My First Triathlon – Willard Bay
This summer has been busier than usual…because being busy is the mother-of-all distraction. Now that things have slowed down a bit, it’s time for some documentation of life. That being said, I have to start with the Willard Bay Triathlon. The race took place waaaaay back in June, and there were so many things about the race that I wanted to remember, to help me to better prepare for the next one that I do. I decided that I had better blog them now before they become even fuzzier in my memory than they already have. OMG yes, I’m thinking I’ll do another….imminently.
Welp…my first triathlon was a simple sprint, 750 meter swim, 12 mile bike and 3.1 mile run. I didn’t train for the race as well as I had hoped to, but dammit, I made a commitment to myself that I would participate and so I did. I did a lot of reading about it, a lot of listening about it, but my favorite piece of advice came from my friend Nytro, who suggested that I pee in my wetsuit to keep warm…because it was spring in Utah, and summer temperatures had not yet made an appearance. While I loved this advice I was afraid of peeling off my wetsuit after the race, only to find a contained puddle of pee running down my legs and burning my skin like acid during the race…and the smell?
The next best piece of advice came from Maia, who advised me not to pick up any parasites from the water…I told her that I would do my best, but that my first and foremost priority would be to not sink…then to avoid parasites.
So I packed all of my equipment the night before, including my cool new one-piece trisuit. I ate toast and Nutella and packed a banana for right before the race. I was so nauseous with nerves that I never did get to eat the banana. As I was setting up my bike and things in the staging area, I noticed that everyone had neatly set their gear (shoes, etc) in front of their bikes on nicely folded towels, which I had not thought of bringing. So that was rookie mistake number one. I really didn’t need a towel after I got out of the water…but for the sake of looking cool next time, I’m bringing the towel.
Rookie mistake number two surfaced every time that I had to pee before the race, which was several. This called for peeling off the tri-suit, which has its own sports bra and requires a special set of acrobatics for disrobing. By the 3rd trip to the potty, I decided Nytro’s idea of just peeing in the wetsuit wasn’t the worst thing in the world, so I put on the bigger rubber supersuit – just in case. Next year, I’ll probably invest in another uber cool tri-suit, but this time it will come in two reasonable pieces….besides, the built in sports bra sucked…making my tits look like they couldn’t defy gravity, and who wants to look like a saggy old hag when they are running?
So, all prep work is done….for good or bad, and it’s my wave’s turn to get into the water. I went out with the females and the relayers in what was a water start. I was super pumped and excited when I was in the water…I remember looking around at the other women and thinking “I can do this. I can swim with these ladies…as a matter of fact…I’m going to do my best to kick some ass in the water”. The blow horn sounds, I dive in…and I’m kicking and I’m fighting and then all of a sudden….I’m having a Full. Blown. Panic attack. Yip, that’s right….my chest hardened and I couldn’t breathe.
I literally began looking for one of the lifeguard dudes to pull me out of the water…then I looked to the shore and saw my family. I decided that I was going to swim or die trying (which seemed like a pretty good possibility). So I did the deadman’s float, in the not-pissed-in wetsuit, and tried to calm myself and get the breathing going again…which happened, though everyone else was already way ahead of me. There would be no ass kicking this day…at least coming from me.
As I swam, I figured out that I would be unable to swim with my face of in the water….not being able to see anything in the murky depths of the Bay was triggering my claustrophobia, and throwing me into the panic attacks, which is how I realized the biggest of my rookie mistakes….no open water swimming practice results in epic fail during race. You NEED to have open water swims before the big race, because pool practice will simply never compare….and in a wetsuit! Mobility in a wetsuit is different.
Believe it or not, I made it out of the water. My darling kids helped me out of the wetsuit (even though they weren’t supposed to)…and helped me into the biking gear. Maia placed my biking helmet on my head…and it was honestly one of the sweetest moments ever of being a mommy. The bike ride was my first real experience on a road bike, and it was simply amazing….I loved it! I didn’t leave my all on the course because I couldn’t help but to do a bit of site-seeing….the run was also quite easy.
