Innocence is Bliss
Apparently, somebody was expecting an update this week. I noticed that quite a few people visited our website on Monday and then not as many on Tuesday and then Wednesday a few less. By Thursday, I think you all gave up on me. I felt guilty all week that I hadn’t updated. I have been meaning to tell you how I feel…so hear goes.

I think it is true of what our friends who have lost a child have said…the days leading UP TO the angel date are the worst. Monday, all I could think about what this time last year. Playing in my mind over and over again, what I was doing this time last year. From the minute out of bed to the drive to the gym at 6:30 am, from the angry W-2 callers on the phone to the pathetic calls I get from associates whose lives are “damaged” because their manager gave them critical feedback.

Seriously people?

But ya know what, I’ve been in that spot before. It was nice being in that “innocence is bliss” stage (thanks Tina). We were just praying that my blood pressure wouldn’t rise and that maybe just maybe we could do a VBAC and not have to do a cesarean. It didn’t even cross our MINDS that Everett would die. Not once.

Yes, death and pain, we have tasted them but not to this extent and BAM. All innocence is gone, replaced by a little door of bitterness that you try to keep closed before it bleeds from your heart and everybody starts to run away before they get sucked into total despair. We were anticipating my baby boy to join our family, I had no clue what was up ahead, around the corner in our lives.

I am not recommending that people live in fear or stifled joy because bad things happen, no I think we can be sensitive to the pain in this world and yet still have peace from God and joy. I can’t picture in my little brain ever having joy in losing my Everett but I pray that God would help me close that door on bitterness and encourage others who have suffered the trauma of losing a loved one. Everybody goes through something: death, physical health, divorce, abuse; I feel that my eyes have been opened and I think a few of our dearest friends and family would say the same. Do I want to go back to the time of Innocence is bliss? I don’t think I do; but I would trade anything to just rewind to 4:00 on Saturday the 28th and make different, supernatural, choices.

Memories -one year ago
Saturday February 28th 2010, we were headed to Target after lunch to buy the last few things we needed to welcome baby Everett home. You see, Lindy was born 3 weeks early, about 4 days after we moved into our newly renovated house that still had no kitchen. I did not have a bag packed, the baby’s room was in shambles…nothing was ready. We were going to be READY this time. The bag was packed. The Target run included buying Tylenol, buying some diapers, and baby lotion. On our way home, we had an appointment at the bank to start Lindy’s college fund. As a repayment to a friend, he encouraged us to put money into a fund for our daughter, so that was the day. We opened an account and headed home for our much needed naps. Dale got up mid-nap to head to church work and Lindy and I continued our naps. I distinctly remember Everett kicking when I laid down for the nap. When I awoke, I don’t know if I felt him, I wasn’t even thinking about it, why would I?

You know how the story ends.

I remember my mom turned on the lamp in Everett’s room the week that family was in town for the funeral and it meant SO MUCH to me to have “life” in that room. That light on meant so much, I can’t even explain. We turned the light on in Everett’s room this week. It has been on 24/7. It brings me comfort. We cleaned out the room today; it had about 9 loads of laundry in it. I hate to put laundry away. I think the crib is going to be disassembled this week.

Today at work, I had an overwhelming feeling of sadness, just thinking that Friday was the day before. The day before my son died. ugh. It hurts my heart so much that I cannot hold him. I wish I could have held him longer. I look at the pictures and I can’t remember those moments very clearly. I wish I could have kissed his little cheeks more.

Future
This weekend, we don’t want to be home on Saturday. I don’t want to count down the minutes determining what was going on then. So, we have booked a room The Hampton in Athens, Ohio. A random city where we know 2 people. The only thing we wanted was a pool, cable tv, and possibly a babysitter. We are set. We leave tomorrow afternoon and escape to a place where we can enjoy our time together as a family.

We tend to try and “create” a future for Everett by telling ourselves that “he’d be walking now” or “Lindy and him would be playing together.”

