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mandimormon-blog · 7 years ago

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Life is Messy

It’s time to put the broken pieces together, and actually complete this journal entry. It’s Wednesday, November 1. I have wet-looking, large eyes, (okay, not as large at the Snapchat filter) but I feel like that’s how I see myself when I visualize myself these days, using that big-eyed, big-mouthed filter, with a voice changer.

My youngest daughter and son are playing “school” together in our ultra-clean living room, ehhh, ultra-clean-ish, since they got home, I guess I do see a few candy wrappers on the floor, from yesterday evening or maybe breakfast this morning. I knocked on Remi’s door, and could hear her chewing in her room, apparently partaking of candy for breakfast. Let me end this blog on a positive note though and talk about yesterday, later.

Those wet-eyes I’m referring to are from the many tears and all of the sobbing I just finished up with, on the way home from my daughter’s Ballet Class. I thought I was doing better. I was feeling pretty good, but clearly, my feelings caught up to me. The busyness and distractions can’t distract forever. Why was I crying?

Well while in Danville, Jude ran back to the dance studio, from Joann Fabrics, and I walked, I wasn’t going to run across the mall, keeping him in eyeshot. Opened the door, plopped ourselves down on two small, wooden children’s chairs to wait the 1-2 minutes left of class. We time it quite perfectly, because a six year-old (wild) boy + waiting doesn’t really mesh. Honestly, I’m surprised he will even spend time in Joann Fabrics with me.

I heard through the door of one of the rooms a familiar song but I couldn’t place it. Don’t you just hate that? When you know a song but you can’t figure out what song it is? This happens all of the time! Oh, music, you’ve had such an impression on me, all of my life.

So, Remi emerges from the room, after the other girls, with a huge smile on her face, and a little pep in her step, because she loves ballet. She loves it. As she and Jude talk and she giggles with another little ballerina and we make our way out to the car, and I return any messages before driving (unlike on the way over to Danville, when I didn’t even realize how far I’d gotten until I crossed the border, but we don’t need to talk about that - #distracted). After I checked and double-checked their seatbelts, and we were rollin’ out; I asked Remi about her dance class. Then out of curiousity, I asked if if that music I’d heard was coming from her studio or the other studio. She said, it was her room, and she could sing it for me: “It’s just a symphony…” in the most beautiful, little, eight year-old voice, and I started singing along with her, and then I added, “Glorious!”

Confused, she asked me how I know the words and that song. As I searched for it on my iPhone and we began listening to the very version she was dancing to, per her confirmation, by One Voice Children’s Choir. She then added, “Mom! Your eyes are wet. Are you crying?”

Sure enough, it didn’t stop. It was probably the ugly-face look, tear-streaming, uncontrollably from both eyes at one time, that rarely happens. I wasn’t bellowing but it wasn’t just a tear or two. I smiled through it and tried to stop myself, but I couldn’t. My own emotions, questions, thoughts, grief and series of recent experiences seemed to just hit me all at once. Remi interrupted my thoughts and my failed attempt to sing along, “Mom, stop crying. Are you going to cry like this when I dance?”

“I probably will, Remi, I’m sorry. This song is beautiful. I’m so excited to see you dance to this.”

Journal Entry: 10/29

The longest week of our life is coming to a finale.

Let me begin with last week was Fall Break, an extra-longer-than-normal Fall Break. My husband and I were pretty busy working and doing those crazy mundane tasks of daily living, plus community service. Being totally distracted from our family and we weren’t going anywhere, so, we decided that Friday, the 20th, to take the kiddos shopping in Champaign and enjoy a “fun day” out and about. Upon arrival at the mall, we rode the cool little animals around the mall for 15 minutes and shopped a little bit, and ate a delicious late-lunch at Red Robin.

Gosh, even to type what last Friday looked like seriously causes my heart to hurt. I had to get up and take a walk around my kitchen, get on my iPhone, and return to regroup.

When we returned home last Friday, I received my passport in the mail. This was a big, big deal. I was stoked out of my mind for it, that I created the Snapchat “Passport” Saga, which has now caught on and is a thing. When I say thing, I use that term loosely, because it’s only a “thing” to a few sixth grade girls. I used the amazing jumbo-mouth filter I spoke about during my last blog, you know, with the voice changer. That passport is going places. Even Reis’s friends have snagged it up and used it for their own stories, “with Amanda’s Passport.” I will share.

It’s all fun and games with you’re using Snapchat, you and your dozen twelve year-old friends, until someone pulls up to your house for your daughter and you’re alone, selfie-snapchatting yourself about to take a run “with your passport”.

