Your most significant life event

[LBoz]

My most significant life event was watching my family die. My only sibling contracted hepatitis A, but it had gone undetected until the ascites began. After that it was a constant battle of infections that caused him to be placed on and off the transplant list. He fell into a coma and it was six grueling months before the family and physicians looked to me to make the decision. My parents refused to let him go. One afternoon, I was at his bedside talking to him and I fell asleep holding his hand with my head on his shoulder. I suppose it was a dream, but it was so real. He told me I was holding him back, that his body was gone but he couldn't go anywhere, that he was "stuck" there. I woke in an instant and knew that the decision had to be made. I called the family and staff together and let them know it was time. We stood around his bed with our hands on him while he took his final breaths. My best friend was gone.

Shortly after that I began trying to have a family of my own. I was almost ready to give up after my fifth miscarriage, and my mother was facing a heart valve transplant operation. The operation did not go well, and she didn't wake up from the anesthesia for several days before they decided they needed to go back in and replace the replacement. I know that I conceived my first born the night of her first surgery. I watched her go through the same types of issues that occurred with my brother. In and out of comas, six months of daily trips to Pittsburgh, and me finally pregnant and appearing to be able to carry this child to term. My mom never seemed to realize who I was until that following Thanksgiving. By that time she was trached and still ventilator dependent, but she could whisper and eat small amounts of real food. I prepared all of her favorite holiday foods and spoon fed her tiny amounts of each. At one point I could see the recognition spark in her eyes. She knew it was me. She put her hand on my growing belly, smiled, and said she knew I could do it. That night, after we all had gone home, she fell back into a coma. Her body began to swell with fluids, her organs began to shut down, yet it was still months of suffering until, again, I was asked to make the decision to let yet another family member leave this world. Once again, gathered at the bedside of a loved one, seven months pregnant and needing my mother more than anything in this world, I watched her take her last breaths. I held her hand for what seemed like hours until they finally led me out of the room. I was numb for weeks afterward. My tiny family of four was now down to two. My parents were both only children, so I have no cousins, aunts or uncles to call my own. I felt like an orphan.

Two months later, I gave birth to my tiny son. He's seven years old now, and with every life event of my children, I find myself reaching for the phone to call my mom or my brother. I think that in some ways it made me stronger and definitely more grateful for the simple things. It definitely made me more compassionate as an individual, more patient as a parent, and more empathetic as a nurse. Not a day, rarely an hour, goes by that they don't enter my mind in some way. They're always with me in spirit and frequently in dreams when I think it was all just a big mistake.

The world is not a better place without them, but I am a better person for having known them.

 

[kathylove]

Lori, that is a lot of months of pain and grieving - it must have been REALLY difficult.

I do know what you mean about wanting to call with news. For MANY years after my father died, I thought of calling him when something significant happened, only to realize that I would never be calling him ever again. It still hurts after more than 20 years. But at least he went very quickly, and didn't experience the months of suffering that your family members went through. It is such a shame that people have to suffer through such long illnesses. So sorry you had to go through that.

My father's death was another very important event in my life. I felt like an orphan, even though I was in my 30s. (I hadn't seen my mom since I was in 5th grade, so my dad was a single parent). It took a quite a few years before I could even begin to adjust to the idea of being without parents.

 

[Lucille]

My most significant life event was watching my family die. My only sibling contracted hepatitis A, but it had gone undetected until the ascites began. After that it was a constant battle of infections that caused him to be placed on and off the transplant list. He fell into a coma and it was six grueling months before the family and physicians looked to me to make the decision. My parents refused to let him go. One afternoon, I was at his bedside talking to him and I fell asleep holding his hand with my head on his shoulder. I suppose it was a dream, but it was so real. He told me I was holding him back, that his body was gone but he couldn't go anywhere, that he was "stuck" there. I woke in an instant and knew that the decision had to be made. I called the family and staff together and let them know it was time. We stood around his bed with our hands on him while he took his final breaths. My best friend was gone.

