anxiety – Page 7 – thelifeididntchoose

[#unblessed] If You Don’t Laugh, You’ll Cry

So my regular followers know by now my mom was lifeflighted over a week ago from her VERY rural home to the nearest large hospital due to a heart attack and complications from preexisting heart/lung disease. (If you didn’t, you do now 🙂 )

I’ve been here with her since Thursday morning-taking night shift at the hospital so my dad can go home to the farm, get some rest and do what needs to be done.

You’d think a body might catch a break when some giant life-altering event like this happens. But NOOOOOOO!

In the week plus a day since Mama has been hospitalized we have had (not really, but sorta) funny one [#unblessed] moment after another.

Last Friday morning, following my dad to the hospital, he did the same sliding “stop” at a stop sign turning right onto an access road that he’s done every time he goes this way for 20 years. But this time-you guessed it!– a very enthusiastic and attentive LEO saw him and pulled his old red farm truck over.

Following behind, I’ll just be honest, more than one salty word slipped out as I anticipated the worst possible outcome in case fatigue and stress prompted Papa to tell the officer what’s what. Thankfully, it didn’t come to that and after running the plates and license the cop let him go. [#unblessed]

Sunday I came to the farm by myself for the first time and left Papa at the hospital. He had remembered to give me a house key and I had carefully put it in my purse.

Perfect.

Got inside-no problem.

I needed to add clothes to a load in the washer and stepped out on the porch to toss them in. Being the well-trained daughter I am, I shut the house door behind me. Locked myself out of the house.

No phone.

No shoes.

No car keys.

NOTHING.

Everyone down this way was in church.

So I did the only thing I could do. I put on an old pair of Papa’s boat shoes (after checking for spiders) and hoofed it the two miles to my uncle’s house so he could give me the spare key. At midday. In the Florida sun. No one stopped to ask if I needed a ride. [#unblessed]

Tuesday I thought I was being very innovative in getting my critical daily medicine prescriptions filled at the local pharmacy HERE since I didn’t bring a sufficient supply from home. Called CVS and it was a breeze except for one hiccup. A single script was out of refills so I had to call my doctor and ask for an emergency 14 day supply to be sent. Nurse took the message, said she’d get it done. That was at 11:15. I head to the pharmacy about 3:00 to pick everything up. Two are ready but the one from the doctor isn’t.

Thinking that there had been a snafu-they might have called it in without thinking to my pharmacy back home-I telephone the office only to be told that the doctor was going to do it this time, but that because he wanted me to do a follow-up appointment (which I had cancelled but forgot to reschedule), he was basically doing it under duress. (Even though this is a “don’t you dare stop it suddenly” medicine and I told the nurse my mom was lifeflighted to the hospital with a heart attack).

All the fight was out of me. I “yes ma’amed” my way through that phone call and said “thank you so much”. The nurse waited until the minute before their office closed to fax the script just because she could. [#unblessed]

They are trying to move the fluid off my mom’s heart and lungs with aggressive IV diuretics. She had one round Tuesday but by Wednesday morning her potassium was so low we had to bring that back up before the next round. Well, the next round started at 6:30 Wednesday night. (For those of you who don’t know about these things, IV diuretics mean trips to the bathroom about every 20-30 minutes.) Yep! All night long, me and Mama made that three foot trek from the bed to the potty-unhooking oxygen, unplugging the IV pole (it won’t hold a battery charge) and carefully moving her fragile self twice an hour until about 3:30 in the morning. Apparently cardiologists figure that if they are on 24 hour call, patients should be too. [#unblessed]

Heading home Thursday morning after little sleep on Wednesday night, I see blue lights behind me. I check my speed. Within the limit. I’m talking on the cell but not texting. I have no idea why I’m being pulled over.

License and registration. He tells me that the tag I have on my truck comes back to the Toyota Camry we own.