In this moment, I nonchalantly, dropped my iPhone arm to my side, as if nothing were happening here, and hopped up, and tossed my passport into the upper kitchen cabinet. Then, answered my door. The irony of answering that door was a very ‘deja vu’ experience I’d had about three and a half years ago, in a way. A mother of a good friend of my daughter’s and her son came in and said they’d tried to call her and needed to speak with Reis about Jesse, her boyfriend, but wanted to filter it through me first.

After they expressed he’d been accidentally shot, I felt the fear and chills down my spine, an instant, intense nausea, and when they asked if they could speak with her personally, I asked them to filter it through my husband first because my mind was absolutely blown. He was still out back on the swing, Jude was in the boat, and I couldn’t help but sob and I asked him to come and listen to what they had to say. Then we brought the girls together, Reis and her best friend, Karma. Since we really didn’t know what would happen, we were hoping for recovery, even possible loss of an eye, and praying for a return to normal activity. This kid was extremely active, with a very promising future. The kids were even planning on going to visit him early next week.

Of course, they were nervous, crying on and off, and wanted to know how long he’d be hospitalized. With my education in Nursing and the unknown specifics, I think my intuition was saying, “Be positive, but prepare for the worst-case scenario”. I told the girls he was in the best possible care and I didn’t know any specifics as to what would happen. Relatively soon after this, it felt almost instantaneously, and after hearing a myriad of rumors and stories, we received nightmare news, that he didn’t make it. We called all of the parents together, first, before putting this onto the kids. After they all made it there, we sat the five children down in our living room, surrounded by their parents.

Breaking this awful news to the children, opened floodgates of tears and hugging and screaming and yelling, and every emotion all at once. It was misunderstood. It was tragedy. Grief. Hysteria. These children are eleven and twelve. These kids that were here ran around together constantly with this boy. They spent time at school together, time after school until dark together, weekends together, Facetiming, Snapchatting, Instagramming, Selfie-sending, the whole sha-bang of social media communications, usually by showing their faces or whatever kind of mischief they were into, one to another. They visited the Java on a regular basis, wreaking havoc, updating their “stories”, getting kicked out of CVS, going to the Dollar Store, Casey’s, and the park. The community saw these kiddos everywhere. The girls would watch Football games on Saturdays and Soccer Games, just so Reis could see this boy.

Grief is an overwelming force that demands to be felt. If you remember, I took a Faith Community Nursing class earlier this year, when things were as slow as they were going to be and the Grief Module was a toughy. In order to help anyone else with this kind of experience we needed to know how we personally felt about grief and loss, and then recollect our earliest experience with death or any significant losses.

Grief is a bomb dropped. Yesterday there was a house, with walls, a roof, and the smells of life steaming up the windows. Today, only rubble of a disaster. Shards of broken confidence and the dust of dreams litter a cracked foundation. (Stephanie Erickson, Author of Companion Through the Darkness) I’ve also heard of the wave-analogy. They keep coming but eventually, instead of all at once barely breathing in between, they lessen and sometimes occur unexpectedly. In the moment, eventually and time can’t even be considered. It’s now. It’s in the moment.

The morning after, I came downstairs and wrote this:

Journal Entry 10/21

I’ve been up for hours and it’s 6 AM. I woke up startled, holding my own breath, and then reality sunk in. Reality that seemed like a nightmare. It’s the kind of heartache you can feel in your bones. My eyes welled up with tears, and I made my way downstairs to check on more than a half a dozen eleven- and twelve-year old girls. Laying everywhere, on the floors and in the beds, sleeping, soundly -- their youthful faces puffy from the hundreds of tears they’d cried over the past hours. I put my sleeve up to my face to muffle my own audible sobbing. I just, so badly, wanted to pick my daughter up off the the floor, and hold her, and cry with her. I wanted to take that inevitable pain away, she would feel as soon as her eyes opened and reality hit her like a ton of bricks. That pain that’s staying for awhile and will never truly heal completely.

That numb, paralyzing feeling I had, has now shifted into another stage of grief cycle. Grieving is so very dimensional and demands to be felt and I know, according to the textbook, that’s okay and eventually things would get easier and happier moments would come, but when you’re in it - it’s the perfect storm. It needs to be expressed. It takes me back, three and a half years ago, when I was wondering how my daughter, Reis, eight years old, would take the devastation learning her father had died, by choice, unexpectedly.

Later at age 10, I witnessed the grief shift for her with the loss of a beloved pet, Amidee, which was a part of the family, this seemed to be incredibly traumatic but I later found out it was because of unresolved grief previously, and now, at age 12, her boyfriend - not to mention one of her very best friends (for several years) - and “first big crush” was gone, too, completely unexpectedly, tragically. Three very different, yet horrific experiences shared in our home, in the very same place with her, in our living room, surely digging up deeper wounds or really catalyzing the grieving process.

