This Is My Story: Lori + Ally

"It was just a dream" was my first thought as I struggled to wake up that morning. Seconds later, reality slammed into my brain with the force of a semi-truck slamming on its brakes while driving at highway speed. It was NOT a dream. In less than twelve hours the most dreaded fear of every mother would become my reality. I would stand at the side of a casket looking at the lifeless form of my daughter. Ally was young. She died of cancer. She left behind a heartbroken husband and two young children. 

There are many stories that I could share about her cancer journey and her determination and strength and perseverance. For now, those stories will remain unwritten. When the time is right, I will share with my grandchildren how incredibly brave their mother was and how hard she fought. Right now, the memories of her battle with cancer are still very painful. I try to NOT think about those memories and focus instead on that fact that my daughter is in Heaven - perfectly healed. 

I will tell you this about my daughter: She was brave. She had an adventurous spirit. She had a vivid imagination. She was determined; ok, sometimes she was stubborn. She overcame many obstacles in her young life. She loved to play the piano. She loved her family. She loved her husband and her children fiercely.

 What I do want to share with you is my journey in grief to this point. It is still less than a year since my daughter went to her Heavenly home. I want to tell you how God has sustained and comforted and helped me during the most difficult time of my life, to date. I fear that at times this narrative about my grief journey will seem disjointed and disconnected. Such is the way of grief. It is unpredictable and nonlinear. It does not follow an outline. It does not always make sense - not to the person grieving; certainly not to onlookers. 

As I write this, it is just over eleven months since my daughter died. Our journey was a very "gentle" one in the cancer world. It was less than a year from the time my daughter's diagnosis until she passed away. Although the treatments were not fun, nor were they easy, she never suffered some of the agonizing side effects that many people do. For that I am very grateful. I have wondered if it would have been less difficult to let go if it would have been a longer journey, a longer time to prepare, a longer wait before having to swim through the cold, deep, raging river that is called "grief". I have come to realize that although every person's journey through grief is different, there is one constant - there are some aspects of grief for which there is no preparation. 

 There were some things about grief that I knew to expect from an intellectual standpoint, but nothing could prepare me for the experiential standpoint. My father passed away thirteen years ago. I knew to expect pain.  My husband's father passed shortly before our daughter did. Our family was already grieving. The grief I have felt in the loss of other loved ones in NO way compares to the searing pain of saying, "farewell for now" to my daughter.  Nothing could prepare me for the gut-wrenching agony of losing a child.

I knew that there would be "grief triggers." Sometimes it's the small things that are the big things. One of the biggest triggers has been my phone. My daughter died exactly one month before her birthday. For many years, she would text ME on her birthday. The message never varied - "On this day, a precious baby girl was born." Because our love language was sarcasm, I always gave her a hard time and pretended to not know of any important birthdays on that particular day. This year it was totally different on her birthday. My phone was silent. I wanted so badly to be able to answer her text and say: "Yes, today a precious baby girl was born. I loved her every day of her life and I will love her forever."

But the silence of my phone that day was deafening. 

Ally used to text me and send me pictures of her children. Every. Single. Day. For weeks and weeks, the lack of buzzing from my phone seemed to scream to me the immensity of my loss. For weeks and weeks, months actually, it was all I could do to NOT pick up my phone to see if there was a text from her. I had no idea how much one could miss an eyeroll emoji!

Another aspect of grief that has caught me off guard, is what I call "grief amnesia.” There are large blocks of times that I simply do not remember!  Because I journaled a lot during her illness and after her death, I have many details written down. But I don't remember them; or if I do remember, it is in snatches - almost like flashbacks - at very unexpected times. There is so much that is still a blur. I have come to see that blur is God's mercy. I don't think I could bear it if I could remember all of the events of the last year-and-a-half.

Then, there is "grief clumsiness." Yes, I do believe that it is a thing. To be clear, I have never been graceful. Just because I dreamed of being a ballerina when I was a little girl, doesn't mean that I was intended to be a ballerina.  But, oh, my word! During the last few months, I have spilled a quart of blueberries in the grocery store. Sent them rolling. Everywhere. Same with a quart of blackberries - different occasion, same store. Or perhaps we could talk about the time I dropped a glass jar of spaghetti sauce onto the floor as I was checking out of a grocery store and was attempting to put it on the conveyor belt. I am sure that there are multiple grocery store employees that inwardly groan when they see me coming. (I do want to go on the record as saying that I did pick up the blueberries and blackberries myself - crying the whole time. I WAS, after all, the one that spilled them.  The spaghetti sauce spill required some help).

I was also totally unprepared for the physical pain that grief brings. In the early days, the physical pain was nearly unbearable and beyond description. I felt like a major organ had been carved out of my body. I had horrible headaches.  At times, I felt like a part of me had literally been amputated.  

Today, after eleven months, there remains a deep ache. Most days, I am able to navigate around it. But there remains a deep ache in the core of my being that reminds me that a part of me is gone. At times, it feels as if this deep ache is harder to bear now than it was during the earlier phases of grief. 

