This week I lost one of the most deeply loving people in my life. I can't write it or say it without feeling such a deep ache it makes a hole inside and threatens to drag me in. I can't look at my kids without thinking they'll never know her. I can't think about anything at all except her. I've been obsessively checking facebook for other people's pictures of her. It's the only place I can keep seeing her. We've been friends for something like 15 years now, half of which we haven't spent much time in eachother's physical presence. Although she always managed to be there for the important moments; my babyshower, my wedding party. That never stopped us from constantly texting and emailing "love you mama" or "miss you soooo much". Kristin was a hard girl to pin down. She always had lots going on in her life and I know I've been guilty of the same procrastination. Of course I always just felt like she would be there. That there'd be time to catch up. Last wednesday, April 6th, the day before she began to get sick, she wrote to me. Before she threw up over and over and her insulin got out of hand. Two days before her sugar shot up to 1000. Before she collapsed on the floor in front of her mother and father and boyfriend. Before her mother performed cpr for 10 minutes while the ambulance raced not fast enough towards her house. She wrote "MISSYOUSISTER>>LOVE YOU SO MUCH". I never wrote back. I read it and I didn't respond because there was no urgency to. Because I could write the next day or the day after that. Because I could text her the next week that I was coming down for Easter. And probably because I was upset she hadn't shown up two weeks before for dinner with me and Kelly. She had had to work. Last friday when I got home from doing god knows what I got a message from her sister that she was in the hospital and to call. She told me the morning's events and though I cried in immediate fear I really believed she'd be ok. Jason got home and I walked a few miles to the chapel up the street. I lit a candle and I prayed. The bible was open to Isaiah 50:9 "awake, awake". Kristin was unconscious but from what I could gather I thought it was from being so heavily sedated. The next day I drove to Connecticut, deposited the babes into my mother's care and drove to the hospital. Her mother, Maria, her father, Tim, and her sister, Karin, comforted me. They held me and told me it would be ok. I gathered myself in and said of course it would. When Maria and Tim led me into her room I was unprepared. Kristin lay on a raised hospital bed, no blanket, just a gown and tubes and wires everywhere. Her body moved with the bleeps and blips of machines. Her eyes were forced from her head. I held her hand, kissed it and then collapsed into it. Her parents stood by her, her mother talking to a tactless social worker. Later, I left the hospital, the world where people stay in limbo for an eternity. Waiting for results they'll wish they never recieved. Wanting it all to end but clinging to the pain of life and it's simple threadbare balance. Outside it was sunny, and cool. A dream world where people put money into parking meters and made tuna sandwiches. Where Kristin was supposed to be lying in the grass somewhere smiling or driving with the windows down singing to some old school Jeff Buckley or some new up and coming band she was reveiwing for work. I didn't want to be out of the hospital. I resented the world without her and I felt an overwhelming sense of guilt being in it. I returned to the hospital the next day and the day after. Every time there was worse news. The cat scans were bad. She had undergone hypothermic therapy to basically freeze her brain to prevent further damage and now they were warming her up. Her body had a hard time maintaining it's temperature. She couldn't breathe on her own. When Karin called me to tell me it looked like she suffered severe brain injury my mother had to hold me like a child. I couldn't breathe. It was the beginning of the end of hope. Monday I arrived back and was for the first time able to spend time alone with Kristin. I whispered to her as I stroked her black straw hair that I wanted to cuddle in a bed with her and my babies. I wanted so badly to hear her voice. Her laugh. I wanted her to grab me towards her and hug me like she always did, so fiercley loving. I held her hand and then rubbed her feet and legs. I tried to lay down beside her a little but there were too many tubes. The neurologist was giving her parents and boyfriend the news that the last mri came back and there was nothing left of hope. They had promised we'd have till friday but now... Her parents went to the chapel and I comforted Eric. Covered in blood from a nose bleed he got from crying too hard. I held his hand and felt his world just disappear. That night was Kristin's last in this world. I give thanks I was able to say goodbye, to tell her how much I loved her, to be a little bit more of her life's story. I hope she heard it all, I hope she still does. I've been reeling these days with pain like I've never felt and whoever said time heals all wounds never new Kristin Anderson. The passing of these minutes makes me ill. It feels like I'm being swallowed by a tide that taking me farther and farther away from her. There's no lesson here. No satisfying end to this. Just another way to make me face this loss and process it. All I can keep saying is I love you mama. I love you and I miss you soooo much.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
My Soul Mama