Now, you have to understand our family has many vehicles and they issued new tags this year. I didn’t pay close enough attention when taking them outside to put them on and got them mixed up. But “switching” tags is a serious offense. And then, OF COURSE, I had not put the new insurance card in the glove compartment-it was floating in my purse. (Thankfully I found it.) For about 10 minutes my heart was racing although I had already decided that if I got off with a ticket I’d pay it without blinking an eye. He did let me go but I’m convinced he thought I was a crazy woman who should have known better [#unblessed]

Today, I tried to get my injectable RA medicine shipped to the same pharmacy since my shot is due tomorrow. Went through the whole routine of getting the shipment set up and find out the earliest they can get it here is NEXT Thursday. When I probably won’t be here at all. [#unblessed]

I’m sitting here in my parents’ home, typing and taking a break. Because my oldest son may be here tomorrow. See, the largest, strongest and potentially deadliest hurricane is headed either for his home on the east side of Florida or for us here in the western panhandle-but we are further inland. My truck is stocked with bottled water and other supplies “just in case”. We don’t know if Mama will be released before Irma gets here or not but we’ll be OK. Who would have thought? It figures. [#unblessed]

Each incident adds stress to the system but none are really all that traumatic.

Because when you’ve buried a child, nothing short of death really rocks your world very much.

And I’ve learned to laugh (once the adrenaline wears off)-because if I don’t, I’ll just cry.

Anxiety is Awful!

I’ve written before about anxiety and child loss here. No matter the cause of death, the FACT of a child’s death seems to create the perfect conditions for a parent’s body and mind to experience anxiety, dis-ease, fear and often a sense of impending doom.

My world was rocked to its foundation the moment I heard the words, “He was killed in a motorcycle accident”.

The worst thing I could imagine had come true.

There was no protection from it happening again, no guarantee that THIS unbearable pain would be the ONLY unbearable pain I would have to carry.

I think my body chemistry was instantly transformed that morning to include rapid heartbeats, shallow breathing and a horrible creepy tension that climbs my spine and clenches its claws tightly at the base of my skull.

Before Dominic left us for Heaven I was not an anxious person.

No matter what happened, I generally took it in stride, looked for a solution and moved forward armed with an arsenal of choices to meet the problem head on.

Now, I can be pushed into a corner by an ordinary phone call that lasts too long. I can feel trapped if a price fails to ring up properly and I have to wait to have it corrected by a head cashier. I can become positively frantic when I reach in my purse and can’t find my keys even though I know for a fact I put them there and if I look a bit harder I’ll find them.

Traffic makes my heart go pitter-patter. The doorbell sends me flying to make sure it’s the UPS man and not another police officer to tell me heartbreaking news.

If I try to multi-task (which I rarely do) I am soon overwhelmed and have to sit down to catch my breath.

I only shop in stores where I’m familiar with the aisles and where products I need are shelved.

I check and re-check directions if I have to go to an unfamiliar address and leave with double the time needed to get there in case I get lost. Making on-the-fly course corrections doesn’t happen.

I pull off and have to figure out where I am.

And heaven forbid the phone rings past midnight -I wake with a start and even a wrong number means I won’t sleep for the rest of the night.

This is not “worry”. It’s not “borrowing trouble from tomorrow”. It is not an indication that my faith is weak or I’m “caving in” to my feelings.

It’s an uncontrollable physiological response to various stimuli.

So please, please don’t judge me or other bereaved parents for making choices about where we go, when we go and how much we go-most of the time we are anticipating an anxious response and trying to beat it.

We are doing the best we can.

Honest.

Feeling Our Way in the Dark

Often this journey through the Valley of the Shadow of Death is dark and lonely.

I am frightened of what may lay in wait-tragedy has visited once, it could come again.

I know Jesus is my Shepherd and I never doubt His companionship. But if I’m honest, as much as I lean into that truth, it’s oh, so helpful to have a living, breathing human being walk with me.

So when a friend reaches out and takes my trembling hand it calls courage to my heart.

When we huddle together in the dark places, waiting out the storm of grief or doubt, it gives me strength to carry on.

Never, never underestimate the power of presence.

For now we see in a glass darkly, but then face to face, and now we know in part, but then we shall know fully just as we have been fully known

I Corinthians 13:12

So until then, what?
We feel our way in the dark.
Until we find each other.
We huddle together in the storm.
Wet and shivering, but together.
And maybe in the end it will be our huddling in the storm that gives us more comfort than our understanding of the storm.”