In retrospect, I really should have pushed myself a lot harder on the bike and run legs. I really wasn’t even that tired after the race…I always make the mistake of holding back because I think I will need more for later (and it might hurt to push myself). Hopefully I’ll stop being such a pansy, and try to be more of a contender next time. I ended up finishing 3rd to last. 3rd TO LAST! But I finished. I loved it, and I can’t wait to do it again.
After I finished the race, my tweenaged son….told me that he was proud of me. I almost started crying. Did I mention that he’s a tween?
On your 15th Birthday
Dear Abigail:
I woke up feeling so sad today and simply missing you terribly. Some days the sadness is heavier to carry than others. I always think…if she could have just gotten past that one moment, she would be here right now, laughing with girlfriends, laughing with boyfriends and knowing that there is so much more to look forward to in life.
I don’t believe in things being “meant to be” or “happening for a reason”. You should be here with me. You should have gotten past that moment and you should be experiencing life. I confess that I avoid your friends like the plague. It is so difficult for me to watch them grow up and do all of those things that you were so excited to do yourself. I can’t help but to wonder how I could have prevented all of this….I’ve bargained away to no avail.
I can’t for the life of me say the words “Happy Birthday”, because there is nothing happy about a birthday that you didn’t live to see. I can only tell you that I love you Abigail. I love you with all of my heart and all of that intensity that I felt the first time that I laid eyes upon you. I couldn’t believe that I was capable of being a part of creating something so beautiful and so perfect. I wish we could go back in time. As we both used to say dear heart, if wishes were fishes….
But wishes aren’t fishes, and no amount of bargaining is ever going to bring you back. I promise to keep you alive in all of your wonderful writing and all of the memories that I was so privileged to make with you in the nearly 14 years that I had you here on this earth. I love you, and for you, I hope this day has passed gently. It was after all 15 years ago today that you gave me the gift of you. I love you, Mommy.
A New Year – 10 Months
Dear Abbey,
I can’t believe it, you have been gone 10 months today. It seems so unreal. A new year began yesterday, bringing to an end an horrific year for us as a family. Christmas was so excruciatingly difficult without you. I found myself running out of stores because I couldn’t bear to look at all of the things that I just knew you would have loved to receive for Christmas this year. As painful as that was, wrapping gifts and stuffing stockings was…I have no words. I thought I might die from the pain in my chest. I cried so long and so hard that ultimately, I ended up stuffing your stocking with Antonio’s things. I was resolute to get it all out, because your brother and sister had both asked so many times if I could be happy on Christmas Day. It was hard Abigail…very very hard.
Daddy and I talked a lot about all of the Christmases that we had with you for the past 13 years and that in a lot of ways helped us to make you a part of our celebration. We took a cute purple Christmas tree to your resting place and many of your friends and our loved ones took to you the most beautiful ornaments to hang on your tree. I also received a lovely letter from your friend Tre, who continues to be inspired by you.
This Christmas I bought myself a gift, I had your book printed and bound so that I could begin editing it. I’ve mostly looked at it and cried. I have started reading it….and I am so amazed at the brilliance that you had at your young age. You are more of a writer than I could have ever hoped to be. Oh what you could have done with your beautiful mind. That loss of your future in tandem with the big hole that is prevalent every single day are the hardest things. I listen quietly so that I can hear your words and I can still conjure the sound of your voice perfectly. I hope I can take that with me to my own end Abigail.
I made a very important decision yesterday….I promised myself that I would accept that you are not coming home. All these pretenses that I have set up around me both mentally and physically are destroying me. With this new year…I’m not going to pretend that I will wake up and find you in your room anymore. I know this is easier said than done…it has become a pretty significant part of who I am. I hope you will help me…I think it might bring both of us some peace. I love you…always.
Apathy
Yes, I just titled this entry “apathy”, it’s actually a former pet peeve that of mine that has become a favorite past time. When Abbey died nine months ago, I couldn’t stop writing, and now I find more difficulty making myself start. I’ve become apathetic and delusional. I kind of don’t give a shit about a lot of things anymore…and this Christmas season has been excruciating….putting it mildly.
