Because it was time

One of my best friends in this world asked me the other day why I had not been posting on my blog in a while. The only answer that I could give her is that I thought that it was probably just depressing to read. Once she explained that she enjoyed reading my blog for the fact that she could understand how I was feeling and dealing with everything that makes up my life right now, I realized that was my whole purpose in writing this blog in the first place. This is my way of communicating to my close friends, who I don't get to talk to on the phone regularly, or see every week and in some cases only once a year. I am blessed to have friends who actually care to know how I am feeling and I love them for their love of me.







I know that I have written of my "dark times" when I go into a deep depression. This darkness occurs every couple of weeks and can last from up to one week to two weeks. During this time, I feel as if I fall off of the face of the Earth. I don't communicate with anyone other than my children. It is almost as if I close myself up into a cocoon, and wait out my dark mood until the sun seems to shine again and I emerge a new person. Or I view it as a molting process. I curl up into myself to shed the sadness and hopelessness from my skin emerging new and bright with a newfound hope and happiness.






Since mom died, my writing has come to a halt. My manuscript sits on the surface of my laptop, beckoning to me to come and revisit my characters and become lost in the little world that I have created. My mind will not allow me to go there at this point. I am hoping that I will get back to that make believe world of people I have grown to love, even if they are only in my mind. I know that they want me to finish their story so that hopefully others will fall in love with them too. In a way I am being selfish for keeping them under the wrap of my laptop when I truly believe others would enjoy taking a journey with my characters. Maybe I will visit them tonight. Maybe not. If there is one thing that I have learned from the past 6 months is that I don't make too many plans. Plans have a way of grounding you to a purpose that may or may not be leading you in the direction in which you should be going.






Back to myself, I guess. My flashbacks have resided. I am sleeping without waking up thinking that Mother is not gone, that I had made a terrible mistake when I saw her on the embalming table. I had a strange occurrence at Wal-Mart before Easter. Before I write about that let me preface this by saying that I know that my religion prohibits me from believing in ghosts, and as a Christian, I don't believe in them simply because I believe in the Bible and God's word leaves no room for lost souls wandering this earth. However, I do believe in Angels and spirits, but not ghosts. In Randy Alcorn's book 'Heaven' he mentions several times that God will allow the spirit of our loved one to touch us or communicate with us in some way from time to time. This is meant to bring comfort, not fear. Back to my incident in Wal-Mart, I was late getting the boys Easter basket supplies and had to go there around 11:30 that night. I had gotten everything for the Easter baskets and was walking down the aisle next to the butter and eggs when I smelled the scent of White Diamonds perfume. I have been preparing myself for months as to what would happen when I smelled that perfume, because it was my mom's perfume, it was her "smell" mixed with cigarettes of course but still White Diamonds. No matter how hard I had prepared myself, I probably couldn't have prepared myself for the onslaught of that scent to my nerves. I stopped in the middle of the aisle, my eyes were wide and I couldn't blink. I just stood there and sniffed the air. If anyone had been standing around me they would have thought I was impersonating a dog. The scent was strong, but then dissipated the further I moved away from the eggs. I slowly backed up my cart, sniffing the whole time until I found the scent again, in front of the eggs. "Someone must have been standing here just now getting eggs and has on that perfume," I told myself. I looked around the store because the smell was so strong that had a person left it, they would still be in the vicinity. I saw no one around me. I sniffed a few more times and then moved on to the milk. Then I smelled it again, stronger now, with the hint of cigarettes mixed in. At this point my eyes began to water and tears started flowing down my cheeks because the smell was so much like my mother it pulled at my heart. I stood there looking around me for another person to explain the smell, while not wanting to leave the spot because the scent was so strong. I sniffed the air for another few minutes and decided that I was losing my mind. I got my milk and started away when I smelled it again. It seemed as though the scent was all around me, inside my nostrils, on my clothes, surrounding me and for a moment I was paralyzed in awe and uncertainty. My eyes were pouring now and the smell was depleting me instead of fulfilling me at that point so I wanted to get away from it. I hurried over to the cereal aisle where the smell went away entirely.


During that entire time I looked around me to explain the smell had come from another woman shopping nearby. I am sure the security people at Wal-Mart thought I looked nuts on their security cameras. There I was, with my grocery cart, my nose sniffing up and down, turning round and round with wide eyes looking for something that wasn't there, and tears rolling down my face. There was no on around me in that part of the store. When I got to the cereal area there were more people but no on smelled like White Diamonds.


I can't explain what happened to me in Wal-Mart that night, but after that night I have felt peaceful again. It was almost as if just smelling her was enough to give me some peace for a while. If God allowed me to smell her once, I hope that he will allow me to smell her again. I miss her so much that I hate myself for feeling the relief during the first weeks of her passing. I talk to her in my head and Tucker and I cry over her at night. He is such a sweet soul and misses Nana so much.


Death is horrible. It makes me long for eternity so that there will be no more tears.


