Living with grief is a never a choice. And so it is something that you learn to live with. There are many versions of grief and types of grief. There are different things to grieve. Sometimes just change can make you feel symptoms of grief.
But there is no argument losing someone is the toughest grief anyone will ever endure. Saying good-bye, how you said good-bye, where and when you said it. All moments that are etched into your memory forever. Thoughts that are sometimes at the forefront, sometimes farther back. Nonetheless, thought of every single day.
These are things I know from my own experience. Losing Chase was the hardest thing I ever went through. The terror of the events that happened. The pain I felt and then seeing my family in pain. It doesn't get harder than that.
But time does change grief. It lessens the sharpness of the pain. It even numbs it to the point that it's part of who you are and you almost can't imagine living without it. Though you would give anything to.
Though I have felt completely sane and mentally stable, I will say that I have never ever stopped worrying that I would lose one of my other kiddos. I check on their breathing no matter what age they are. I don't have anxiety attacks, but occasionally I do panic if I don't hear from them. The youngest one, yes, I do check his breathing much more often.
It's because I can't get the image out of my head. I never will.
What death looks like.
Last spring, Emma, now a junior in college, had a first-time seizure at her apartment and her roommates helped her calling 911 and then calling me. WIth a very clean bill of health, this came as a shock. But as we learned, there is no predicting this sort of thing because it's something she was born with. Her genetics left her to abnormal brain activity, only to be seen at the age of 20, sitting in her apartment, diligently studying for final exams at her kitchen table, when all of a sudden she fell to the floor, convulsing.
We were very thankful that there was nothing fatal going on in her brain or heart, but being told that the seizure was basically a fluke of abnormal brain activity and probably won't happen again, didn't give me, personally, much comfort. Two and a half months later, while living at home and working from home, she had a second seizure at her desk. She was on medication but had forgotten to take it. I was home and found her on the floor seizing and a split second, my life felt once again like that moment Chase was being taken by emergency c-section. Scared out of my mind what was going on and what was going to happen, I held her and Owen tried calling 911 but not before her seizure stopped and she came to.
We knew it was because of the missed dosage, so there wasn't to do other than take the medicine loyally.
That was the plan, until another two and a half months later when another seizure happened after another missed dose. There are other factors that influenced this behavior that I won't go into because I'm writing this blog post about my own personal fear, not Emma's mistakes.
Though I don't feel overwhelmed with this fear, I sometimes think I really am. Almost like a sugar addiction that I think I can easily stop, but really I can't. (cough-cough). After helping her this last time, and now that she's living back at school, I am finding it much harder to live with this fear. I've told myself (and her) that I won't text her much. Because the act of not getting a return text from her might just send me into a panic. And every time she calls me, when I pick up the phone I expect to hear her frightened, frail little voice, crying into the phone telling me she just had another one.
Or worse yet, her stopping mid-sentence and having one while on the phone with me. Because most of the time I am talking to her she is multi-tasking so she's typing a million words a minute on her laptop, finishing an email or some homework that's due.
And with this fear comes the images that are burned into my brain. Some that I've already seen and some that I'm afraid to see, but I've imagined them all. I heard on a podcast once that maybe I'm imagining the worst so that when something bad actually does happen, I'll be prepared to deal with it.
I don't like that way of thinking at all.
And since this condition of Emma's is genetic, now my brain travels to my other three living children. What would it be like to find them having a seizure out of nowhere and where and when will it happen? Every time I hear a crash or bang in the house, my first thought goes there.
My fear continues to grow.
They don't consume me. I still enjoy my kids and being with them and watching them grow and parenting them. But what they don't know is that these thoughts are there all. the. time. I can't stop them. I pray and ask God to take care of them. But I guess I don't have enough faith because I can't stop myself.
And I don't know that I ever will be able.