Shortly after that I began trying to have a family of my own. I was almost ready to give up after my fifth miscarriage, and my mother was facing a heart valve transplant operation. The operation did not go well, and she didn't wake up from the anesthesia for several days before they decided they needed to go back in and replace the replacement. I know that I conceived my first born the night of her first surgery. I watched her go through the same types of issues that occurred with my brother. In and out of comas, six months of daily trips to Pittsburgh, and me finally pregnant and appearing to be able to carry this child to term. My mom never seemed to realize who I was until that following Thanksgiving. By that time she was trached and still ventilator dependent, but she could whisper and eat small amounts of real food. I prepared all of her favorite holiday foods and spoon fed her tiny amounts of each. At one point I could see the recognition spark in her eyes. She knew it was me. She put her hand on my growing belly, smiled, and said she knew I could do it. That night, after we all had gone home, she fell back into a coma. Her body began to swell with fluids, her organs began to shut down, yet it was still months of suffering until, again, I was asked to make the decision to let yet another family member leave this world. Once again, gathered at the bedside of a loved one, seven months pregnant and needing my mother more than anything in this world, I watched her take her last breaths. I held her hand for what seemed like hours until they finally led me out of the room. I was numb for weeks afterward. My tiny family of four was now down to two. My parents were both only children, so I have no cousins, aunts or uncles to call my own. I felt like an orphan.

Two months later, I gave birth to my tiny son. He's seven years old now, and with every life event of my children, I find myself reaching for the phone to call my mom or my brother. I think that in some ways it made me stronger and definitely more grateful for the simple things. It definitely made me more compassionate as an individual, more patient as a parent, and more empathetic as a nurse. Not a day, rarely an hour, goes by that they don't enter my mind in some way. They're always with me in spirit and frequently in dreams when I think it was all just a big mistake.

The world is not a better place without them, but I am a better person for having known them.

Lori, this account of part of your life left me in tears. I'm sad for your losses, but happy about your son. You are such a strong and beautiful person, but you've been through so much, too much.

 

[Lucille]

It took a quite a few years before I could even begin to adjust to the idea of being without parents.

I see that coming for me, my Dad is old and frail. I can see that it would take a long time to get through the loss of parents, Kathy.

 

[Rich Z]

You know, I think that life is just chock full of many forks in the road, all of which will lead your life in one direction or another. And like pieces on a chessboard, they are all interrelated, not only with your own future, but with the futures of countless others. For instance, my decision in my younger years to play music professionally led me into a situation where I needed legal help, and that in turn led me to an attorney whose daughter was Connie. Whose own sequence of events put her at that same place at that same time. How many of those little outwardly insignificant forks in the road could have made the outcome completely different then how it turned out?

Or how about the time that I decided that I wanted to see if my corn snakes were acclimated to captivity by breeding them? Who could have ever imagined where that decision would lead? Had I gotten all infertile eggs, heck, that might have been the catalyst for me to take a completely different fork at that juncture. And how many people has this corn snake fetish of mine touched over the years that would not have taken place?

I dunno, I guess I think I am more molded by all the little influences then any one major event. There are just so many of them that I can look back on and realize that my life now could be completely different at any of those junctures had I gone the other route.

 

[snakewispera snr]

I see that coming for me, my Dad is old and frail. I can see that it would take a long time to get through the loss of parents, Kathy.

Don't even go there..... One thing I am not looking forward to...
I have been trying to envisage every emotion in preparation for the inevitable...
(No not morbid.... I get massive amounts of time to think and reflect... It's a welder thing... Hours alone with your arc .... And there's only so many subjects to ponder before you have to dig deep..... LOL)
Anyway......
I figure loosing either parent is going to be hard, but the clear out of personal belonging must be the killer....
There's possibly other scenarios I haven;t thought about yet, good really,
I haven't worked these out yet......

 

[desertanimal]

Anyway......
I figure loosing either parent is going to be hard, but the clear out of personal belonging must be the killer....

Your story was very touching, Lori.

I have been thinking about families a lot lately. A friend of mine just lost his father to pancreatic cancer while he was teaching a field school in Ethiopia. He came back for the funeral and then went back to Ethiopia to finish the field school. During this time, his wife was posting lots of stuff on facebook about their grief. I kept telling Kristi that if my mom died I wouldn't be inclined to rush back right away, since, after all, she would be dead, so what would be the rush in having the funeral? Why not just wait until the field school is over and then have it? Kristi said, "I think the point, Stephanie, is that the family is grieving, and that you want to come back to be all together for the initial grieving." "Oh," I said, "Yeah. I hadn't thought of that."

