Your strange talent

It was during an amazing down pour and thunderstorm last Saturday that your terrific habits and quirky ways were brought to the forefront of my mind once again.

Jared and I, minus our mini me, decided to take the canoe out early to a local lake in Suches, GA. We stayed out enjoying some fishing and swimming for a few hours but saw the onset of a nasty looking storm approaching, so we quickly loaded up the boat and headed home. The sky opened up on us on our trip back down the mountain and we narrowly escaped having to delay our boat unload at home by a matter of minutes, as the storm was in hot pursuit of us. I'm not sure if it was the late evening before (childless), the early morning activities, or the simple battering of rain down on our roof that made me feel the exhaustion roll in, but no matter I decided to take a nap for the first time in a really long time.

As I laid my head down the thunder outside started to clap with the fury, so I lay awake thinking of you for a while. Your insane ability to sleep until 11:00 am and then take a four hour nap at 6:00 pm was the first thing I thought of. I used to question you all the time on your inability to maintain a normal sleep pattern and you would always reply, "Because I am not old, like you". As though being old  disqualified you from having a life after the sun went down.

Your daily routine quite literally consists of sleeping until 11:00, 10:00 if you could smell breakfast wafting from my house, getting up and eating, convincing some unsuspecting relative or friend to go on a wild shopping excursion in which you would never by anything, and then promptly after asking where we were going to eat dinner, the infamous announcement of your impending departure for an evening of napping. After your four hour 'rest' from such a grueling day, it was to Twitter, Facebook, or texting to find out what was going on that evening, and then off to start your 'day'. It was uncanny at how clockwork you were. It was a little strange how you could be sitting there talking and then out of the blue announce, "Okay it is time for my nap". Bizarre.

It was during a recent conversation with our brother Vince in which he was kind enough to help me to understand the habitual meanderings of 'kids these days', as if I am really that old! His explanation was not a whole lot more substantial than your own and consisted of, "Because it just makes sense to nap late then go out at a 'normal' time". Kids these days.

So when I laid down to take a nap last Saturday, during the most perfect of napping weather, and started thinking of you, I thought, "Nope, not quite right, I am about six hours earlier than her schedule." But I figured you might be proud that I was at least 'giving it a try' anyway.

You will always be the napping queen in my mind (well, second to mom), but I figured in Heaven you probably don't really need them. Knowing you though, you probably take them anyway because your most amazing talent was sleeping at any time, any where, under any circumstances...even up there.

All dogs go to heaven

A patient told me at work the other day that the pain in his foot was equivalent to that of child birth. I laughed at this statement and quickly asked him if he had ever experienced child birth. He had not. But the more that I thought about that statement, the more that I thought about how I don't really remember the pain of child birth. While I know that it was painful, I can't remember the exact pain. Do you know what I mean? And I believe that the reason that we don't remember the exact pain is so that we will eventually want to have more kids because if you could remember the pain, you certainly wouldn't want to experience it again.

Child birth pain is not like that of the pain that you experience when you lose someone that means so much to you; that is pain that I can remember and carry with me everyday. 

As you probably already know, we had to put Onyx down the other day. While his heart and mind were still strong as ever, his body had begun to work against him. I can say, without a doubt, that was one of the hardest things that I have ever had to do. There is something so heart wrenching with having to say good bye to a life long friend that has done nothing but love so unconditionally. Especially one as amazing and true as him. I told Jared, after we were done burying him, that I was so tired of feeling this way, as the pain crept back with full force. And then I prayed for peace....

As I sat there, on the cold, tile floor holding his head while the vet injected the anesthesia I was immediately brought back to night that we were called to the hospital the night that you died. When I received the devastating news, I fell to the floor; a tile floor not dissimilar from that of the one in the vet's office. Another common factor was the devastation that I felt in those two moments. He went peacefully, although it took a while for the drugs to take his life due to his strong heart and his insatiable will to live for us. Not unlike your own death, we were told that you didn't feel anything due to your prolonged unconsciousness. This statement to me, in hindsight, seems humorous. I know it is what doctors and veterinarians are told to say, "They didn't suffer or feel anything", but how is that fact supposed to make me feel better about the fact that I now have to go into the world minus a large chunk of my heart. Perhaps I am just too selfish. 

As soon as we got home from the vet, I went immediately to Onyx's food bowls and dumped what little food was left in it in the trash can and then washed them out. I picked up his filthy, dusty, hairy bed and stuffed in the corner to be dealt with later, when the pain subsided. Its as though I thought in my mind that if I got rid of the reminders that the lump in my throat and the sickness in my stomach would also go away. 