I don’t want to go there too often, I think those thoughts are harmful to me because they don’t contain ways of having joy. It is ONLY negative and it will only ALWAYS be negative. There is never a time that I foresee those thoughts HELPING me in any way. That is a game in my thoughts I try to squash from the start. But it sure does hurt. I wonder what his little personality would be like.

I pray that God shows us grace as we trip through this pain and stumble all over each other.

I pray that God grants us mercy and gives us more children. As Lindy prays “Give mommy a baby….that works.”

Thank you all for your prayers, your cards, and care packages. They bring us joy when we come home from a long day and see that you are thinking of us. The blue star that was purchased and named Everett, the lovely candles, the dinner out with friends, the free childcare so we can go out, the wreaths to lay on the tombstone…all special to us.

Happy birthday Everett,” we wish you were here.

So, I’ve been following this blog McKmama and she has created a fun posting called “Not Me Mondays” where we post our crazy mom stories by being brutally honest. Here’s a few I’d like to share.

Lindy and I spent some time at the library learning about groundhog day and making a paper craft of a groundhog hat, which she wore for the remainder of the day and kept putting it on my head. I went to my endocrinologist that afternoon for the first time in a year, since I lost my son. I’ve been dreading the visit, thinking that they would ask how my son is or blame me and my diabetes for his death. (I know, crazy thoughts!) Anyhoo, I took Lindy and Dale was going to meet us there. I was ushered into the back room pretty quickly, before Dale got there. I disrobed and the doctor came in to get started. She turns off the lights, checks my eyes, checks my blood pressure, talks about my control of my sugars, what I’m eating. We are half way through the visit, and Dale shows up. He walks in and doesn’t want to interrupt, so he doesn’t. At the very end, Dale DOES NOT reach up to the top of my head and pull of the “groundhog” day paper craft hat that I didn’t FORGET I was wearing. My lovely daughter did NOT put the hat on my head the first minute I was in the doctor’s office and I DID NOT forget to take it off. Can you imagine what the doctor was thinking that whole time?!!!!!

I did complain to Dale this week about not finding lids for the sippy cups. Where are all the sippy cup lids!!! I DID NOT proceed to find 7 dirty, stinky, sippy cups under Lindy’s bed in her room. That would never happen in our house. I always have the dishes done and in the cupboard, not rotting under my toddler’s bed.

speaking of dishes…

I pulled out some dishes from the dishwasher to place our dinner on and seeing that one plate had some crusty leftover food on it, I DID NOT put Dale’s food on THAT plate and leave the clean one for me. He’s a guy, he doesn’t care!!

I DID NOT find myself looking for really really good parking at my gym so that I wouldn’t have to walk very far. Seriously?

Well, if you live in Western Pennsylvania, you might have been a part of the best snowstorm since 1993! If not, let me share some of those amazing moments with you. It all started with the television predictions of a BIG storm headed to Pittsburgh Friday afternoon. I the skeptic, said, Ha. yeah right. We’ll get 1 inch and then it’ll be over. I left work at 4:15 on Friday evening and what normally would take me a 25 minute drive home turned into an hour and a half drive. People were PANICKING because of the storm and heading home early. I guess that means drive stupid like there is no tomorrow. I mean seriously people. It’s not slick out yet….just drive.

I made it home and we snuggled down in the warmth. Then, being the crazy people that we are, we decided to go get some steak at 7:30. We could do it right? We loaded up the car with blankets, water, food, snow shovels and salt. Time for another adventure with the Harris’. Now Dale is a pretty amazing driver in the snow. I think that growing up in Alaska helped grow some courage. We made it there just fine. We had the only non-SUV vehicle in the parking lot and the restaurant was just about to close but we got our fine steak.

The way home was a little bit different. Cops had blocked off roads and we had to take a different routes. We had to plan ahead because we could not climb hills very well.

We did make it home and had full bellies.

And of course when we got home, Lindy and Daddy had to go play in the snow at 10 o’clock at night.

We woke up the next day to a beautiful sight. We had 17 inches of snow by the time the snow stopped falling. 17 INCHES!! The dog could barely walk in the backyard in the snow. He didn’t know what to do. I guess I probably should have bought TP and Milk at the store like all the other crazies.

