Why I Claimed Mother's Day This Year

On Sunday, I got to be part of something that has eluded me my entire adult life.  At age 42, I finally got to be part of a Mother’s Day celebration.  This year, the day wasn’t just about honoring my mom and nana, although I was and always am grateful to have the opportunity to do so.   This year was different.  This year, I was the center of the universe to the one who now knows me as “Mommy.”

To rewind to nearly a year ago, Mark and I decided to expand our family. We did our research, worked on the logistics, and finally connected with the people who eventually found us the little one who would bring life and love into our home.  Following all the formalities that one goes through when they are about to adopt, we met Charlie in person.  He had just turned two years old and was quite a pip.  Charlie hadn’t had the best life thus far, which is why he had been in a foster home while awaiting adoption.  When we first met Charlie, he wasn’t our biggest fan.  We could tell Charlie distrusted us, and we really couldn’t blame him.  The limited information we had about Charlie’s early life included an alcoholic dad, a divorce and probably verbal – if not physical – abuse.  It wasn’t until folks outside the family got involved that Charlie was moved to foster care to await a permanent home.  Although his foster mom was very nice and loving, Charlie’s emotional scars were pretty deep.  We knew we were each taking a chance on each other.

Once the adoption was finalized on July 27, 2016, he was all ours.  Talk about nerves.  Would I know what to do?  Would I know how to meet all his needs and make him feel as loved as he deserved?  Besides filling the house with some toys, yummy foods and other comforts of home, we also decided to change his name.  It was going to be a new start all around, so Charlie became Chance.  We were his second chance, and we were both taking a chance on each other.

On his first night, we were fully prepared for crying, restlessness and sleep deprivation for all of us.  Despite what I always swore would be strict bedtime rules, we let Chance sleep with us.  That moment when he climbed into our bed came so naturally, and I wasn’t about to separate him from us on his first night in a strange home.  It must have been the right thing to do, because he fell into a beautiful sleep and didn’t make a sound all night.

Mark was able to take some time off work to be with Chance, but I went back to my job right away.  When we both had to return to work, it was very difficult.  We worried all day about how he was doing, and couldn’t wait to be with him again.  As for me, I would worry about him even when I was home.  One night at bedtime, after he was with us for only about a month, I was watching him sleep and for a moment I swore he wasn’t breathing.  I watched him for a few seconds and then starting yelling his name, as well as Mark’s.  Chance woke up, startled, and just stared groggily at me.  All I could do was burst into tears, full of relief.  I guess the flashbacks of worrying about Mike always stick with me.

Most days have been full of great joy.  We have loved getting to introduce Chance to family and friends, though it’s obvious he has trust issues that will need a lot of work.  Hopefully the pain of his past will lessen over his lifetime and allow him to let people get close to him.  He has so much love to give.  Whether we go to the store, the Starbucks drive-thru, or just walk through the neighborhood, people always comment on how beautiful he is.  I know it’s just like a mother to think their little one is beautiful, but I can honestly say Chance is gorgeous.  He is a typical two-year-old – funny, curious and hard to keep up with.  He prefers junk food over fruits and vegetables, but we try to steer him away from the bad stuff.  He tries to get into everything throughout the house.  Chance mostly sleeps throughout the night, but occasionally cries when he needs something.  While I sometimes wake up exhausted, I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything.

Chance gets into his share of trouble.  We hate to have to raise our voices at him, but sometimes it’s the only way to get his attention when he isn’t listening.  He has gotten a few time-outs, but he is also rewarded for his good behavior.  He has bonded with me and Mark as his new mommy and daddy, and I can’t believe how much I have fallen in love with this little guy that I didn’t give birth to myself.  In a little over two months, he will turn three years old.  The adventure is just beginning.

Back to Mother’s Day, I woke up Sunday morning with a different feeling than I’ve experienced in recent years.  This year, I felt a real connection with the holiday that honors mothers, and Mark made sure I knew how much I was loved.  I didn’t have the same dread or pain in the pit of my stomach.  Some sadness still lingered, as all the longing and disappointment of the past can’t be erased, but there was a definite difference this year.  The day started with Chance's face in mine, along with some cuddles in bed.  When I made my way to the kitchen, I found a beautiful “mom” card with gifts that included jewelry and a gorgeous pink azalea. 

I cannot wait to find the perfect spot in our yard to place the plant that celebrates my first Mother’s Day.  Hopefully, Chance won’t eat it.

Oh, did I forget to mention that Chance is a German Shepherd?

Happy Mother’s Day to moms of all creatures, great and small.