This event was juxtaposed with my grandmother's death two weeks ago. Kristi and I are heading to the DC area this week for the funeral (they already had the memorial services and stuff). I am dreading it, because my family is so depressing, the weather there is so depressing, funerals are sort of depressing, etc. And I was trying to figure out, yesterday, who I might see there. Would my little sister be there? Would my cousins? My grandparents were both only children, so the entire extended family consisted only of my aunts, uncles, and cousins. I spent every Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, grandparents' anniversary, grandparents' birthdays with these people, yet, I don't know where my cousins live. Heck, I don't even know where my sister or father live. Then I started to wonder, What happened? Why are we not in better communication? Nothing terrible happened. There was never any explosion, never any un-healable rift. We're different from each other, but so are lots of people's family members. Why didn't we stick together like other families do? Why didn't my mom send me some Christmas money or return my texts on Christmas day last year when I was half a world away having Christmas by myself? Why didn't she return my phone calls the Christmas before? Why does my wife's brother's in-laws who live in San Diego know more about what I'm up to in my academic career than the uncle and grandmother that lives (and lived, respectively) a half hour from my mother? It's like we were missing some glue that other families have. What was that glue? And then I realized what it was. It was love. We just never had it. It was just never there, so as we aged and had no obligation to spend holidays together--when we moved away from each other and as the matriarch and patriarch became too old to have sufficient gravitational pull to bring us together (and are now dead, so that's it for that)--we just dissolved--like salt molecules in water. So then I wondered, why didn't we have love? And as I considered every person in my extended family, one by one, I finally realized that most of them are/were broken people who had never really known how to love. With that realization, I was able to let go of a bit of anger I'd been having trouble letting go of, and I also realized how lucky I am because I have always known how to love--myself first, and then others. And knowing how to do that is probably why I'm by far the happiest and most content person in all of my family.

When my own mother dies, I don't expect to feel orphaned. I don't even expect to be all that sad. In some ways, that's a good thing. But in some ways I am jealous of those of you who've hurt so much when you've lost family members, because on the other side of that coin (the pain and missing) was true love. I have plenty of love in my life now--so much that I count myself very fortunate, but it would have been nice to have had it from the beginning.

 

[jesserca]

I picked falling in love. I am only 23 so in ten years who knows what I would pick? I am young and although I know better, I'm naive. LoL. There have been many turning points in my life, my father having cancer, finding out I have a nice little brain tumor friend in my brain, but falling in love was it for me. I was always advanced for my age, and I saw highschool relationships as frankly stupid and trivial. Who would know that at 15 I would see this tall guy with long hair and eyeliner and end up with him for the rest of my life. My life has had hardships, as have everyone's, but Kyle has been with me for almost all of them. I struggled for a long time even during my engagement on marrying a man who I've been with since I was 16. How could we know what else there is out there, are we making a huge mistake? But through it all he is the one who is always there, and always backs me up, and loves me for all my eccentricities. Maybe in 10 years I will disagree with this but I hope not.

 

[vetusvates]

Lori, this account of part of your life left me in tears. I'm sad for your losses, but happy about your son. You are such a strong and beautiful person, but you've been through so much, too much.

Ditto, Lucillle, big time.
Lori, I was thinking about a nap, but a big catharsis in the afternoon now has me wide awake.
Most (maybe all...LOL) of my significant events were negative or depressing. But if I can LOL about them, and share them with a dry eye (because there was a time when I just could not speak of them), or even a little sarcasm or satire, they had to have made me a deeper person, at least I hope. Over the months, your typed words, and the two brief conversations we've had by phone, certainly are testament to your having grown taller and stronger through adversity.

Stephanie, wow, you are a very deep and discerning creature. On my mother's side, and she's an only child, was always a family very close and loving and affectionate. On my father's side, much as you so eloquently describe, is that lack of connection. In retrospect, in my case, there may have been love there, after a fashion, but a formality and lack of affection that came to facilitate a disconnect later in life. "No glue" is certainly an understandable metaphor.

 

[vetusvates]

I picked falling in love.....
.....But through it all he is the one who is always there, and always backs me up, and loves me for all my eccentricities.

How sweetly said, jesserca.

 

[LBoz]

Ditto, Lucillle, big time.
Lori, I was thinking about a nap, but a big catharsis in the afternoon now has me wide awake.
Most (maybe all...LOL) of my significant events were negative or depressing. But if I can LOL about them, and share them with a dry eye (because there was a time when I just could not speak of them), or even a little sarcasm or satire, they had to have made me a deeper person, at least I hope. Over the months, your typed words, and the two brief conversations we've had by phone, certainly are testament to your having grown taller and stronger through adversity.

Thank you Eric and Lucille. I have grown so fond of you both.
Eric, there was a brief time that I felt all was lost between us. I am so happy and blessed to know you, and to know that we are, indeed, friends.

 

[Nanci]

DYK Lori, I dream about my dead parents all the time. It used to be very rare, and I would wake up and be all disoriented, but now it happens several times a week. Often I dream of my daughter as a very young child, too. I wonder why. I find the dreams of my parents very comforting. I can't recall their voices sitting here now, but when I dream, there they are.

