Pushing Away the Unimaginable, or The Sun will Rise November 9th

There are moments that the words don't reach.
There's a suffering too terrible to name.
You hold your child as tight as you can
and push away the unimaginable.
                           --Lin Manuel Miranda, Hamilton


I absolutely love this show.  Anyone who knows me at all knows how much I love it. But I never ever allow myself to listen past the first part of the second act.  I can't listen to their son, Phillip, die. I can't listen to what happens afterward.  This lyric is taken from the song It's Quiet Uptown which is sung just after Phillip dies. I would love to be able to sing it because it is absolutely beautiful, but I can't, because this lyric breaks me every single time. This is what I do every single day.  I push away the unimaginable because if I let myself imagine it, even if just for a split second, I am undone.  The day is over. I can't move. I can't breath. I can't function.

This has been a bad week.  Nothing catastrophic really, just a lot of the same little things, frustrations at work, bad time at chemo, arguments at home.  I am on my second course of antibiotics in one week for two separate illnesses so I haven't felt so great either.  I spend a lot of time looking outward, trying to find good things in the world that I can focus on, so I can say "at least this thing, this is a good thing." Seriously, when I can't find some goodness somewhere, in something, I become almost despondent.  I had such a complete meltdown in church after the bombings in Paris that I ran out of the sanctuary in tears. I had a few of those things last week that I was able to focus on.  Our church had a lovely service for the dead and a church dinner on All Souls Day.  I couldn't bear to go to the service or even to socialize much but I was happy just to hangout behind the scenes setting things up and washing dishes because I knew that service was a good thing.

After Hurricane Matthew there was so much beauty to be found in our community.  Neighbors checked on each other.  They brought each other hot food and gave each other's kids safe places to play.  It didn't matter who had a Trump sign and who had a Clinton sign. Trump voters and Clinton voters came together in our church hall and put together over 300 bag lunches that were given out to the children in our community who were missing out on school lunches due to the flooding. Supporters of both candidates gathered bottled water, clothing, and food and took it to the Salvation Army to make sure the people at the shelters had supplies. Hurricane Matthew went a long way to restoring my faith in humanity.

As the election draws closer, however, these outward signs of goodness in the world are becoming few and far between.  I feel very strongly about who I voted for and it is hard for me to understand those who voted for the other candidate, but I try not to say anything, not on social media anyway. The things people have been posting on Facebook are so upsetting.  Everyone is so vicious. I may need to step away from it all for awhile just because I don't want to see this.  Families attacking each other.  I just want to ask everyone out there to please remember that deep down, you love each other.  Please remember that the sun is going to rise on November 9th and no matter who wins, we are all going to have work to do to repair the rifts that have formed in our nation.  We don't want to have to repair rifts in our families as well.  On November 9th your family will still be your family.  Your friends will still be your friends. Your mom, your dad, your next door neighbor, your Uncle George, your great aunt Edith, your kid's best friends parents, they will still be there and they will still be the same people they were before the election. They are still the same people who read stories to your kid, who taught you how to tie your shoes, who cleaned up after you that time you OD'd on Nacho Cheese Doritos and threw up all over the velour interior of their car. They still love you and you love them. Please do not let this stupid election change all that.

In closing I'm going to ask each of you to do me a little favor.  Before you post something election related on Facebook or Twitter this week, think about Great Aunt Ethel and the Nacho Cheese Dorito incident, think about your old friend and the time she held your hair after you overdid it at a party.  Remember the time your other friend's husband helped you pack up and move on short notice.  Help me find good things in this world so I can push away the unimaginable.  Get involved in something wonderful that your community or your church is doing.  Scan the news and share stories about people helping people. Remind yourself that no matter what happens on November 8th, when November 9th dawns the thing that will move our country forward will be the beautiful, complex human beings that make our country one of the best on the planet.

Surprise

On my tenth birthday my dad took me bowling so we could have some one on one time.  My mom was making homemade pizza and cake.  I had been upset because we couldn’t afford a party that year but I had gotten over it  and was happy to hang out with my family that day.  When we got home I went in the dining room for dinner and all my friends came leaping out from behind doors, in closets, under the table, shouting “SURPRISE!” It was wonderful.  It was the best kind of surprise. 

