bad things…good people
My life has been full of grief and loss. Sometimes it feels like I’m a magnet, and no matter how hard I try to attract joy and contentment, it’s the bad things that are drawn to me over and over. It’s like I’ve been cursed by some karmic wrong for which I can’t atone, because I don’t know what the wrong is. I’ve always tried to be a good person… to do the right thing.
But horrible things keep happening. Things that I can’t control. It’s as if all of my good deeds and choices are repelled by the universe, and sadness is what I attract instead.
I lost all of my grandparents while I was young. I lost my family as I was stuck in the middle of the brutally nasty divorce of my mom and dad. I lost my only sister, Shannon (from whom Libby got her middle name), very unexpectedly. She was 32; I was 24. I lost my cousin. I lost my sister-in-law. While dealing with all of these deaths, I lost my faith in people, my trust, my innocence, and true love as I lost my 18-year marriage to my high school sweetheart.
Then, this past year, in November, I lost my dad. He died of a heart attack on the side of the road in his car as he was driving home from work. Twelve days later, on the day of my father’s funeral, my stepmother was found unconscious at their home. She apparently didn’t want to live without my dad.
I wrote two obituaries and planned two funerals in one month. In the same time frame, my mom wasn’t feeling well and had multiple medical appointments to help diagnose her pain.
I remember returning to my job as a middle school teacher after my stepmom’s funeral and two of my dear co-workers saying to me, “We were surprised you showed back up. You hear about people that just give up on life and run away to an island somewhere to start over — if anyone deserves to do that, it’s you.”
I laughed a little— wishing that I could do just that, but knowing that I had to be responsible and pay the bills. Plus, I couldn’t really worry about my own stress. I had three kids to take care of and my mom’s issues to figure out.
“Life only gives you what you can handle, right?” I joked with them.
In January, I found out that my mom has stage 4 pancreatic cancer. She is fighting it with chemo, but has a slew of other health issues and needs a lot of support and care, which means frequent trips to the cancer center and ICU.
At the same time, three people in our family got Covid despite us all being vaccinated. It hit me the worst. I posted a tongue-in-cheek picture on social media of a dumpster rolling down flooded street, the contents inside ablaze. It had the caption “Rolling into 2022 like…” My life felt like a dumpster fire.
I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen, and that every single difficult thing that had ever happened in my life would be completely eclipsed by the pain I would come to know on February 9th, when I got the hysterical and frantic call from Libby’s dad that she and her brother had been in an accident on the way to his house and he thought they were dead. After speeding to the accident site screaming “No, No, No, No!” the whole drive there, I saw the crushed car, hit by a car carrier truck directly where Libby was sitting, and I knew that there was no way my baby girl was alive inside its mangled frame.
My son survived, but my daughter died, and with her died every hope and dream and plan for both her future and mine. I had figured out how to be strong through everything that life had thrown at me, but I wasn’t ready for this. No one is ever ready for this. And it’s more than I know how to handle. Because I can’t give up and run away to an island someplace, even if I would want to. I still need to pay the bills; I still need to help take care of my two boys and my mom. And I know, in all honesty, I can’t run away from this pain. It’s going to be with me no matter where I am — no matter how much I try to atone for whatever I may have done to deserve this cursed life. No matter how much I try to hide, or distract, or cry, or bang my fists … this grief, that makes all of the other losses obsolete, isn’t going anywhere.
This isn’t a pity party; I’m not asking for reassurance or for anyone to tell me that “it will get better.” I’ve read enough books and studied enough about grief to know that it won’t get better — it will just become different. I won’t ever forget; I just have to find a “new normal.” I hope they’re right, because so far, my “normal” has sucked.