Do you see my car below?

The ONE day Lindy slept in until 11am right?

Daddy went outside and shoveled the driveway with the neighbors, Matt and Hilary joined us and the dogs played together. I waited inside until Lindy woke up. She woke up and saw daddy out the window.

We spent about 3 hours out in the snow Saturday afternoon. Met almost every single one of our neighbors that we had never even seen before.

The Governor declared a state of emergency for the city and we were looking forward to a weekend “off.”

You would have thought the world was ending. It was soo weird to see the city shut down.

Gladly, Dale’s work was canceled for the entire weekend, so we had him home 24/2. Yay!

Digging out.

Important thing to do in storms like this, according to Dale, is to dig the car out and get it off the street before the plows go down the street and cover your car with so much snow, you can’t get to it until Spring. We spent a substantial part of the morning digging it out and trying to get it into the driveway. Luckily, all the neighbors were around to help each other.

Look at all the snow on top of the car above.

Obligatory picture of mom, just so 20 years from now, I’m in at least one picture.

Lindy’s snow angel.

ready

aim

fire!!!

sledding on our way home

When we got home, we made some hot chocolate, some popcorn and Lindy watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for the first time.

Saturday evening, we decided to go do something that Dale has been wanting to do for five years now and that is to ski down the Target, Camp Horne Road Hill. Now, for those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about…there is a shopping complex that was made about 5 years ago up on a HUGE hill, a hill that one could ski down. Well, at about 6 o’clock last night, we made our way to the top. All the lights were out in the complex. Sam’s Club and Target were running on generators, surprisingly, Target was still open, only running with its emergency lights on.

We dropped Dale off at the top and drove to the bottom. 4 times he went down, the last time on his sled. It was hysterical. Skiing in the pitch dark down a shopping mall hill. One dream finally accomplished. Lindy and I had a good time being the ski lift. In the picture below, he started at the big sign, clear up on top of the hill and made his way down into a parking lot.

Afterwards, we went into Target. Now that was CREEPY. It was dark and there was maybe 4 employees. We had nothing to buy really…but of course walked out with $100 worth of stuff. Lindy ran down aisles, the employees were picking out sleeping bags so they could sleep on them that night in the store.

All that frozen food, gone to WASTE. wow. There is no way they could sell that food after a power outage. I would have gladly taken the food off their hands but of course that would be a liability.

What would YOU do during a winter storm?

Sledding videos posting later this week.

So, I’ve been following this blog McKmama and she has created a fun posting called “Not Me Mondays” where we post our crazy mom stories by being brutally honest. Some of them are really fun to read and I thought I’d share a few things that I did not do this past week.

I did not put my 3 year old child into the kitchen sink so that I could clean my kitchen. It wasn’t the only way I could contain and entertain my child while I loaded the dishwasher and scrubbed the floor. No way. Not me. That would be too much fun for said child.

I DID put my daughter into bed with her shirts on from that day because we hadn’t gotten in late and I didn’t want to change her into pajamas. The next morning, I did NOT get her out of bed and smell her shirts to see if they were clean and then proceed to put on clean pants without changing her shirts that she wore 24 hours previously.

I DID not put my chocolate milk in a non-clear glass so that my 3 year old would not know what I’m drinking. Nope. I am way too mature for that. I enjoyed every single sip of that chocolate milk without the guilt of my daughter knowing.

I did not start to complain about a friend who just had her 4th child, complaining that it was so easy for her and she just “pops” them out. My friend listening to me complain did not interrupt me and say, “um, she is having some issues and still in the hospital, something is wrong.” Nope, not me. I would never say anything like that.

I did not feel a tad bit sorry for myself when I was at the gym at 5:30 one morning and I over heard 2 ladies talking about what time they get there. One woman said, “I’m usually here by 4:30.” I did not roll my eyes and feel awful that it took every ounce of my being to get out of bed at 5:30 that morning.