Though I didn't do the same for you, I do remember the first time that mom and I ventured into your room at your dad's house, it was about 5 days after you had passed. Mom had wanted to collect a few items of yours to take back with her. We laughed about the fact that there was a bra at the top of the stairs right when you walked into the loft, oh how you loved your bras. Later we discovered a pretty impressive collection of bras stuffed in a drawer. You would go to restaurants and "order" the free items, such as bread or chips and salsa and beg for gas money, but you must have had at least $800 in bras up there! As we looked around, I imagined what you were doing before you left the night that you died. Your room was a disaster and I was slightly terrified of what might be lurking up there but as I shuffled through your unkempt and wildly piled bed spread and sheets, I discovered the book "The Hunger Games" and I remember feeling so saddened because you had only made it to page 42 and I just know you would have loved those books. Beside the book was a trail of crumbs that led straight to the two boxes of Girl Scout cookies that Reagan had given you not more than a week before. Samoas. It was when mom pointed out that you had an amazing pile of pajamas that I got the idea to make the quilt. So after collecting the pairs that I wanted to use and a few t shirts that I remembered you by, I shuffled through the books on your book shelf. It was a strange collection of "Captain Underpants", Nicholas Sparks books, and like twelve dictionaries...okay not twelve. I took your copy of "Little Women" because I always used to say that our relationship was so like that of Jo's and Amee's in the book; that and we both loved that movie. It was during another trip a few weeks later to your room that I couldn't bear the look of it any more, that and I was rightly concerned that if not picked up that those cookies would eventually attract any number of unwanted house guests, so I reluctantly cleaned it up. I put your dirty clothes in the hamper, arranged you desk, untangled your sheets and brushed the crumbs from your bed. After I was done I looked around and said out loud "Chelsea is going to strike me down with lightening for cleaning this room." I have not returned to your room since. I'm not even sure that it is a conscious decision that I haven't, I just haven't.

Onyx July 12, 1999-July 17, 2012

As we buried Onyx, near the playground where he would so loyally sit and watch Reagan, I thought about how you would always call him "Uno" for two reasons: 1) because you said that he looked like an "Uno" not an "Onyx" (even though, mind you, he was a BLACK lab) and 2) because you changed his name years ago (in your head) because he was your dog and you always took care of him (this was, of course the biggest load of BS). I would always yell at you not to call him that because such a small brain could get easily confused. 

So as I said good bye to yet another family member the other night, I told Onyx to tell you hello and to make sure to tell you that his name was Onyx. The sad thing is that even if he did tell you, you probably greeted him with the name that you bestowed upon him so many years ago, "Uno". 

I like to think that he got a new pair of legs to run with and you got your "Uno" to keep you company until we can all be together again. 

Show him the ropes.

It’s been 120 days. Or 122 to be exact. And it hasn’t been any easier to cope with moments of shear panic and pain scattered among them.

It was during a conversation with a very close friend, whose father had just been given a week to live, that all of those moments of pain, shock, and torment over your loss began to flood back over me. She asked me if it got worse before it got better. Without a moment’s pause or hesitation I told her I could not begin to tell her how true that was. I also told her that she will hear two of the most enormous lies in the days and weeks that would surely follow the most devastating moment in her life. While both are often told without consciousness to the fact that they are lies, the first is “I know how you feel…” and the second is “time will heal your pain”. The first statement takes the form of a lie due to the fact that there is no possible way that anyone, in that moment, could ever know how you feel. While they may have experienced some semblance of the pain that you feel it is my experience that everyone’s dealing with death is all very different. And the second is a lie because time does not heal it, it just makes it easier to bare.

So when my friend, saddened and heartbroken, asked me if it gets worse before it gets better, how I am supposed to tell her that the pain she is about to experience is going to be the worse she has ever experienced. How can I tell her that what she is about to experience will be the worst pain and most devastating moment of life that she will ever know? How do you tell her that when you think that you can’t cry anymore and when you feel like there is nothing left inside of you, you find yourself wincing in pain? How could I tell this friend, in what, at the moment was her most tragic time of her short life, that she will soon feel like digging her own grave, crawling in, and burying herself with what was left her spirit? That while life continues on around her it will feel as though she has lost a piece of hers and at times, when she is alone and it is quite, that she will actually make herself believe that she can hear her heart shattering into a million pieces, literally? How could I prepare her for the hardest journey that she will ever experience and tell her that her life will be forever changed? That she is about to start a journey, that feels never-ending? How could I tell her that no matter what I say or do or whatever help, condolences, and warm wishes that those that pass her will give, nothing will make it any easier bear? That no matter what, she will feel like the burden is hers to bear alone? I couldn’t. So I didn’t. I just told her that, yes, it gets much worse before it gets better. I told her that the burden is not hers alone, that she is surrounded by love and we are all here to take that journey with her, something I have learned, humbly, in the four months since you left us. I told her that my heart breaks with her but that it is okay to fall apart because she has so many people that love her that will divide the load and carry it for her.

