I wrote this piece in the first year after my dad’s accident in 2017. He died in September of 2023. A kindness that we all had waited for. 6 years of living with a traumatic brain injury as horrific as his, was 6 years too long. As time has gone on, moments like these are fewer and farther between. The heavy blanket of grief has gone from a thick wool material to a mid-weight, all season fabric. it’s something I can cope with, rather than want to feverishly kick off of me when it feels too warm. It’s more manageable, and the bad days are scattered throughout the calendar instead of booking me solid 24/7. I no longer have to live in the in-between, he no longer has to suffer. None of us do. The flashbacks still happen, but they aren’t as frequent and I am able to be more present in the precious moments with my children. A lot of life has been lived between then and now and there’s so much more left to live. For today, I am grateful for these moments I remember, to be able to look back on them and see just how far I have come. I hope that if you find yourself in the middle of your own metaphorical driveway, struggling to find joy because so much life has been dumped on you, that you can be encouraged that it gets better. Not right away and certainly not without a hell of a lot of healing, but it does get better.
If no one has said this to you lately, you are brave, my friend. You are brave to be facing all that you are. You are brave for waking up every single day, knowing what you’ve lost. You are brave.
Xo,
Shea
I laid down looking up at the sky, willing its vast and limitless power to soak into my bones. My curly headed boy lay beside me.
“Look at that cloud, baby! Can you see a dinosaur?” I would ask him with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. I picked at the ground with my finger and small bits of rock settled themselves underneath my nail.
I rattled off animals and creatures for him to search the sky for. Meanwhile, I was searching the sky for an answer. Eyes and heart pointed toward the heaven that was supposed to cradle me, my back cold against the concrete of the driveway, my body shaped into a still snow angel. I took deep breaths, in and out. The air was fall, chilly and fresh as it wrote itself into my lungs. In and out. In and out. I had hope that if I stayed long enough my soul could bargain for the hope it so desperately needed. In and out. In and out. I let my body become the cold, hard ground.
“Look over there! Do you see the puppy?” My finger pointed to where the sky kissed the tree tops.
What did any of this mean? Why did he survive? Where are you, God?
“Oh! I think I see a snake, can you see the snake over there?”
How am I supposed to carry this pain with me forever?
“Yes! I see the ice cream! I bet you it’s yummy!”
How could You do this to me? To us? To him?
“I think I see a truck! Can you see it?
My butt is going numb from laying on the cold hard pavement and without warning I am back in the bathroom of the hotel in Amsterdam, cradling my knees to my chest as the tears fall hot on my cheeks and the piercing cold of the tile cut through the thin fabric of my pajama bottoms, unsympathetic to the agony that has taken over my body. I gripped my toes to the floor to steady myself. I can’t type fast enough to my best friend, as she so lovingly held me from across oceans via the internet. I am in a country unfamiliar to me and I am in shock. It’s in the early morning hours that feel like the middle of the night and I have no concept of time or what time I am waking her to talk to me. She’s my angel swooping in to help me carry the pain. My husband must hear me crying and comes into the bathroom and wraps his around me. We both cry as our minds and hearts try to make sense of it all.
“Mickey!” he shouts. Elated to have found his best buddy from the television.
And I am back. To the ground. To the driveway of the home that was supposed to be theirs forever. I look up at the trees. I wish I could be a tree. Tall and strong. Rooted deep into the ground.
How could you do this to me?
As I close my eyes, hot tears leave a glistening trail down my cheek and travel to the back of my neck. Every waking moment of my life feels like a contradiction. This paradox is something that I was not prepared for. No one tells you that one day you’ll have to hold sorrow and joy in your arms as they struggle against each other in complete, and total disagreement.
There will be many more moments like this for me. Living in two worlds at the same time. The one world where I am a mother and I am delighting in every smile and squeal that comes from my curly headed boy and the other where my mind will snap back to the reality of what has happened, flashes and reels of my dad in the hospital bed, connected to tubes and wires. Reliving the phone call that changed everything. Imagining what he must have thought mere seconds before impact. Sitting with my curly headed boy, smelling the edible scent of his skin after a bath, but also sitting with my grief, every second of every day. I would have to physically shake my head when these thoughts came with vengeance. Almost as if to shake them out and let them fall to the ground so I could sweep them up and throw them away. Letting them tumble out of my head like the blocks my toddler likes to stack and then knock over. It’s a constant power struggle and most days, grief wins by a landslide.