~Ken Gire, The Weathering Grace of God

Stuck or Unstuck in Grief? Who Gets to Decide?

“Stuck in grief”-it’s a theme of blog posts, psychology papers and magazine articles. The author usually lists either a variety of “symptoms” or relates anecdotes of people who do truly odd things after a loved one dies. “Complicated grief” is a legitimate psychiatric diagnosis.

But who gets to decide?

What objective criteria can be applied to every situation, every person, every death to determine whether someone is truly stuck in grief? How do you take into account the circumstances of a death, the relationship of the bereaved to the deceased, trauma surrounding the event or any of a dozen other things that influence how long and how deeply one grieves a loss?

Obviously there are certain signs that someone needs professional help, medication or intervention. If a person is abusing drugs or alcohol, acting out in ways that harm or threaten harm to themselves or others, or is experiencing depression or uncontrollable anxiety then please, please, PLEASE get them to a doctor who can diagnose and treat them.

But for the rest of us, “normal” grief covers a wide variety of behaviors, feelings, attitudes and timelines:

Posting photos or videos of our missing child is normal. It’s the last visual link we have to someone we can no longer see.

Mentioning my son in conversation is normal. I mention my other children and his life is still intertwined with ours.

Crying-even years or decades after the loss-is NORMAL Grief waves can hit with tsunami force from out of nowhere and slam me to the ground. The only thing I can do then is let them wash over and around me until they pass.

Keeping space for my son in my home, at my table, in my heart and on holidays is normal. Some parents do this with a special candle, photo or ritual. Some do it with a stuffed animal or other item that represents their child. Some do it with words or deeds of kindness done in honor of the missing one. No one has sat in Dominic’s space at my table in these three years. It’s my silent witness to his ongoing influence and irreplaceable presence in our family circle.

Keeping a room exactly as it was is normal. Boxing everything up is also normal. Every heart is different and every heart has to decide what helps it heal.

Sleeplessness is normal. Some parents never return to pre-loss sleep patterns. I wake every morning at about the time the deputy came to our door. Every now and then, if I am extremely tired, I may fall back asleep for an hour or two. Sleeping the day away is normal, too. Sleep may be a welcome relief to a weary heart and some parents find that when they can, they sleep a lot. (Note: if this continues for days or weeks, please check with your doctor about the possibility of depression.)

Anxiety is, sadly, VERY normal. The worst has actually happened and that makes the possibility that it could happen again oh, so real. Anxiety may well spread to things that seem to have no relationship to loss. It’s also normal to have a “devil may care” attitude. The worst has actually happened, so what could be worse? Might as well live life to the full.

Withdrawal is normal. So is over-scheduling and staying busy. Both are ways someone may try to deal with heartbreak.

You don’t have to be “stuck” in grief to still feel the pain and have it continue to affect your life.

I am and have been highly functional since the morning the deputy arrived with the news of my son’s fatal motorcycle accident.

But I am a very different “me” than I was before that doorbell rang.

Some things I can’t do anymore. Some things I do differently and some things are brand new and I have only done them since he left us.

Labels are rarely helpful when applied to people.

Every person is unique, every relationship unique and every situation unique.

And every grief journey will be unique as well.

Repost: Dealing With Anxious Thoughts

As a follow up to the repost a couple days ago: Why is Anxiety Part of Child Loss?, I wanted to share this entry.

Here are some practical ways to deal with anxious thoughts, take them captive or redirect my focus so that they don’t rule my heart.

Please feel free to add any helpful tips in the comments section below. We learn best from those that share our journey. You may have the very words that will encourage another parent’s broken heart!

I no longer have to imagine the worst thing that could happen in the life of a mother-I know exactly how it feels.

And if I allow my heart to ponder that too often or too long, it consumes me.

So I am learning to take those anxious thoughts captive, learning to make them live in only a small corner of my mind instead of taking it over completely.

It takes effort and discipline, but it’s possible.