Another October 14

Tomorrow is four years.  I don’t even know what to write about that, except that I can’t believe it.  Kinda scary, actually.  Tomorrow will be the first anniversary that I actually went to work on October 14, though I am only going in for half a day and then taking the rest of the day for some time to myself.  People are already starting to share beautiful memories of Mike, which is what I need.  Remarriage doesn’t negate my need to feel that Mike is still as loved and remembered as any other time since we lost him.  I certainly don’t miss him or love him any less….

Trifecta

It's that time of year again.  It's the trifecta -- September (Mike's birthday), October (anniversary of his passing) and November (our wedding anniversary).  My body seems to realize when this time is coming, even when my mind is not purposely thinking about it.  Even after the trifecta passes, we move right into Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's.  It's like falling down at the shoreline and having wave after wave crush your ass into the sand.

Some good things have been happening lately, but I've felt unusually sad.  I can't seem to shake it.  I have been struggling, and I recognize it.  Mark does his best to be supportive, but I know it's hard on him.  It can't be easy.  I still talk to Mike in my sleep, I'm told, which has included crying, laughing and seemingly normal conversation.  And I never have a recollection of any of it.

I know great losses change you and stay with you, but I wonder if they sometimes do more -- I wonder if they can just mess you up too much.

In less than two hours, the trifecta begins.  Happy 44th birthday, Mikey.

Closure? Rubbish

I watched this and cried -- because she gets it.  Totally worth the watch.

Scars

Here's a nice sentiment I recently read:

Mike used to say that scars were cool (Lord knows he had a few scars caused by cancer -- scars that were both physical and emotional).

I'll second that motion.  I have my scars, but they're the result of loving someone with my whole heart.  I can't say they're cool, but I did survive the cause of those scars.  I will wear them with pride because I have to, and because I am living proof that my scars didn't hold me hostage in an emotional hell.  I clawed my way back to the land of the living, and loving, and I continue to claw my way forward.

Maybe scars are cool.....

Newly Wed

Married in a private ceremony on April 24.  Celebrated with loved ones the following day.  Honeymoon getaway to Las Vegas.

More to follow.

Who's Gonna Know But Me

There’s an old song country music song (“old” meaning from 1994) that my dad and I both liked.  It was a song by Kathy Mattea called “Who’s Gonna Know.”  If I remember correctly, the song was written by Mattea’s husband, and he wrote it after watching his wife and her siblings laughing and interacting at a get-together.  Mattea’s husband, an only child, watched in both joy and some sadness at how his wife and her family loved, laughed and shared memories together.  He knew that someday, when both his parents were deceased, he would have nobody to share their family memories with.

On the eve of my marriage to Mark, I am reflective.  I am always reflective, but tonight more so.  As I have expressed many times, I have a huge fear of loss; now more than ever.  When it comes to Mike, I have been embattled with the fear of losing our memories.  The memories I fear losing aren’t necessarily the typical ones: What was our wedding day like?  What did we do and see on our trip to Ireland?  How did it feeling taking a trip to Bermuda with the entire family?  Those memories are fairly easy to recall and keep sharp.  It’s the “small memories” -- the ones only Mike and I shared and knew about -- that I fear losing.  Our inside jokes.  A memorable late-night conversation before falling asleep.  An epiphany about personal growth that we came to together.  A feeling or experience we discussed.  A special secret we shared.  We had a language that only we understood.  We could convey a thought with just a look, and only we knew what it meant.  It’s those memories that can’t be triggered by looking at a photograph, or recalled by reminiscing with family and friends.  These are the most sacred of all memories with a spouse, and yet they are the easiest to lose when one half
of the couple is gone.

I have feared being the sole keeper of these most precious memories.  That’s a big job.  It has overwhelmed me at times.  It has worried me to the point of panic.  While I always love hearing others share Mike stories, it’s the Mike stories that just belonged to the two of us that I fear losing the most.  I am the sole keeper of the flame.

In January 2010, when Mike nearly died from pneumonia, he was spooked to the point of keeping
a journal, secretly and written specifically to me only, for one year.  He gave me the journal as my Christmas gift at the end of that year.  It is the most treasured thing I have from him.  While the notebook contains his private thoughts to me, I will share what he wrote on page one: He said he hoped and planned for us living a long life together, and one day being able to read the journal together and laugh.  But if that didn’t happen, and he wasn’t here to grow old with me, he wanted the journal to serve as his memories to me.  I tearfully read the journal when he first gave it to me.  I haven’t yet been able to read it since. 

