October 24, 2013

It came.  It was hard.  Kids were great, for the most part.  I'll explain some of the drama in a later post, but here are some pictures from the day.  I think they are some of my best.

 

Four years.  Twenty balloons.  And still lots and lots of love

Dread and Acceptance

The week of dread is upon us.

Thursday is the four year anniversary of the accident.  It seems like just yesterday, unimaginable that it's been that long.

The kids are a bit off.  We all are. They love the morning when we meet at a local park, eat breakfast. play on the playground and send our balloon messages to heaven.  Everyone seems to put all of the underlying tensions aside and just enjoy being together and remembering Jeanne and Mike.  I actually look forward to the morning.  I spend the morning behind the lens of my camera capturing the day and the love our family holds for each other.

For me, for whatever reason, it's the night before that gets me.  As bizarre as this sounds, it feels like the accident is going to happen all over again.  The horror and shock. 

In my head, I run through all of the images that encapsulate that night and the days and week following.  Telling E and M their parents were dead.  Holding KT in my arms and picking out the glass from her hair.  Coming home to K and sobbing.  Scenes from the funeral.  Seeing E walk into her parent's room, falling face down on their bed and sobbing...the first time I saw her cry about it.  Sitting on the floor outside of 18 month old KT's room listening to her cry for her mommy and not being able to do anything.

The questions come flooding in as well.  Did she know what was happening?  Why couldn't Mike stay on his side of the road?  Was she ever in pain?  Does she know we have the girls?  Does she know we're doing the best we can?  Does she know how often I think of her and how they are never forgotten?  Not even for a day.  Does she know how much I love her?

Why them?  Why us?

There is a bit of a difference this year.  I feel the dread, but I know that it will be over soon.  I know that we just need to remember and get through.  Maybe this is the first step towards acceptance? Acceptance that the accident really happened and that they aren"t coming back.  This is it.  This is our life.

Strangely this insight makes me feel better like I'm moving the boulder called grief further down the road.

Stats, Furloughs, and the Month of October

I'm pretty active on Facebook.  I post funny things about the kids, pictures from vacations and, of course, all of A's videos on herpetology and skateboarding.  I especially like how this forum has allowed me to keep in touch with, and often reacquaint myself with, childhood friends and teammates.  I like Facebook.

I've mentioned it a few times around here about how the girls get significantly more attention in comparison to the boys.  My parents are the worst in this area.  I'm getting used to my parents first asking about the girls and then the boys get an inquiry almost as an afterthought or something they know they are "supposed" to do.  C and S think I'm exaggerating about this, but they too cross this line and, frankly, have absolutely no idea what it's like for our family.  I think at this point the boys blow it off and shrug their shoulders, simply accepting that grandma and grandpa go to all of M's games and E gets special dinners.  I can't tell you how many times a day I get the dreaded question, "How ARE the girls?" It gets so old.  It still hurts my feelings.

On Facebook, however, the stats are right there.  If I post anything about the girls (which I do just as much as the boys), I get quadruple the amount of likes.  People who don't even know the girls add comments and light up that blue thumbs up.  I don't know why it bothers me.  Am I secretly still harboring sibling rivalry with my dead sister?  Is my frustration colored by the experiences with my family?  Am I jealous for the boys? Why do I have a problem with the attention the girls get?  Their story is undoubtedly sad and tragic.  I think maybe some of these feelings stem from my need to get people to understand that yes, the girls lost their parents, but they have a family and we're taking care of them. I don't want them or us as a family to continue to be defined by tragedy.  We have five kids and work hard everyday to treat them the same even when everyone outside of this house doesn't.

Or maybe this is all in my head.  As Chris Rock once said, though, "You can't argue math.  Everything else is debatable."  In this case, the stats don't lie.

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If I see one more post or comment from people about "essential" federal employees, blah, blah, blah, I'm going to scream.  These are real people with real families and mortgages, bills and expenses.  My husband works really hard and is very good at what he does.  He hasn't had a raise in years.  He works in the public sector because he wants his job to have a purpose. He is now sitting up in bed reading sports news on his nook.  One day not getting paid, probably no big deal.  Weeks not getting paid...we could have issues.

Congress passed a law.  The Supreme Court upheld it.  An idiot group within Congress is attempting to thwart our legislative process and is willing to have the government shutdown.  Obamacare has NOTHING to do with the budget (it's an insidious law that actually makes sure EVERYONE in the country has access to health insurance...egads!).  In my day, we called this being poor sports.  It makes me absolutely sick.  In the meantime, I'm going to continue to work my butt off just in case I have to be the sole breadwinner in the house.

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I hate the month of October.  The accident was in October.  This month last year K almost died. C and I were talking yesterday that we question everything we do during the month of October thinking that it's colored by our feelings at this time. This will be four years since the accident.  It still feels like it was yesterday.  It still feels that in 23 days we'll have to relive it all over again.