Tag: grief

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A Rock and a Hard Place

Hannah

Sweet Hailie Marie. This girl has shown me more about perseverance than most adults I know. This world is going to feel more empty without her.

Hailie’s father, Mark, and I first became friends in middle school. Thankfully technology has allowed us to maintain our friendship through many moves and life changes. There is a quote from Harry Potter, however, that I feel explains the foundation of our friendship even better.

“There are some things you can’t share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a 12-foot mountain troll is one of them.” -JK Rowling

Our 12-foot mountain troll came in the summer of 2011. Mark tragically lost his wife while giving birth to their son. I tried to be a supportive friend without really having any idea how to walk with someone through that. Several weeks later, I unexpectedly lost my baby girl, and entered a whole new world of understanding the hurting. Going through those great losses helped give my friend Mark and I an understanding of each other, and forged a friendship of encouraging each other through a pain we both now knew very well.

I’ll never forget the phone call which seemed only a short time later. Mark’s daughter Hailie had brain cancer. It was an extremely hard thing for me understand, but I watched the family take this new challenge with strength and calm.

This is when I became privileged to know a little girl with fight and determination that is awe-inspiring. Three times over the next few years she fought this beast. She bravely faced the treatments that stole much of her childhood, and she pressed on. She’s fierce, and she’s gentle, and that girl always has a smile. It’s been tough watching her family walk through this suffering, but seeing how they handle it with such calm perseverance and deep trust has been inspiring to me.

Now we know that the time to fight has come to an end. That beautiful, courageous girl is not going to be with us much longer. It’s excruciating. It’s confusing. I know I have argued with God many time over allowing so much heartache in this family’s life. Answers to questions we’ll never know, but I do know that Hailie, as well as her family have given us all a lesson in perseverance, the importance of family, and the hope that can never be squelched by the darkness.

Will you keep them in your thoughts and prayers with me? These days ahead promise to be heart-crushing, and sometimes I lose the words to pray within the searing of watching my friend walk this path of suffering.

Please leave me a comment, it lets me know you’re listening!

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Pulling the Trigger

Hannah

Last weekend, someone I love took his own life. It brought a whole new rawness to the mysteries I ponder over suicide.  It brought sadness and wondering and questioning from places that did not feel very good.

In the aftermath of the unexpected suicide of our beloved actor, Robin Williams, there was this heightened awareness of the possibility that anyone, at any time, could chose to end their own life.  I appreciated that it suddenly was not the elephant in the room, and  scatterings of suicide hotline ads lined public places and television commercials. People were having conversations about how a person gets to that place. It saddened me though that it took someone so iconic to bring about that shift. It saddens me more that once the shock wore off, we went right back to our comfortable lives and forgot about the life around us that keeps being snuffed out at their own hands.

flowers marguerites destroyed dead
Photo by Gratisography on Pexels.com

I will tell you, after working on an ambulance and in the ER for 13 years, the ones that actually do it are not the ones you think. Yes, often times the warning signs are there, but too often it is the person who never brought it up, the person who everyone thought had it all together, the person who had no reason to feel that way. Their loved ones stand in stunned disbelief. Those calls are some of the ones that haunt me the most.

One of my son’s classmates died by suicide not long ago.  The star of the team.  The boy who made everyone feel like a friend.  The boy no one expected.  What if that is exactly why he did it?  That’s a lot of pressure to maintain the status everyone looks up to.  That pushes the door wide open to feel not quite good enough.  I watched my son wrestle hard with the questions, and I didn’t know what to say.

It’s all around us.  It’s in the young boy angered by his parents’ divorce, the teenage girl struggling to fit in, the elderly man no longer visited by his family.  It’s in the movie star who seems to have it all, the business man who gives the perfect pitch, and the mother grieving the loss of her child.  It’s in the pastor’s wife, the put-together, the successful, and the disheveled.  It’s not only in the trauma, it’s also in the mundane.

Depression isn’t always because something terrible happened, sometimes it just shows up.  It’s stuffed and tucked and disguised and ignored, but remains that constant companion beneath the dull-eyed smile.  We frown upon it; frown because they must be doing something wrong, they’re not trying hard enough, or they aren’t thankful for what they have.  Wrong.  Depression can show up anytime, anywhere.  I know because I have fought it.

From bouts of post-partum depression after a few of my births, to a longer streak of hopelessness when my body was so worn, to a perfect joy-filled blessing-soaked day of wanting nothing but to cease to breathe, I realized this is not something so easily defined.

I do not know the answer.  I’m afraid no one does.  I want us to keep looking though.  Keep talking about it. Stop shaming people for seeking the help of a counselor, or for needing to take anti-depressants.  Stop entertaining your assumptions, and get out there and make people feel enough. Make them feel loved, and cared for, and seen.  Be kind.  Take the time to connect, even if it’s just for a few seconds.  I feel like none of us know when we might be the one standing between a person and their death.

adult alone anxious black and white
Photo by Kat Jayne on Pexels.com

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Giving it Up

Hannah

This week I had a pretty hard doctor appointment that revolved around the words “severe muscle impairment,” “tracheotomy,” and “ventilator.” The same day I received an email reminding me it is nearing time for me to recertify my national Paramedic license. It was a sobering day.