It seems that in those first few months I spent so much time in her room, reading through her journals…and just looking for something that would say. “HERE IS THE ANSWER!”…congratulations! But now I spend more time pretending that it never happened and that eventually I’m going to come home from work and she will be looking up pictures of the lead singer of Tokio Hotel and telling me how hot he is.
And then….and then…we go Christmas shopping for the kids…and I’m surrounded by all the things she loves..especially the books, and I feel like I will die inside. Literally die. These things make this whole thing real…they rip me from that safe place that promises that she can come back, that this could all very well be a nightmare..and then the mania sets in. I find myself needing to run out to the car while shopping at a book store, because I don’t want to sob in front the world…and because that pain in my chest is no minor inconvenience. It has moved in with all of its belongings, and it intends to stay there for the long haul.
Now the mania…oh the mania….the craziness that inhabits my brain doesn’t scare me…it hurts me. It makes me sad. Not like a lost my puppy sad, but the kind of sad that you can feel in the marrow of your bones, and imagine infiltrating every cell in your body. It makes me imagine myself digging Abbey up because it is cold outside and I can’t stand the idea of her body being cold…it makes me imagine myself breaking every piece of glass in this house and screaming at the top of my lungs when I do so…it makes me want to hurt myself to feel pain…to feel anything…when the pretending become just as awful and suffocating as the realization.
And it isn’t even the end of year one.
The Half Marathon
I’m getting ready to run my race on Sunday, and I couldn’t be less prepared. I ran all summer, and then school started and I found less and less time, and even less energy….but I’m committed, so I’ll run anyhow. It’s been a tough week. I’ve had a lot of crying bouts, that have just kind of crept up on me.
I had decided some time ago that I would run with Abbey’s iPod. I hadn’t turned it on since the emergency responders and police officers turned it off the morning that I found her. When I plugged it in today, I felt a tidal wave of emotions that put me back there that morning.
I remember hearing her iPod that morning when I found her…it was a soft song coming through her small speakers, but I can’t remember which song it was. I just remember that it became confused with what I was trying to understand and to make sense of…because nothing that morning made sense. Nothing.
There are things that I think about very privately, that I don’t typically share with anyone. Sometimes those things torture me. When I turned on that little purple iPod and started scrolling through her music, her pictures….I started sifting through those torturous thoughts…was she crying when she died? Did she die thinking that no one loved her? My last words to her were words reprimanding her for not having done her laundry before bedtime. It was an awful weekend to begin with…all of us were completely out of sorts. Her cat that she adored was hit by a car the Friday that preceded the Sunday that she died. Those last words of mine weigh on me heavily. I wonder if the last song that she heard was a song that she loved. I wonder at all those times I have comforted her…and yet was not there in the end…to save her. Most of all, I wonder how I am supposed to accept this….because for some reason I can’t.
Sometimes I think of her and she’s so ethereal…and other times, it’s as though I could walk into her room and see her in there doing her thing, or sitting at the dining room table chatting up her friends on Facebook…but I cannot accept that she is not going to grow up…I can’t explain it, but I can’t move on from it.
It was hard turning on her little iPod today…I not sure which will be harder on Sunday…listening to all of her music or trying to finish a 13 mile race that I have not properly prepared for.
6 Months
Yesterday was 6 months. 6 months since I last held or looked upon my child. She didn’t go off to college, she didn’t leave the house to marry…she died. She’s not coming back. I know that and still it is impossible to believe. I look at her picture hanging up at work and it reminds me that when I go home – I am not going to see her there, it still takes my breath away. It still feels surreal to go and visit her grave and to see her name upon that headstone…every time I feel like I’m in a play, somehow acting out my part and that at some point the play will end and I’ll go home to my real life.
As a parent of a suicide, I am often consumed with the question of “why”. I have found that this is not uncommon, having connected with many other mothers who live in my hell. We all know that there is not a definitive answer yet we continue to dig, as though solving the mystery might somehow reverse the outcome. But there’s more to it than that. Another part of me needs to see concrete evidence that it was not my fault. This doesn’t exist either.