After Mike passed, and my panic of forgetting things began to set in, I also wanted to keep a journal written only to him, even though he wouldn’t get to read it.  I frequently penned the thoughts as they came to me.  The notes consisted of all the memories that only we shared, which I wanted forever logged so my brain could be released from the pressure of constantly replaying them in order to keep them fresh.  I carried the notes around forever, and in fact, I didn’t actually start putting them in journal form until within the last year.  Once again, Mark respected my need to do this, and understood why I had procrastinated with it for so long.  Now, the notebook is complete, and if a specific memory comes to me on a given day, I know I can pull out the journal and jot it down. There, they're safe.

Mark and I are creating our own special memories that are just shared by us, and we’ll continue to create more.  We will have our own inside jokes and our own secrets.  That’s the beauty of marriage, and thankfully I am in a place where I can once again create memories that are alive and well.

Who Do You See When You Look at Me?

What do you see when you look at this picture?

The picture above is one of those well-known optical-illusion images.  If you haven't seen it before, it's pretty neat.  Depending on which way your initial perception leans, you may immediately see a young, beautiful woman.  If your inclination goes the other way, you will see a decrepit old woman.  At any given moment, both women exist.  Amazingly, they inhabit the same space, and they can change, literally, in the blink of an eye.  Neither is wrong, and neither is more valid than the other.  If the young woman embodies health, happiness and a fruitful life ahead of her, the old woman embodies weariness, fatigue and a life coming to a close.  I think about both of these women, as I have been, and are, both. I have thought about it a lot over the past few years.  I have thought about it when I've had a disagreement with someone -- I see things one way and they see things another way.  I have thought about it when I hear people insulting others' faith, and wonder how two ways of looking at the world can be so far apart.  The time I've thought about this picture most, though, is when I have mulled over my journey through grief.

In the days and weeks before losing Mike, I often felt like that old woman.  I was exhausted, stressed and felt much older than my 36 years.  I remember looking in the mirror in Mike's hospital room and shaking my head at the blotchy skin and bags under my eyes.  The young woman who still clung to the hope of health and a future was still living within me, but she and the old woman were in a grave battle.  When Mike passed, the old woman won.  She won for a very, very long time.  I surrendered.  Game over -- nothing to show for it.  The eight-and-a-half years of the on-and-off war against cancer had taken everything out of me.  The constant worry about what could happen had become my nightmare come true.  I now began to re-live all the moments of stress, pain, triumph and disappointment, and yet unlike before, I had to live with knowing the awful outcome.  I knew the horrible ending to the story and I couldn't protect Mike from it.  My heartache manifested within me like a memory Rolodex, complete with flashes of horrible hospital images (some of which still race through my mind at night when I'm trying to fall asleep).  The young woman who insisted that this was all a huge mistake -- that Mike and I should be picking out baby names or paint samples -- was dwarfed by the old woman who was picking out a casket and funeral music.  The separation from Mike was unbearable.  Living each minute without him felt like being forced to stay awake when you're on the brink of exhaustion.  I always felt like he and I had this "twin thing," always knowing what the other was feeling and thinking, and now I was left without half of myself.  And although we hated the source of part of our closeness, Mike's illness gave us a bond that drew us closer than most couples.  Now, I had to bear that aftermath without him.  I had memories, but you can't have a relationship with a memory.

Over time, I managed things better -- at least in front of other people.  When I reached my max for "managing," I kept to myself where I could grieve as I needed to.  Life was now to be lived with an asterisk (*).  Everything post-Mike was different and would always be different.  I likened it to living with a chronic condition -- it was nearly impossible in the beginning, but I eventually learned how to live with it.  Some days were better than others, and now I have more good days than bad.  There are still flare-ups, and I don't always know when they'll come.  However, today, the young woman wins more often than the old woman.

I have my "old woman" moments, moments when I think about what could have been had Mike finally beat cancer.  I still miss our silliness.  I still miss taking care of him, doting on him, even buying him snacks like the ones I'd bring him in the hospital, praying he'd be interested enough in them to eat.  I still miss how that little bit of Southern accent (adopted from years of living in Florida) would sometimes come out when he spoke.  Our own relationship aside, I grieve the fact that he lost his life.  When I have my moments, especially about the most horrible images, I may squint, contort my face and shake away the thoughts.  Ironically, I see the same grimaces on the faces of the memory-impaired residents at work when they are trying to remember things they realize they've forgotten.  I do the opposite.