I don’t have to live the rest of my days a quivering mess-

Read the rest here: Dealing With Anxious Thoughts

Repost: Why is Anxiety Part of Child Loss?

It surprised me when I felt anxious after Dominic ran ahead to Heaven.

Not that the doorbell startled me, or that passing the place of the accident was hard nor that hearing motorcycles made my skin crawl.

But that every single day for many, many months anxiety crept up my backbone and made a knot in my neck.

It surprised me that I felt like I was literally going to explode.

Read the rest here: Why is Anxiety Part of Child Loss?

Yes, I AM a Cat Lady

I confess: I AM a cat lady.

Not the one with the dozens living in the house and stinking up the place but the one who relies on her furry pal to get her through hard days.

I raised Roosevelt from the day he was born.

His mom was a sickly outdoor cat that had never made it through a successful pregnancy and was not a candidate for being spayed because she wouldn’t have survived the anesthesia.

So the day I heard a tiny “mew” outside my window I hardly expected the sight I beheld. Here was mama kitty utterly amazed that she had birthed a baby, walking off the edge of the porch with a tiny black something still attached by the umbilical cord.

She could have cared less.

I grabbed scissors and a towel and rescued the little darling without much hope of his surviving.

But he did.

That was seven hospitalizations, two surgeries and one giant heartache ago.

He has become my comfort companion, my purring pal, the one who knows before I do that my RA is flaring, my heart breaking.

I am thankful for this oasis of comfort in a desert of hurt.

I am thankful that the God Who made me also made animals to bring healing in the midst of heartache. Oh, so thankful for a husband that puts up with my crazy “save everything that breathes” personality and doesn’t mind if a cat sneaks up the side of the bed in the middle of the night to get cozy in the covers..

When Dominic died, I remember sitting in my chair as the parade of sweet friends and family came over to cry with us. Roosevelt sat with me the entire time. His warm body reminded me that I was still here even when my limbs seemed to float away into the ether and my mind wasn’t entirely certain that what I saw or heard was real.

I have learned to count my blessings.

And while the majority of them walk on two legs, at least one has four.

My Choices Reflect My Focus

My daughter is a quote collector like her mama.

Here’s the one she has taped to her dashboard:

That is challenging for me.

When the one thing happens you think will never happen, well, that opens a whole chest full of fears you thought you’d locked inside.

But when I wake up I get to choose: will I give in or fight back?

I’m learning that while I can’t stop the thoughts that fly around in my brain I can choose which ones I invite to make a nest there.

When fear threatens to undo me, I resist.

I refuse to react to what MAY happen. I choose to hold onto what IS happening, right now.

Truth is, either way, I have no control over the future.

I will not lose today because of what tomorrow might bring.

What to say? What to do? Loving the Grieving in Public Places

Last week I wrote about some strategies I employ when in a social situation: Surviving Social Situations After Child Loss.

But if you are the friend, family member or acquaintance milling around who bumps into me or spies me across the room, here are some things you can do and say that will help me as well:

Be aware that the greeting, “How are you?” sometimes feels like a challenge instead of an invitation. I’m scrambling for words to express my true condition without ruining the mood of the gathering. It would be so much better if you simply said, “Hello” or “I’m happy to see you” without additional comments about how long it’s been.

Don’t pose or push for answers to questions that are primarily designed to satisfy your own curiosity. If I give a brief reply, take the hint and move on. If I say I can’t talk about it, drop the subject. If I turn the conversation back to you, pick it up and carry the ball. Public spaces are not the place to try to draw me out. If you are concerned about me or want to REALLY know how I’m doing, take me to lunch or bring me dinner or invite me out for coffee.

Notice my body language. If I am fidgeting or hugging myself or backing away or crossing my arms it’s time to let me go. I may hold my tongue but my body will give you abundant clues that I’m nearly at my limit for social interaction. Give me permission to end the conversation and preserve my dignity.

Hugs are almost always wonderful. Physical touch conveys love and compassion without requiring any response. If you know me well enough to hug me or squeeze my hand, please do.