This week I lost one of the most deeply loving people in my life. I can't write it or say it without feeling such a deep ache it makes a hole inside and threatens to drag me in. I can't look at my kids without thinking they'll never know her. I can't think about anything at all except her. I've been obsessively checking facebook for other people's pictures of her. It's the only place I can keep seeing her. We've been friends for something like 15 years now, half of which we haven't spent much time in eachother's physical presence. Although she always managed to be there for the important moments; my babyshower, my wedding party. That never stopped us from constantly texting and emailing "love you mama" or "miss you soooo much". Kristin was a hard girl to pin down. She always had lots going on in her life and I know I've been guilty of the same procrastination. Of course I always just felt like she would be there. That there'd be time to catch up. Last wednesday, April 6th, the day before she began to get sick, she wrote to me. Before she threw up over and over and her insulin got out of hand. Two days before her sugar shot up to 1000. Before she collapsed on the floor in front of her mother and father and boyfriend. Before her mother performed cpr for 10 minutes while the ambulance raced not fast enough towards her house. She wrote "MISSYOUSISTER>>LOVE YOU SO MUCH". I never wrote back. I read it and I didn't respond because there was no urgency to. Because I could write the next day or the day after that. Because I could text her the next week that I was coming down for Easter. And probably because I was upset she hadn't shown up two weeks before for dinner with me and Kelly. She had had to work. Last friday when I got home from doing god knows what I got a message from her sister that she was in the hospital and to call. She told me the morning's events and though I cried in immediate fear I really believed she'd be ok. Jason got home and I walked a few miles to the chapel up the street. I lit a candle and I prayed. The bible was open to Isaiah 50:9 "awake, awake". Kristin was unconscious but from what I could gather I thought it was from being so heavily sedated. The next day I drove to Connecticut, deposited the babes into my mother's care and drove to the hospital. Her mother, Maria, her father, Tim, and her sister, Karin, comforted me. They held me and told me it would be ok. I gathered myself in and said of course it would. When Maria and Tim led me into her room I was unprepared. Kristin lay on a raised hospital bed, no blanket, just a gown and tubes and wires everywhere. Her body moved with the bleeps and blips of machines. Her eyes were forced from her head. I held her hand, kissed it and then collapsed into it. Her parents stood by her, her mother talking to a tactless social worker. Later, I left the hospital, the world where people stay in limbo for an eternity. Waiting for results they'll wish they never recieved. Wanting it all to end but clinging to the pain of life and it's simple threadbare balance. Outside it was sunny, and cool. A dream world where people put money into parking meters and made tuna sandwiches. Where Kristin was supposed to be lying in the grass somewhere smiling or driving with the windows down singing to some old school Jeff Buckley or some new up and coming band she was reveiwing for work. I didn't want to be out of the hospital. I resented the world without her and I felt an overwhelming sense of guilt being in it. I returned to the hospital the next day and the day after. Every time there was worse news. The cat scans were bad. She had undergone hypothermic therapy to basically freeze her brain to prevent further damage and now they were warming her up. Her body had a hard time maintaining it's temperature. She couldn't breathe on her own. When Karin called me to tell me it looked like she suffered severe brain injury my mother had to hold me like a child. I couldn't breathe. It was the beginning of the end of hope. Monday I arrived back and was for the first time able to spend time alone with Kristin. I whispered to her as I stroked her black straw hair that I wanted to cuddle in a bed with her and my babies. I wanted so badly to hear her voice. Her laugh. I wanted her to grab me towards her and hug me like she always did, so fiercley loving. I held her hand and then rubbed her feet and legs. I tried to lay down beside her a little but there were too many tubes. The neurologist was giving her parents and boyfriend the news that the last mri came back and there was nothing left of hope. They had promised we'd have till friday but now... Her parents went to the chapel and I comforted Eric. Covered in blood from a nose bleed he got from crying too hard. I held his hand and felt his world just disappear. That night was Kristin's last in this world. I give thanks I was able to say goodbye, to tell her how much I loved her, to be a little bit more of her life's story. I hope she heard it all, I hope she still does. I've been reeling these days with pain like I've never felt and whoever said time heals all wounds never new Kristin Anderson. The passing of these minutes makes me ill. It feels like I'm being swallowed by a tide that taking me farther and farther away from her. There's no lesson here. No satisfying end to this. Just another way to make me face this loss and process it. All I can keep saying is I love you mama. I love you and I miss you soooo much.
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I am crying. I am so sorry. I really cannot imagine how you feel. I thought of you so much today...at so many moments. At one point for some odd reason I caught myself singing Dannyboy to Lukas....made me think of you. I must feel so lost and strange and empty and vulnerable and deeply deeply sad. This is not the time to try to make meaning out of what must feel like a great injustice. It is not time to fix things or make it o.k. But it is a time of love. In her absence you must feel so heart breakingly just how much you love her.
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