 

[LBoz]

DYK Lori, I dream about my dead parents all the time. It used to be very rare, and I would wake up and be all disoriented, but now it happens several times a week. Often I dream of my daughter as a very young child, too. I wonder why. I find the dreams of my parents very comforting. I can't recall their voices sitting here now, but when I dream, there they are.

It IS comforting, isn't it? In my dreams, there is a specific home, and I can tell you where everything is and what is in every drawer, nook and cranny. It's become almost a second "home" to me. It was confusing at first, but now I don't question it, I simply revel in it.

 

[ratsncorns]

Angela, dang girl, what were you thinking? You are so sweet and quiet and angelic in person...I can't even imagine you have that much "gangsta" in you! LOL!

LOL... you have NO idea! :dgrin:

 

[ratsncorns]

I can _so_ picture you doing that. You have a devilish look in your eyes...I bet you'd touch an alligator with me!!

I sure would!

 

[Lucille]

I dunno, I guess I think I am more molded by all the little influences then any one major event. There are just so many of them that I can look back on and realize that my life now could be completely different at any of those junctures had I gone the other route.

I remember a small but important fork. Years ago, I found Fauna and decided I wanted to register. I must have done something wrong because I couldn't finish the registration process. I somehow was able to send a message through, and you helped me complete my registration.

If it had been your busy season when your cornsnakes were on eggs, you might not have had the time to help me register, and this thread would have never been written, there would perhaps be fewer rough spots on Fauna, and I'd be writing and setting up polls elsewhere. You are right, sometimes small events send ripples far into the future.

 

[desertanimal]

Stephanie, wow, you are a very deep and discerning creature. On my mother's side, and she's an only child, was always a family very close and loving and affectionate. On my father's side, much as you so eloquently describe, is that lack of connection. In retrospect, in my case, there may have been love there, after a fashion, but a formality and lack of affection that came to facilitate a disconnect later in life. "No glue" is certainly an understandable metaphor.

Haha. Discerning, definitely. Deep . . . I don't know about that.

My father's side is even worse than my mother's. My paternal grandparents haven't spoken to me since high school, because I had to audacity as a female child to publicly disagree with my grandfather (he insisted that snakes had ears like lizards, and I insisted that they did not and, since he persisted, told him as politely as I could that he didn't know what he was talking about). They only "love" you if act exactly as they think you should act. They don't understand that loving someone has nothing to do with yourself, that it's not about YOU--it has to do with appreciating that person for who he or she is, largely irrespective of his or her interactions with you.

 

[kathylove]

"...It's like we were missing some glue that other families have. What was that glue? And then I realized what it was. It was love. We just never had it..."

OMG, I think that is even more sad than Lori's experiences! I just can't even IMAGINE not spending occasional long hours on the phone with my brother in Az, or visiting him and taking trips. Or visiting my other brother and sister in Ga, and spending many holidays with most of them, including many of their kids. It is even more important since losing my dad, and never having really had a mom. I just can't think of what it would be like without them! It is so sad to think that you have never known that love, and thus can't know what you are missing.

Of course, since we never had kids, many friends and relatives say the same thing to me, lol! Although we did "raise" my niece from around 15 through college, we never had the diaper stage. And we will never know both the joy and sorrow that our friends and relatives will experience.

 

[Nanci]

My family isn't very "glued" and we're scattered to the ends of the earth (or the US) these days. Still, when we do come together for a birth, a funeral, a rare family reunion, to me, it's like we never were apart. I love them, and they love me, even if we lose touch for months or even years.

 

[desertanimal]

"...It's like we were missing some glue that other families have. What was that glue? And then I realized what it was. It was love. We just never had it..."

OMG, I think that is even more sad than Lori's experiences! . . . It is so sad to think that you have never known that love, and thus can't know what you are missing.

Of course, since we never had kids, many friends and relatives say the same thing to me, lol! . . . And we will never know both the joy and sorrow that our friends and relatives will experience.

Heh heh. It's not that bad, Kathy. Certainly many, many people have much, much worse when it comes to family!

But you're right--I don't know what I'm missing. I see it sometimes in other people, and I long for it, but it's only fleeting. Like you said it's the same thing as not having kids--stuff (joy, sorrow, frustration) you're missing out on that other people experience. But really that's true of everything in life, right? I got to experience the joy, frustration, difficulty, amazing-ness of living in MadLand for a year, doing something I love to do. Lots of those people who have kids opt out of the opportunity to experience those sorts of things. I have a lot of love and a lot of loves in my life, so on the whole, though I missed out on one that lots of people really rely on (being loved by family), and though I'm opting out of another (having and loving my own kids), on the whole I feel that I'm a very lucky person with a very full and rich life. You can't have everything; I have enough.