Don’t corner me-physically, emotionally or spiritually. Backing me into a tight space makes me feel trapped. If I’m on the end of a pew or aisle, don’t ask me to scoot down so you can join me. I’m there in case I need to make an exit. Don’t stand too close to me while we’re talking-my need for adequate personal space has greatly increased since Dominic ran ahead to heaven. Don’t throw Bible verses at me or ask me how Jesus is meeting me in my sorrow. These are things we can talk about together, in private, in a way that makes space for me to be honest and express emotion without fear of embarresment.

Don’t make comparisons between my missing child and person featured in the wedding, baby shower or engagement party we are attending. Trust me, I’ve already done the math. I already know the distance between Dominic’s homegoing and this day. I am already mourning one more thing I’ll never get to see him do.

Please don’t use this time to tell me about another bereaved mother you “just want to introduce to me”. I am open and willing to walk with others on this journey, but this is not the time nor the place to put me on the spot. If you know of another mom that needs my help, write me a note, give me a call or text me.

If I leave a room, don’t follow (unless you are a very close friend). Let me go. I will return if I can and if I can’t, I won’t. Text me if you’re concerned. If I come back, let me slip in without any fanfare.

If I cry, hand me a tissue or a handkerchief. Don’t ask, “What’s wrong?” Besides the obvious, I may not have an answer for you.

Please help me move conversation along when I lose my train of thought or seem at a loss for words. Grief makes it hard to think sometimes, especially when in a crowd and/or a place with lots of background noise. Give me permission to end a conversation-it probably doesn’t have a thing to do with YOU-I’m just running out of steam and need a few minutes’ respite from having to talk.

Attending social events is exhausting for me now. I want to celebrate birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, graduations-but that means a lot of people and a lot of unknowns. Dozens of potential triggers, any one of which might conjure a grief wave that can drown me.

I do what I can to be prepared.

But I’ll take all the help I can get.

Why is Anxiety Part of Child Loss?

It surprised me when I felt anxious after Dominic ran ahead to Heaven.

Not that the doorbell startled me, or that passing the place of the accident was hard nor that hearing motorcycles made my skin crawl.

But that every single day for many, many months anxiety crept up my backbone and made a knot in my neck.

It surprised me that I felt like I was literally going to explode. I would walk and walk and walk just to push the negative energy out of my body.

I was also surprised by what seemed to be random triggers-smells, sights, foods, voices, places-that could send me into a tailspin of rapid heartbeat, hurried breathing, sweaty palms and a feeling of abject terror.

I didn’t know it then, but my experience is common.

It shouldn’t be surprising, really.

We all operate in the world as if it is predictable, as if it follows rules. It’s how we stay sane.

If our minds perceived that most of what we experience has at least a small element of the random, we would sit frozen, terrified to move.

Who can live in a world where you never know what to expect?

When Dominic left this life suddenly, unexpectedly and without warning, my sense of safety and order was violated.

The illusion of control was stripped away. The grid through which I viewed the world was ripped to shreds. What I thought I knew about how things worked was proven unreliable.

Truth is, I never really had all that much control, but burying Dominic made that undeniably obvious.

This brutal disruption in worldview created a kind of internal panic.

I wasn’t conciously aware of it at the time because I was overwhelmed with sorrow and the pain of loss. But my mind was trying to wrap itself around a new understanding of how the world works.

I needed to learn to live in a world where I couldn’t predict outcomes, I couldn’t guarantee safety (even if I did everything “right”) and I couldn’t REALLY plan for tomorrow because tomorrow might very well never come.

I had to figure out how to get out of bed instead of cower under the covers. To get in the car instead of stay at home. To continue to love the people God gave me even though they may be taken any time.

Anxiety is an outward expression of the inward reality of this disruptive process. My body was screaming what my mind was silently sorting out.

As I have worked on incorporating my experience of losing a child into my worldview, the anxiety has decreased.

I don’t expect to ever live free of anxiety again-how can I when I know by experience what most people only imagine?

But I’m learning ways to deal with it when it rears its ugly head.

And I’m learning that every time I triumph over it, I’m stronger and better able to do it the next time.

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