I felt her pain deeply, for my first ‘love’ had been her daddy, around her very same age. It feels so real when you’re in it and I was crazy about that boy, as I know, and anyone who knows these kids knows, Reis is about Jesse.

The grief for this eleven year-old boy, who stood just two days before, in our kitchen, with his big, beautiful, brown eyes, his unmatched wit, and his vibrant personality -- was hitting hard, in a way that cannot be described in words. This boy who’d been a wonderful friend to my daughter for years, and been a positive, encouraging role in her life, during this beginning transition into middle school, had been taken from this life, before the story was finished. Such permanence.

On the brink of complete and utter devastation, and all that encompasses that, here I am, replaying those “what if” and “why” questions, not fathoming the pain his mother is going through (thinking of my own sweet son) or this boy’s father, or his dear brother, and sister and all of their family, grieving their great loss and grieving for each other. My thoughts traced over everyone who called this little boy a “son” because he was truly a best friend to several boys and a few moms saw him very often, anyone who loved this guy - these thoughts, on repeat, through my mind, and searching for words of comfort, before putting on my own armor for the day, to be present, a shoulder for my sweet baby girl to cry on, a game face for dozens of friends and families. This group of friends, so close and always together, have just had their lives altered forever. This boy was one-of-a-kind, irreplaceable, and he’s left an impression on all of hearts and minds, leaving us changed, forever.

On Sunday, Jesse and Kolton came inside, and waited on the girls to put on sweatshirts and go out into the drizzly elements. I didn’t feel great that day, but I did snap a picture of the girls leaving and the boys were on the steps, barely visible. That day was the same day the kids had been stalking Jesse’s photos on social media, and snapchatting him photos of them, with the line from the song, Mad World. “All around me are familiar faces..” This is probably normal thing for little girls in middle school, in 2017. Then they all left but came back through later when we were working on the flag for the boat, my husband constructed in 90 minutes.

On Wednesday of that week, he’d been inside the house, because the girls said it was “too cold” to be outside, at 55 degrees. Reis had slumped her shoulders down and was dragging her feet around the kitchen declaring her hunger, it was 12:01 p.m.. As I leaned against the bar, on my phone, without looking up, I selfishly said, “Get yourself some food, there’s plenty here, find something.”

Reis then sent my husband a message asking him to get them food and there was a whole orchestra of messages between the three of us. Reis expressed she hadn’t been feeling well and the only real meal she’d had, the evening before, was a salad from the Beef House. (Real first world problems, here.) It was true, she missed school that Monday, because she had been under the weather, but I insisted she go Tuesday if she wanted to see her friends on Tuesday evening or throughout Fall Break.

Since she wasn’t against gluten-free nuggets and fries from the freezer bin, I whipped out the jumbo package of ground beef and made cheeseburgers, g/f mac-n-cheese, green beans, and potato wedges.

The squad: Reis, Karma, Kennady, Ella, all sat around the dining room table, and Jesse stood next to Reis, saying he was good, each time I offered, stating he had a large breakfast. The girls pigged out, per the norm, and my husband came in and sat in the empty seat at the dining room table, asking everyone to listen up. This was about to get good. My husband and I are huge fans of ‘Resilience’, and he had a way about conveying a good message to these youngsters.

In a calm, very rational manner, he asked the girls what the word, “Entitlement” meant. Jesse cut into the conversation, “I’m not very smart, you’re gonna have to tell me.” Allen, gently corrected him, “You’re smart. It’s okay if you don’t know, I want to explain it.”

He then read from the definition (which later I was told by Reis that the girls thought Allen didn’t know the definition and that was why he was reading it), and discussed what it was to have ‘privileges’.

*Crickets*,yet, again, but by this point, Reis sprang up and cleared her plate and began working on the dishes. Our eyes met twice and she gave me ‘the look’ of utter humiliation and embarrassment.

Jesse, always outspoken, commented how he really didn’t have privileges, the girls agreed they didn’t either, but Allen, again, gently corrected them all by explaining the cell phone was a privilege, not a right, as was the time the kids were able to hang out together, the sports and activities, they most likely don’t fund themselves, and the list goes on.

All-in-all the conversation was for Reis’s benefit, and I’m positive she’ll never forget it. I know I won’t. I whispered to her, her friends know her dad and her friends are not upset or offended, they are just fine and dandy. Clearly, they were laughing and conversing with him even after the “talk” was over. After he left, and I was drying the dishes, I witnessed Reis snapchatting Jesse from across the room while Ella, Kennady, and Karma lounged on the floor and couch, and Jude, too, Jude occasionally showing Jesse his game because he honestly has always thought when Jesse, Josh, or Kolton come over, it’s to play with him.