These past two weeks have been some of the most difficult in my life. It was the first time that I went through the back-to-school ritual without Abigail. I cried my eyes out every time I saw a notebook, a folder or a blouse that I thought she would have liked. Dropping the other two off at school and watching them walk into that school building without their big sister was excruciating. It’s so fucking unfair. So unfair. I’ve always thought that expressing a situation in terms of fairness was juvenile and petty, but dammit, it all feels so unfair.
I miss her. I miss her in my bones, I miss her in every cell of my body. I have never had so little regard for my own mortality. Losing your child affects you that way. To end on a more pleasant note…I dreamed about her last night. She was a chubby little baby again. She wanted to nuzzle her little face against my chest and cuddle. It was so familiar and so real. It made me smile as I crawled out of bed this morning. As I type about it now, it makes me want to cry….because even that sweet taste of her is not enough.
My new to me 1940s buffet
You know that you have waited too long to blog, when you cannot for the life of you remember how to post an image. Gah! Well…it’s way past my bedtime, but I did it. Here are some decent photos of the buffet I bought this past weekend. Maia and I were on a hunt for the right art deco chair to go into my living room. I didn’t find the chair, but holy cow did I happen upon a treasure. This is a 1940s buffet built by Sligh Furniture Company out of Grand Rapids Michigan. It’s all tendon and biscuit assembly without an ounce of veneer. This thing weighs a ton and just about made my wonderful neighbor Libby a widow as her husband, Chris and an uncle moved it into my house. This was after a thorough scrubbing of pearly white spider sacs that lined the bottom of the cabinet. I did some research and this particular piece sells for $700 – 1000. I bought this for $70 at Deseret Industries, the local goodwill chain. It’s beautiful….check out the art deco detail on the front of the cabinet doors. It also has one velvet lined drawer for the fancy schmancy silver that I don’t own. I’m in love, truly. Still looking for that perfect chair though.
Redefining All Things Java
With the turn of events in my family’s lives, my blog has taken on a decidedly melancholy tone. I’ve often wondered if the Javacat Café now feels more like the Suicide Café. I thought about apologizing for this….for just a moment and then decided that I would not. I have other decisions to make in my life that are deeply parallel to this one little decision on how I will now define my blog…and that decision is how I will let this tragic event define my life. Despite what I think or how I feel on a daily basis, I still own the choice on how I will let Abigail’s choice define me.
With that being said, I am a different person than I was four months ago. I question every previously held belief that I have ever had….about me as a mother, about God and certainly about life after death. I don’t believe I have been a horrible mother but certainly I could have been a better mother, which is not self-deprecation but rather a realistic evaluation. One thing that I cannot be is the grieving mother who stays in bed and cries all day while her other two children wonder why they no longer matter. Not to lay claim that I do not have those days. Sometimes my will is not stronger than the paralysis, and I realize that this is part of the process and embrace it.
So, to that end, I get up every day, I go to work and I come home and remember (most of time) to feed my kids. I try very hard to make time for a run. The pain I feel inside is constant and at times unrelenting. Running is also painful, but a different kind of pain….it is an elixir in a sense for the other pain that will probably never be quelled, but at least be made bearable. It’s a constant struggle to not let that pain shove me into a dark corner where I am less able to be normal enough to be a mom, a wife and a friend. So I exist…I do more than exist, I choose life.
I am slowly learning to live with the feeling that I have been somewhat lobotomized. I am not unlike a person in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s, to put it more succinctly, I can’t remember shit. I have huge gaps in my memory and I struggle with the simplest things. I look at people and no longer recognize them…it’s strange. I even forget sometimes that this tragic thing has happened. I expect to go home and find my girl on her computer, and when I pull myself back to reality and try to comprehend the reality of this new life…it’s crushing. It may be years before I can say “there is no turning back”, and yet I am patient with myself. I allow myself to march straight up to her room every single morning and absorb the fact that she is still not back. I am patient with the wound being torn open day-after-day. Sometimes I cry, sometimes I get extremely pissed off and sometimes I just go numb. All of that is okay. It’s something I need to do.