On occasion, I can still hear mom's voice. Usually when I am thinking about a problem, or I am mad or upset about something. I can hear her giving her opinion in my mind and that gives me comfort. This also may be a sign that I am completely crazy, but I'll take her voice in my head even if it means they put me in a padded room. She may have been selfish, and a terrible mother and a terrible role model, but I know that she loved me even if she didn't show it in her actions. To be in her presence again would be amazing. Just to sit and feel her all around me. That's not possible now, with all of her belongings gone and her house sold. I just have the memories and the mementos that I kept downstairs. I can't bring myself to go through them right now but I will one day.


And, when I finish that manuscript, I will dedicate it to her. Oddly that was one of the last things she asked me for, was to bring my book to her so that she could read it. For that reason alone I need to finish it, in her honor.


I love you momma. I know you can't see this, but I hope somehow you hear my thoughts as I type.


With God's Love around me, I leave you tonight.


April

Connor turns 4 and Mother's day

Tomorrow is going to be a day of joy and sadness, as it will be Connor's 4th birthday and the first Mother's Day without my mother. On one hand I am so amazed that my baby is already four years old. Why does the time pass so quickly during the days filled with joy and the days filled with sadness seem to crawl. My memory of his birth is bittersweet as it was a hard labor and even worse, I could not hold my precious little man for twelve hours because he was in the NICU. The first two weeks of Connor's life showed me how very brittle our lives are and that we ultimately no control over our lives. During the fourteen days of staying in the NICU with Connor I learned to give everything over to God. That was the first time that a situation had ever truly brought me to my knees. I was completely in His hands, at His mercy, for I had no idea if my sweet baby would be cured from the Group B Strep that threatened bacterial meningitis. It was a dark time but also a time of light because I felt myself in the arms of God and for the first time I really understood what it meant to be vulnerable.
Unfortunately those two weeks also etched a wound that would fester and grow over the next two years. That wound was inflicted by my mother, and the only antiseptic was God's love. Mother did not make it down to sit with me in the NICU during those difficult days. Sure, she had good intentions to come, every day she would call my cell and tell me that she had planned to come down but her back was hurting, or her stomach was upset, etc. I guess the birth of Connor was also the beginning of her constant sickness. Whether or not she could have really tolerated the fifty minute drive to Birmingham was never discussed. I just know that she wasn't there. Everyday I sat on the uncomfortable vinyl couch in the small nursing room provided by the NICU for babies who could leave the unit. I held Connor every second that I was in that room. I nursed him, then I would pump, watch reruns of the Cosby Show, Golden Girls, and Everybody loves Ramond. Brad wanted to save his maternity leave for when Connor was able to come home, so he would come to the hospital everyday on his lunch break and bring food from the cafeteria. We would eat together and he would hold Connor, who had an iv in his little leg at first, then his hand, then finally his forehead. Then he would leave to go back to work and I would continue with my vigil until 7 or 8 when I would go home to see Tucker before bed.
It is odd to think that Tucker was the same age then as Connor is now. He was so mature and sweet during the whole NICU experience. I am sure he never understood why his baby brother couldn't come home at first, but he didn't ask many questions.
So many friends helped out during those weeks. Margaret Ann and her mom came to clean my house, which was a mess! Bethany brought cookies and sat with me for a while. Alex came to see me, though she didn't realize that she was pregnant with her own John Hallman who she had prayed for and tried for over a year to get pregnant with. Forrest and Polly dropped by on their way back from the beach. Andrew and Robert both came to visit in the NICU. It was also at this time that I became so thankful for my friends. My mom only came one day toward the end, coincidently on the same day that Daddy and Jackie returned form Indiana. Of course mom was there when Connor was born, but that was a fiasco.
The fact that she had not been there for me was devastating and told me where I stood in our relationship, as well as where her grandchildren stood. I will never understand her selfish ways. She even mentioned to me that since I was going through so much I didn't need to worry about her Mother's day gift, and that I could get it for her when Connor was better. At the time I found that audastic. Now I think that she truly thought that I was worrying over what to get her for mother's day, when in fact that was the last thing in the world I was thinking. That mother's day was the day that the doctor's told me Connor had to stay another week in the NICU. I left the hospital that day broken. I cried myself to sleep when I got home and didn't leave the bed for a day. Before that day, we had hope that he could go home with us on Mother's day, but that day we found out that all three cultures had shown the Group B strep. The next day I found out that I too had an infection in my c-section wound. It was a rare type of Staph. I walked from the emergency room where they had tested the infected site, over to the NICU for my daily sit with Connor. Those days were so uncertain and I have never felt more helpless and hope that I never feel that way again.
So tomorrow, on Mother's day, I will celebrate my sweet baby Connor's fourth year on this earth with us. I will also celebrate being a mother to him and Tucker. However I will be missing the mother that I have lost. Even with her selfish ways, and her mind numbing relentless tirades, I miss her very much. I would love to be able to call her tomorrow and tell her Happy Mother's day. I will tel lher in prayers tonight instead and ask Jesus to deliver my message. I know she is with me, I have felt her a lot today. It still seems unreal that she is gone.
God is good, and God is just. Our trials and tribulations are brief, and our future with Him by ourside has infinite possibilities. Two of those possibilities are sleeping peacefully upstairs.
I am blessed to be a Christian, a mother, and a wife. God is good, all the time, all the time.