Later, I said something about my passport, and Jesse asked me where I was going, and I said, “To Mexico!” in an over-exaggerated voice, Reis didn’t miss a beat, because she said, “Your home country”, back to him. I then raised an eyebrow at them both, and he said, “Yeah, did you know I’m from Mexico?”

“Jesse, I know your who your parents are, you’re not from Mexico.” He then told me, “Yeah, I know. But they say I am because I’m tan.”

Later, I went into Reis’s room, and tiptoed over the bags and clothing that had been “straightened up”, when motion caught my eye outside of her bedroom window. I peered outside to see Jesse, wearing a Sombrero along with his buddies, too, with Kolton, the Copas Boys, Davy, possibly a Kindell boy, too, and my son, in the custom “Despacito” a boat, my husband had constructed. The girls were standing all around, too, and I said, “Allen, come here and look at this sight. Grab my phone. I need to take a photo.” I didn’t get my phone and never took a photo but it’s imprinted in my mind, forever.

The boat evolved from a fishing pole. My son begged me to make a fishing pole with him, so I did. We both used sticks and tied a small ribbon to the end. Funny thing is, we fished up some leaves because the ends of the ribbons were fuzzy enough to pick them up. We pretended we were fishing from our dock (aka picnic table) and the tailgate of my husband’s truck, and Jude would do the commentary of our excursion. I feels like a lifetime ago, since this happened, since so very much has happened, seriously.

Life has a way about teaching you about priorities. Doesn’t it?

The candlelight vigil was something I’d never experienced and a spiritual feeling I’d never felt before, ever. It was beautiful. A moment I remember while shuffling around trying to make sure everything was good to go, was watching my daughter walk, briskly toward the restroom. I could see her wiping her eyes more than once on her way there, so I followed her. When I walked up to the doorway, I witnessed her sobbing, embraced by a group of her friends, all crying together. It was beautiful and painful all at once. She saw me and gave me the nod (aka the head shake) that I wasn’t needed here, so I turned around and walked away.

I can’t express how much it hurts or how helpless a mother feels when she can’t take the pain away. She can’t make it better. She can’t fix this. I’m learning. A good friend visited me during lunch, while I was in the office, yesterday. He had heard something that made him think of Reis and of me.

He told me about the Metamorphosis of a Butterfly. As we all know, the butterfly doesn’t begin as a butterfly, but rather a caterpillar. Then before the big change, it forms a chrysalis and eventually emerges, completely changed as a butterfly.

A scientist was observing this process, and he noticed the butterfly he was observing was having trouble emerging. So, he simply clipped the top of the sac and almost immediately and simply, the butterfly was able to get out. Yet, even though this seemed to make it easier, the butterfly’s wings did not expand and it never took flight.

Why? Because the butterfly needed that experience, to breakthrough the sac without aide, in order to pump fluid from it’s abdomen through the veins in the wings, which causes the wings to expand to their full size. It’s something the butterfly must go through to fly.

Initially, this story hurt my heart. I think it’s pretty normal for us, as parents, to want our children to live very uneventful, normal lives, with little suffering, grief, and anxiety. We don’t want our child bullied. We don’t want them to feel lonely or depressed. Naturally, we don’t want them to hurt or to feel pain. We want to take their pain away, “fix it”. We’d gladly take on their suffering if we could.

Even friends feel this way. I can’t even tell you how many kids, said to me, they wished they could take Jesse’s place, so their friends wouldn’t be hurting so much, because he was such a great person, and so Reis would be okay.

These comments aren’t alarming because they were each saying this only out of love.

They love Jesse, they are going to keep loving Jesse, and they love each other, yet this wasn’t their path or plan. I assured each of them they are meant to be here, right now, for each other, and although we can’t put the ‘why things like this happen’, into words, one day we will look back on this and see what kind of growth came from this experience, how this changed our life, how we could help other people and how we were better friends. Jesse’s charisma and goodness can be emulated in each of our lives, every day. As hard and as cliche as it may sound, he can live on, through us.

Yet with removing trivial pursuits, as my husband says, “You’ll find a new obsession or addiction.” That obsession is Snapchat.

I created a “story” on Halloween Eve (Is that a thing? Maybe I should say on October 30) the Five Step Approach to TP’ing Homes. In fact, I sent it to all of my snappy buddies, then I had to create a collaboration of those five things for “My Story”. It was about as epic as The Passport Saga: Oh The Places Amanda’s Passport Will Go, I mentioned.