I want you to know that the kids are all doing well…or as we like to say, the best we can. They are much like me in that when they try to comprehend the realness of this new life, they break.
Another thing that I have to acknowledge is that we have not gone through any of this alone. Our families, our friends and our neighbors have held our hands and at the very least provided distraction every step of the way. It surprises me to read about how a family suicide often changes people’s relationships with their friends…scaring them away and making them uncomfortable. This experience has actually brought our circle of acquaintances closer and words could never express how grateful we are to them. So with this blog and with life, it’s one step forward.
On Your Birthdate, Abigail
Daddy and I went to see your grave tonight after picking up some supplies for the rainbow cake that I promised you I would make for your birthday. It smells wondrous outside and there is a lightening storm, crowning the mountains in the brightest of silhouettes. You would have wanted to sit out on the balcony to watch. You loved the rain and the thunder. It did not go amiss that you were born under these same circumstances, a chilly late spring storm. As we drove home, I thought about the drive home from the hospital, two days after you were born. Daddy was behind the wheel of my big old green Volvo wagon, the car you loved with the “fuzzy warm seats”. We were so nervous on the road…I think your dad drove 15 miles per hour the whole way home. We were so scared and so excited and so full of love. Tonight we were just scared.
I’m sitting here…thinking of what I should write to you and the words are there but the grief seems to be drowning them. Tomorrow at 3:15 am you would have turned 14. I can’t bring myself to say Happy Birthday, because it isn’t a happy day and birthdays seem to imply a progression, but you Abigail are forever 13. Forever. There will be no first date, no drivers license, no high school graduation. Even though it wouldn’t surprise me even one bit to find you in your room, listening to your iPod…the fact that these events will never happen is still not within my realm of comprehension. Confronting them is terrifying and gut wrenching.
I know that in time I need to focus on cherishing every minute of the 13 years we spent together, but right now all I can do is suffer the deepest grief over those things you will never experience. I find myself thinking about how I will never hold or spoil your children and it just kills me. It’s a precarious balance right now. I know that I need to dig deep Abigail and sometimes I don’t have the strength to do that. For the first time in my life…I don’t have the strength. I miss you so profoundly that the desire to smell your hair threatens to make me go crazy.
You know that crazy sign I keep looking for? I can’t help but to think that the rain and thunder are you speaking to me in the only way you can now. I’ve decided that there is no harm in believing in hope…reunion….eternity. I will see you again my pretty girl, whether it’s in my dreams…in your room, in your pictures your presence is always in my heart. Always. That doesn’t go away. I love you and think about you every second of every day. That doesn’t go away either.
I don’t know what the morning will bring, but then again, I never did.
Pretense
The most difficult part of this whole thing is the pretending. It’s giving those standard answers to the questions on how you are doing…how you are feeling. No one wants to hear someone say, yeah, today I feel like a miserable piece of shit again….but that is what it amounts to…what I feel is:
• A good deal of self-loathing. Don’t tell me what a great parent I am when my daughter just took her own life. I didn’t even see it coming but the signs were there. I chalked it up to a whole lot of age appropriate behavior but never once looked at myself and thought, “you know what, you need to try harder….hug her instead of ignoring her when she seems impossible”
• A sense of disbelief that the world would dare go on and progress from day to day.
• So miserably sad that it manifests itself in actual illness…making me gag at the thought of food and leaving me vulnerable to every miserable germ that decides to come my way.
• So angry. At her. At me. Was I really so blind? How could she?
• Fake. Getting up, taking care of work and family…I would love to crawl into a dark hole and close my eyes
• Confused…that her room is still empty, that her bed is made. She never made her bed. I go lay in it just to mess up the covers.
• Pissed off that time is so cruel as to take the smells that were hers out of her clothes out of her pillow out of her blankets and other things. I really hate time.
• Sick. Sick that her birthday is in just a few days. How could she? How do I?