Meanwhile, the young woman in me has interest in life again.  I often get excited about things and want to have experiences again.  Thank God Mark has the same desire.  It's funny -- people often talk about items on their bucket list, but, sadly, Mike and I had to focus so often on simply avoiding the bucket.  Now, I am slowly trying to take advantage of the time I have left on this earth to enjoy life, and part of that I do in honor of Mike, always aware of how his time here was cut short.  Still "young woman" has a conundrum.  Dare she hope again?  I think about my favorite line in "The Hunger Games," a movie Mark has made me obsessed with.  The line, spoken by the diabolical President Snow, goes like this:  "Hope:  It is the only thing stronger than fear.  A little hope is effective.  A lot of hope is dangerous.  A spark is fine, as long as it's contained."  "Young woman" wants to hope, but "old woman" is wiser and knows better.  She has seen the harshness of life.  I know "young woman" will triumph most of the time because that's my nature, but "old woman" lives inside me, too.

Who do you see when you look at me?  I'm sure most people now see "young woman," and that's good.  That's accurate most of the time.  Thanks to Mark and our love and our plans for marriage and a future, "young woman" is more and more visible.  She has come out from under the covers.  But don't be alarmed or confused when "old woman" comes out.  She is weary and some days "young woman" just isn't strong enough to outshine her.  "Old woman" still needs to be heard.  She sometimes needs to be comforted.  She's been through a lot and she still needs support.  Embrace both of them, because no matter which one you may see from your perspective, they're both here.

Reengaging

I cheated myself.  I didn’t do it intentionally, but I did it. 

Several months ago, on October 18, I accepted a marriage proposal from the sweetest man I’ve met in the last year and a half.  Our engagement took place in the middle of Times Square’s hustle and bustle, and yet it was somehow sweetly intimate and private.  Several passersby who witnessed what was unfolding squealed and “oooh’d” at the sight, and a couple of them even took pictures (one of them texted it to us so we would have that candid moment captured on film – er, I mean phone).  Over the next few minutes and hours, we reveled in the excitement of being newly engaged, and laughed and conspired like junior high kids about how it was still our own little secret.  We had our likenesses sketched by a caricature artist on the street, then continued on to a lovely dinner in the heart of the city.  The special weekend continued the following afternoon with a trip to see “Blue Man Group” as well as some more sights around town.  Once we returned home, we slowly began sharing the news with our closest family and friends.  The next day, I shared the news with my in-laws (which was very tough), and soon thereafter made it “Facebook official.”  It was lovely and perfect and I couldn’t have asked for anything more.

Why, then, wasn’t I exactly on cloud nine?

I am so thankful to have met Mark, and thankful that I didn’t give up on life after losing Mike.  I am thankful that on April 24, Mark and I will get married and start the next chapter of our lives together.  I must make these things very clear before I continue.  The problem isn’t with Mark.  The problem is with me.  I wasn’t prepared for the feelings my engagement would stir up in me – feelings that I was moving farther and farther away from Mike and our life together.  For so long, I have protected my relationship with Mike by putting it in a sort of grand display case – like a precious gem – complete with glowing luminescence to highlight its beauty and perfection.  I put our relationship on a pedestal, in a class by itself.  How now was I supposed to tell people that I’m going to be devoting my life to someone new?  One of the residents at the assisted living where I work recently made a comment that caught my attention.  Florence’s husband died at age 46.  One afternoon, she said to me, “People asked me why I didn’t get married again.  I said, ‘I know what I had….’”  That comment made me well up with tears that I quickly had to hide.  I have operated under that same way of thinking for so long.  I lived for almost three years in a horizontal haze, spending more time than I can count lying on the couch, the front of my shirt completely soaked in tears, in utter disbelief at what happened.  I remember being at work and sitting in my supervisor’s office about five months after Mike died (roughly two months after I returned to work).  I told him I couldn’t continue to work.  I couldn’t function.  I cried and cried and kept saying, “I just want my old life back.”  He retorted, “You can’t have your old life back.”  I almost hated him for saying that.  He soon followed with, “You’re young.  You might meet someone.”  I almost hated him more for saying that.  When he proceeded to get on the phone and call potential therapists for me until I finally landed an appointment, I could barely recognize his role in the earliest moments of my path to help.  And meanwhile, God knew I wasn’t through.  He was preparing to send Mark to me, long before I was prepared to entertain any such plan.

Fast forward to last fall.  I had already been painting myself into a corner over the preceding months.  I was rather private and reserved about my new relationship, and I wanted to tread lightly with respect to my family, friends, and I think even Mike.  So when the news of our engagement went viral, I was overwhelmed.  Some were a little surprised, some were a little shocked, but every bit of feedback I received was positive.  Most people were over the moon for me.  And yet I found myself wading through all the positivity, like slashing my way through a jungle, trying to find the truth about how they really felt.  They must be upset.  They must think I’ve “gotten over” Mike and that I’m all healed.  They must think my life is perfect again.  They must think I don’t want to (or need to) talk about Mike anymore.  They must think my pain is completely gone.  They must think I’ve moved too fast.