As mentioned, the median age of my Snapchat Friends is probably 12, and I’ve recently come to the conclusion that a Twelve Year-Old Girl is most likely my Spirit Animal. Clearly, because that’s what I went as for Halloween. That or “Mama Vandallama” my criminal alias.

So, I washed my hair extensions, finally. They’d survived Tyreischella with Boho Braids, and feathers still affixed, and Haunted Trailz, on Saturday, when I gave it my best acting skills plus the girls clipped my extensions into Whylee’s hair after the Trailz. Those extensions needed recovery.

Ok, and to be real honest, we tried doing what the Trailz Coordinator wanted, during Haunted Trailz. My husband was supposed to appear to be dragging me across the trail and apparently, my acting skills are rusty and maybe we shouldn’t even refer whatever I did as acting or a skill. So, I played “dead”, trail goers would shine the flashlight on my “pretend dead” acting, which allowed my husband to come up from behind, in a creepy mask, and startle them pretty, darn good. This lasted for only a couple of hours, because by that point we had a dozen sixth graders asking to go home to the warmth, and they weren’t going unattended.

Anyway, shampooed extensions, lying out to dry. A friend of mine stopped in with some money from the event over the weekend, and she mentioned another perfect addition to the ‘Four-become-Five Step How to TP Approach’, and I added that in. I let her in on what was going down because at that point I had a pair of black panty hose on my head like a do-rag which may have seemed a little more legit since my “weave” was out on the counter.

On Halloween morning, I clipped in my extensions, to prepare my disguise for the evening. After returning home from work that day, I opened my daughter’s room to half a dozen girls dressed in all black, as instructed. I then put on some war paint, and was ready. I found it pure comedy as more kids showed up to our home, they openly were being dropped off by their parents and carrying 4-6 rolls of toilet paper in their arms. I guess there were no objections or clearly those kids had a stellar alibi-to-come. I’m gonna go with the no objections option.

There were 8, then 9, then 11, then 16 kids in our group. It felt a lot like the meme “I feel young until I hang out with twelve year-olds, then I remember I’m definitely 31.” They didn’t really have a plan, and when they thought they had a plan, they actually knocked on their teacher’s door. They were chased off a majority of the time, which is comical, and by the time we stopped in for some free hot dogs at the Old Gym, they were ready to have an “escape vehicle”. Sadly, my husband’s truck was containing some doors and junk that wouldn’t support 12 kids, too, so we took the “Hot Mess Express” (my Mountaineer). The juvenile delinquents put the seats down (both rows), so it was flat, and they insisted on maneuvering safely in and out of the vehicle by keeping the tailgate lifted the entire time. Remi came, too, so she said on my console, and I always had a co-pilot. We tried a few teacher’s houses and relative’s homes, but inevitably each and every time, the kids would come in a dead sprint back, and without time for a roll-call, I’d yell, “Are we all in?” “YES! GO GO GO!” and I’d almost have to close my eyes and speed off. Nice thing about keeping that tailgate lifted, even while driving down Liberty Street or Third Street was my license plate wasn’t showing. So, unless one of the dozen kids in the back were ID’d, jail was looking like more of an idea rather than a destination for me, that evening. “Accompanying 16 Minors” would have been epic, but I’m glad we safely and reasonably toilet papered and Ding Dong Ditched.

The spin off the DDD was we purchased actual individually wrapped Ding Dongs, and left those at most of the homes, true Ding-Dong Ditchin’.

This morning, when I woke up I felt like I needed about 24 more hours of sleep. I wasn’t sore from running around but the few short sprints I did partake of, I wasn’t prepared for, whatsoever. I may run 4-6 miles most weekdays, but those are leisurely. Laughing, talking, texting, and running, no sprinting, no loss of air or breath, just leisure -- and if you refer to it as jogging, I take offense.

There are times when You might feel aimless And can't see the places Where you belong But you will find that There is a purpose It's been there within you All along And when you're near it You can almost hear it It's like a symphony Just keep listening And pretty soon you'll start To figure out your part Everyone plays a piece And there are melodies In each one of us Oohhh it's glorious And you will know how To let it ring out As you discover Who you are Others around you Will start to wake up To the sounds that are In their hearts It's so amazing What we're all creating It's like a symphony Just keep listening And pretty soon you'll start To figure out your part Everyone plays a piece And there are melodies In each one of us Oohhh it's glorious And as you feel The notes build Higher You will see It's like a symphony Just keep listening And pretty soon you'll start To figure out your part Everyone plays a piece And there are melodies In each one of us Oohhh it's glorious

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