For these past couple years, I have let my husband’s encouraging words and glass-half-full spirit spur me on in believing that I will walk in my Medic boots again. He was always reassuring me that we would get through this; I would get strong again and go back to the career that I love. During that time I have struggled with who I am when I’m not a paramedic or a firefighter. It became such a big part of what motivated and moved me that when it was gone I struggled with depression and wondering who I was. I still do at times.

Being a paramedic and firefighter is unlike any job on earth. To get to walk into people’s lives at the time they need you most, it’s indescribable. It was a privilege and an honor to get to show up in homes, cars, churches; all the places people have built their beautiful messy lives, and serve them at their most vulnerable moments.

I know that I am loved and cherished as I am. I know I am still me, and the people that matter the most will accept me as I am, but it has been a painful walk to slip further and further from my polished boots, the distinctive smell of bunker gear, and the smooth weight of my stethoscope around my neck. Like most folks in my line of work, I am a strong type A that likes to have everything under control. It is extremely humbling, and sometimes discouraging to see that I have lost much of that control, and have to surrender to something that controls me, rather than myself controlling it. What an important lesson in life though; one I undoubtedly needed to learn. We are not our own, and the power is not ours.

Most nights I don’t dream, but when I do it is of being back on the streets alongside my cherished partners, rushing toward the danger and the opportunity to help save a life. I know they are just dreams, but until I can’t anymore, I will keep clinging to them with a smile.

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The Long Goodbye

Hannah

Today I am remembering my pastor’s wife, and sweet friend Kara, on the day she left this world for the Heaven she so joyfully believed in. She is missed, and the legacy she left behind is one of great encouragement and grace. I know I was honored to learn from her about life, family, and faith.

Today her documentary came out. I encourage you to watch it and learn what made this woman such an inspiring friend. I am still challenged by many of our conversations, and always striving to love big like she did.

Click here for a link to the trailer.

Please leave me a comment, it lets me know you’re listening!

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Vacancy

Hannah

After another night of tossing and turning, I woke this morning with my heart feeling heavy, raw. A strange, sick-butterfly feeling tumbled in my stomach. It’s funny what the heart remembers before the mind even has a chance to catch up. Today it has been five years since I was woken by the call that my little brother had unexpectedly passed away.

I suppose it still feels so raw because in the years that have passed there have been many curveballs to handle, which have left little time for the grieving process that I know is still to come. Even so, my chest squeezes tight and my eyes pool with watery thoughts as I ponder back on the special friendship I shared with my brother. There is so much I wish and need to talk to him about right now, and it’s crushing that I can’t.

I want to work on the streets again with him side by side. I want to drive to Kansas to cheer through his epic fourth of July firework extravaganzas. I want my youngest to know his Uncle Ben as he grows. All these things in a beautiful, painful tangle of joy and heartbreak and anticipation of an eternity.

The rhythm of life continues to ebb and flow, even with these hole-shaped pieces of my heart unfilled. Someday, all will be new, but while I am waiting I’ll never stop missing him here.

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Glimpses

Hannah

If you’ve known me very long, you know how special purple, rainbows, and butterflies are to me. Purple was our Ellie’s color, and on the day we buried her, her sister’s butterflies hatched way earlier than expected under the most perfect full rainbow painted across the gray July sky. Every time we see these things now, they are like a sweet hug from our girl, reminding us of her footprint on our lives.

As we celebrated her 8th birthday a few days ago, the mundane parts of a winter day were punctuated amazingly by the sweetest gifts, seeming to be perfectly placed just for us.

As I lay watching a movie with my loves, we all turned to grin at each other knowingly as a conversation about rainbows erupted in the middle of a suspenseful plot. My husband turned to me. “How many movies do you suppose they start talking about rainbows in,” he grinned. It was true. Specific, beautiful reminders of Ellianna Grace were purposely left in plain view for us on the anniversary of her birth. The others I was able to capture, to look back and remind myself of the goodness.

Purple and rainbow, in a dress fit for a princess!

A photo that popped up in my Instagram feed from Pitter Patter Art.

Life is sweet indeed.

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Brave Beginnings

Hannah

Today we are celebrating the 8th birthday of Ellianna Grace, and I can’t help but smile. Four and a half months seems like such a short time to get to have a person in your life, but eight years later, she is still making a difference and changing lives. From the relationships we have formed because of our journey with her, to the hearts we have gotten to relate to and bring comfort to because we have been there. Her story reaches on.

This week for her birthday we raised money for Brave Beginnings, an organization which provides life sustaining medical equipment to NICUs in order to support these tiniest of babies. With the generous help of our family and friends, we surpassed our fundraising goal within hours. Our little girl, making waves and bringing change. Couldn’t be more proud. My Jesus who promises to hold her, also promised that her story didn’t end with her death, and it most certainty hasn’t.

Happy birthday, baby girl!

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