Unfortunately, she did not have to wait long for that moment. Her father, Tim Wade, lost his valiant and harrowing battle with cancer today. It was in that moment, when I got the devastating news that I thought back to the moment that Vince and I ran into the Emergency Room at 2:00 in the morning, one stormy, Friday night, thinking that we had all of the time in the world with you, only to happen upon your dad coming out with the answers written all over his face. I felt that feeling again when it feels like a mac truck hits you in the stomach and all of the emotions run over you all at once and you open your eyes only to discover that you are keeled over, on your knees, heaving the life out your soul. My thoughts went to the thought of wet towel dumped, accidently, into a pool, and you pick it up to ring it out. It isn’t the towels fault that it is dripping wet, why does it have to be twisted into unforgiving knots over and over again? I thought to my friend and how she might be feeling in that very moment when the waves of nausea come intermittently with waves of physical pain and unexpected insanity, and I felt it too. How I wish I could take it from her.

Whether it is a tragic, one car accident, on a rainy Friday night, or a long, heroic battle with cancer, death is never something experienced exactly the same by any two people and is never easy to take in by the living. We are the ones left behind to suffer in agony. The only piece of advice that I could extend to my friend was that, somehow, someway, she will come out on the other side in the end, and she will have only her fond memories and her time with him to help her carry her through. And somehow, it will. It will be the small things that mean the most, like me with the memories of you and the rain, or riding in the car and song that you would belt out to comes on, a favorite food, or in your case foods. Those will be the moments that will hurt the most but be cherished the longest. 

Tim Wade was an amazing man, but you were an amazing person too, and your life was ended too soon as well. That just goes to show that God has EXCELLENT taste. I was a lucky person to get to know him and for that I have to give a little tribute to one of my fondest memories of him. It was at a crucial time in my young, impressionable life right before I got my driver’s license. My mom had purchased my car a month before I actually got my license and I was feeling indestructible one evening. So Ann, Leann, and I concocted a plan to tell all of our parents that we were going out with the other’s parents driving us. I then took the keys and drove to each person’s house and picked them up, Ann first, then Leann. When I arrived at Leann’s house, Ann and I went in to greet her dad and family. I still to this day am not sure what set him off to our plan but he immediately knew something was up. He asked me if he could come out to the car and say hey to my mom, “he hadn’t seen her in a while”. Our “quick thinking” went into diverting mode and quickly told him, as we were scurrying out the door that we were in a hurry and to get going. The next day at school, I was called to the counselor’s office, having been the “good kid” in my family, I started hyperventilating. As I walked down the hall, sweat in my palms, I kept trying to think of what it was that I had done wrong. When I rounded the corner to find the White County Sherriff’s Deputy standing, very official, outside the counselor’s door, I started peeing myself. With pee running down my leg (not really), I sat in the chair and the sheriff asked me if I knew why I had been called to speak with him. I didn’t. He then proceeded with the story of being called “anonymously” by a concerned community resident that I had been driving around without a license. Shocked into disbelief and curious as to how he would have known, I lied and said that was false. He gave me one chance to tell the truth. Okay, I did. He let me off with a warning but told me he would his eye on me. Later on, while discussing who could have ratted us out and recounting the evening, we came to the conclusion that it had to have been Tim. Many years later, I asked him. He chuckled, and with his eyes squinted and the reflection of the light in his glasses, he replied, “Well someone had to teach you a lesson? It worked, didn’t it?” Only Tim had succeeded in doing what my mother, still to this day, has failed miserably at…bested me.

I take comfort in his passing knowing that you will “show him the ropes” up there. I will never understand why things happen the way that they do, but I guess I don’t have to. You have both left huge holes in the lives of those that your lives have touched, but you have also left an amazing impact that will never be forgotten. 


                                                 Tim Wade 12/30/64-07/05/2012