On April 12th of this year I took my 11 year old daughter to a routine follow up appointment with her neurosurgeon.  She has hydrocephalus diagnosed at age 2, and gets yearly MRIs to follow up from her third ventriculostomy. My daughter was doing great. We were expecting this to be nothing but a quick visit.  We had the 2 year old with us. We had dinner plans with friends.  Instead, that day, we got the worst kind of surprise.  The MRI had found a small growth in her brainstem.  It had been there the year before and was thought to be a benign finding, almost like a birth defect, that had caused her hydrocephalus in the first place. The growth had grown.  In one year it had nearly doubled in size. It wasn’t a benign finding, it was a brain tumor.  My daughter had a brain tumor. My vibrant, beautiful, smart, happy, 11 year old Sarah had a brain tumor. 

We are approaching the 6 month mark and we have at least a year to go in our treatment but I have been thinking back on the last 6 months quite a bit lately.  I have been surprised by so many things in the last 6 months, mainly by the beauty that I have found in people. It started that day. The medical student who found a toy push car and took Hannah for rides while the neurosurgeon and I talked to Sarah.  The nurse practitioner who then took Sarah to “find Hannah” while I talked to the neurosurgeon.  The busy neurosurgeon at the end of her long clinic day who sat there with me while I sobbed, while I begged her to tell me if my baby was going to die. 

I have been surprised by kindness. Everyone we encounter at the hospital is so kind to us. The nurses who seem happy to see us each week, who ask Sarah about all her activities, who act like accessing her port is the funnest thing they have done all day.  The nurse who talked to me about her NICU days when I was exhausted and post call from resuscitating a micropreemie the night before, who then covered me up with a blanket and reclined my chair when I fell asleep.  The doctor and NP who have laughed and talked and cried with us, who remember from week what Sarah said her next week’s plans were and then ask about them. The lady in the bagel shop who always remembers that we drink chai tea lattes, who gets them started when she sees us coming. Finally, the art teacher, who we absolutely love, who makes chemo Wednesdays fun, who remembered my birthday, my Ruthie’s birthday AND Sarah’s birthday, who brought us some of the cakepops she made for her own birthday because I had told her how to make them and she was so proud.

I have been surprised by joy. By the joy that radiates off my daughter as she paints a new masterpiece while her chemo runs. By the joy on her face when she sees her little chemo buddy Ridge, a precious little 3 year old who just loves his Sarah. By the joy I feel every time she and I sneak away for a little mother daughter time after chemo, exploring new restaurants and shops. By the joy we feel as a family when we get home and our magic chemo meal has been delivered so we can just sit down, have dinner, and enjoy each other’s company.  As depressed and angry as I have been the last six months, sometimes the joy is overwhelming.

I have been surprised by friendship. By the people who went from being nice folks we chatted with at church to being people we can count on in a pinch, people who sometimes just drop by with pizza or lasagna. By the woman who went from being a coworker to being the friend who took it on herself to sign people up to bring us food every single week on chemo day.  By the old friend who went from contacting me whenever we were going to be in the same town or whenever one of us had a problem to texting or calling every Wednesday and making sure we planned some time together ASAP.  By the friend who went from “hey you are fun to hang out with and our kids are all besties” to “you are my lifeline and I don’t think I could have survived the last 6 months without you.” So many people say that tough times show you who your real friends are, implying that most people walk away from you when times get tough.  For me, these tough times have shown me that I am surrounded by more wonderful, beautiful, real friends than I ever imagined.

It's Been Awhile

Wow! So much has happened since that last post.  We've been too busy and life has been too messy to take time to post things on the internet beyond Facebook.  Occasionally though, I feel like I have more to say.

  We added Sarah to our family and then BAM, we added a baby.  It has been hectic and crazy but I have to say that things have ended up just like we had hoped, just like Ruthie's picture in that last post (plus Bryan of course and with Hannah added too).  We have a house full of love.  The very thing we wanted. 

Things took an unexpected turn last April with Sarah's tumor diagnosis but we are coping. It has made me want to try my hand back and blogging though.  I have a lot of things in my head that I feel like I need to get out and if reading it helps anybody, or at least gives them enough insight not to hate me when I act weird, so much the better.