with my twins, I noticed a tiny smear of pink blood in the bathroom. The doctor spoke cold and matter-of-factly. ‘This is going to be quick. Your babies will be born and die.’ She wouldn’t let me hear their heartbeats. ‘I refuse to start labor again.’ As long as they were inside me, they were safe. When a new doctor randomly walked in, were gone in seconds. I yelled to my sister, ‘Call my husband!’ We were racing down the highway to save their lives.”
“I made a promise to myself. If I was cleared from having the chance of developing a second cancer, I’d get a tattoo. I met a lady who asked me a question that changed my life and perspective forever. ‘Why are you the way that you are?’ she asked. From then on, we became connected by the heart. We were able to help heal each other.”
“Grief looks like walking around Hobby Lobby with a beautiful, happy baby boy and tears running down my cheeks. How do you even pick flowers for your daughter’s grave? Can anything I buy show how much I love and miss her? My rainbow baby is making the cashier laugh. I wonder what she thinks I’m buying the flowers for, and if she can feel the grief roll off of me.”
“We waited for his buggy. We had to walk through passport control with him biting, hitting, and screaming as he does when he’s upset. On the plane, he was upset and screaming. We had comments like, ‘Should have brought my headphones.’ He is, in fact, disabled and not just being naughty.”
“I went out with a friend last weekend for a late dinner. When I arrived, she asked where my kids were. ‘Oh, they’re at their grandparents for the night.’ And she said, ‘Oh, that must be hard, you must miss them!’ I thought to myself, ‘Not really!’ It’s important for me to remind myself that I am a person. I am not just ‘mom.’ I am so much more.”
“We woke to my son crying and covered in vomit. The next day, his brother was the same and couldn’t keep anything down. We thought it was a stomach bug, but it kept happening. ‘Both your boys have leukemia.’ It felt like being stuck in some kind of messed up Groundhog Day where all your nightmares are real. I felt helpless.”
“I have all these mental images of women, dressed for success and sitting desks with their laptops open and their not-even-necessary glasses to the side. The lighting is bright and there is a perfectly groomed plant in the corner by a floor to ceiling window. I felt like an imposter for being successful.”