One night (one of many), when we were talking through my struggles, Mark said the words that I needed to hear.  He just looked at me and said, “Nobody expects you to spend the rest of your life as a grieving widow, sad and in pain.  Nobody….except for you.”

Wow.  There it was.  I was cheating myself.      

Mark has reassured me time and time again that he is here to add to my life – not replace anything.  To put that into perspective, one of my re-married widow friends says this:  Just as a parent loves all their children and doesn’t compare them, a deceased spouse is just as loved as ever, and there need be no competition or comparison between the previous spouse and the current spouse.  I will take that one step further:  If a parent should (God forbid) lose a child, do they stop loving him or her?  Don’t they love their remaining children just as much?  And should they create a new life after loss, does that child replace the one who has died?  No.  I try to explain my love for Mike and Mark in the same way.  I will always love Mike, and I will always miss Mike.  I will always grieve the lost hopes, dreams and plans we shared.  I will always be angry at how cheated he was.  Our love was unique and special and cannot be compared to any other love.  In my new life, I love Mark in a special and just-as-unique way.

Still, I remain terrified of more loss.  That’s the root of my problem.  Over the past year, I have been sure I was going to lose people.  I was sure Mike’s friends would keep in touch less and less, until they disappeared from my life completely (after all, without Mike, what interest would they have in me?).  I was terrified I would lose my in-laws – these wonderful people who have been as close and supportive as if they were my own blood relatives.  I was sure people would stop talking about Mike, and would think I didn’t want him brought up in conversation.  I was sure that my family would take down any pictures or reminders of Mike, so as not to upset Mark, and also adopt a “that was the past, this is the present” attitude.  I have been fearfully anticipating others’ erasure of my 10 years with Mike, as if they never happened.  Those difficult anniversaries would now be treated as any other day, and the support I still need would be gone.  I lost Mike physically three and a half years ago, and now I was going to lose every last trace of him I have left, including his name.  My grip on everything Mike seemed to become even tighter.

It took weeks after the engagement to really begin feeling excited.  Until then, it was like I was grieving another sort of loss.  For three years I had gotten used to being Mike’s widow, which was all I had left being I could no longer be his wife.  I had settled into the comfortable, albeit reluctant, role of being Mrs. Michael Coyne, sharing memories and talking about Mike as the still-center of my universe.  I had my pictures, my mementos, my routines.  Just as I was “settling” into this reality, along came someone I wasn’t expecting.  It took a lot of time, tears and talking to figure out how to weave this new person into my life, while being true to the person I’d become – a person with a lost love imbedded in her heart.  I found a way to make a new relationship work – but marriage?  That brought with it an entirely new responsibility.  Mark and I had talked about marriage for a while, and I was all for it, but once news of the engagement began to seep out, I was blindsided by a flurry of feelings – fear, uneasiness, renewed grief, desertion.  How could I be excited about becoming someone else’s wife when the husband I lost had permanent residency in my heart?  And how do I weave my two worlds into one?  After all, Mike wasn’t just some guy I dated – he was my best friend, my partner and my entire world.  Plus, his illness gave us a special closeness that most couples never get to experience.  Now I felt like I faced the exhausting task of managing this delicate balancing act – talking about Mike in the right amount and context.  And since Mike is such a big part of who I am, to keep that hidden would be like hiding part of myself.

Over the weeks and months post-engagement, I began to make peace with some of these feelings and become more comfortable and eager about remarriage.  It hasn’t been easy, and Mark and I have had many tear-filled talks, sometimes going over the same difficult hurdles multiple times.  This adjustment period is still a work in progress, but we have promised each other that we will get through our struggles together.  Today, as Mark and I are less than a month away from exchanging vows, I am getting more and more excited about the big day – genuinely excited.  Mark has helped me immensely with this growing comfort, as have family, friends and my therapist.  They have reassured me that Mike is not forgotten, and that shows when people simply speak his name.  I suspect that as the big day nears, I will have some twinges of mixed feelings – not because I doubt my love for Mark, but because yet another chapter in my life with is Mike closing.  That chapter, however, has not been deleted.  My commitment to Mark doesn’t negate any of my love for Mike – it just puts it in a new place in my life.  In fact, maybe because my marriage to Mike was so wonderful, it will allow me to have another wonderful marriage because I know what true love looks like.  I don't want to live the rest of my life cheating myself.  After all, cheaters never win.