I have had to accept the fact that grief is not linear. Tears can still overtake me at a moment's notice. The dull ache in my heart can flare into a stabbing pain - again. At times, I still absentmindedly pick up my phone to see if she has texted me or sent pictures of the grandchildren. After eleven months, I SHOULD know that isn't going to happen. There are still days that just saying her name causes me to choke up. When we go visit our son-in-law and grandchildren who live nine hours from us, there are still times that the tears flow as we drive down the road that leads to her home as ALL of the memories come washing over me. Again. I can wake up feeling "normal" and the reality of it all will slam me. Again. Such is the way with grief.

For a period of time, I graded my grief recovery on the number of days in a row that I could go without crying. (I think nine days remains my record of tear-free days). I don't look at healing in that way anymore. For me, healing consists of reaching for the hand of God each morning and accepting what the day brings.  Some days I knock it out of the park and clean, do laundry, work in the yard, sew, walk, read. Other days I sniffle a little.  Some days (although they are growing fewer and farther between), I have to just sit with the pain and shed the tears. 

Grief is so much more than just missing a person. It is missing a way of life that no longer exists. It is accepting that some dreams will never become reality. It is trying to mend the gaping hole that has been left in your heart. It is missing what used to be while coming to terms with what IS. 

Part of grief for me is missing having a daughter. In full disclosure, my daughter and I had a typical mother/daughter relationship. We are both quirky. We could get on each other's last nerve. Our love language was sarcasm. Although I am choosing at this point to keep most of the stories untold, I will share a few examples to help give you an insight into our dynamic as mother and daughter. For a period of time, my daughter and I would binge watch the TLC show "What Not to Wear." We spent hours laughing and making sarcastic comments about various aspects of the show. Later, we binge watched the A&E show "Hoarders" and would spend the commercial breaks speed cleaning. It is amazing how much surface area two people can clean during one commercial break. I don't even know how many times we watched the movie "Raising Helen." For a long time, the phrase "That was very bad behavior" from that movie became the warning signal from one to the other to proceed with caution. My daughter absolutely LOATHED the Christmas song "Silver Bells."  Because our love language was sarcasm, I took pleasure in singing it to her (without warning) during the Christmas season. 

If I were to offer some thoughts on what has helped me to this point to work through grief, and to share some of what I am learning, I would say:

It's OK to find comfort in things that may seem silly or childish to those who are not grieving. I have a T-shirt that I gave to my daughter at the beginning of her cancer journey. For months, I slept in it every night. It brought me comfort and it made me feel close to her. I have some of her lotion that I used for several months. Because I don't want to use it all, I have put what is left in it in a small chest where I keep some of her things that I treasure.  

There are some things that absolutely must be avoided. (Please note that I am writing from my personal experience of losing a child. I am not a certified grief counselor). Two "games" must never be played. You will NOT win! The first is "Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda." The second one is "If Only.” How do I know, you ask? 

For weeks I found myself playing these games. Sometimes I would play them both at the same time. IF ONLY, I had known the last phone conversation was the last one I would ever have with her, I WOULD have said so much more!  I WOULD have recounted all the silly things that made us laugh until we literally could not breathe and had tears rolling down our cheeks. I WOULD have told her how brave she was. I WOULD have told her how proud I was of her. I WOULD have told her how much I loved her. I WOULD have said "I love you" a thousand times. I SHOULD have known that things were not going well at the end. I SHOULD have dropped everything and gone to be with her - even though it was literally impossible to get there "in time." (She was in a hospital nearly 12 hours away). I SHOULD have been with my child when she drew her final breath. I COULD have been a better mother. I COULD have listened more.  I COULD have been more patient. Did she know she was going to die? Was she scared? Did she know that I loved her? IF ONLY I knew! 

While I do think, to a degree, "if only" is a natural part of the grieving process, you cannot torture yourself with these mind games. By the grace of God, you have go on. One baby step at a time

 Spending time with people is crucial. There were many days when I would have liked to crawl into a hole and not come out. Because so much of grief is very personal and private, it is easy to become absorbed with your own pain and loss. It is good to get out and interact with other people. 

As I travel forward on the path that has been ordained for me, there continue to be "aha" moments. I am learning that there is no finish line to grief.  Grief changes. It ebbs and flows. I am a list girl and task oriented. It frustrates me beyond what I can say to not be able to circle a date in my planner that indicates the day when I will have successfully concluded grieving for my daughter. 

God has also been gently showing me that it's time to begin to look to the future. Recently I had to go through many pictures on my phone to create more storage. As I relived the last 8 years stored on my phone, so many memories came flooding back. I played a few videos I have of my daughter - just to hear her voice again. The 38 years that she was here were a very special part of my life. I will love her forever. I will miss her forever. But just as we store our most treasured items in a cedar chest, it's time to carefully and tenderly fold some of those memories and store them in the cedar chest of my heart and start looking to the future. You cannot recreate what was with what is.

What I have is a loving, faithful husband of 44 years. I have three amazing sons who married equally amazing women. I have a hard-working son-in-law who is a dedicated father. I have five grandchildren with one more on the way. When we visit my daughter's children and husband and see them flourishing and loved and cared for, it brings healing to my heart and a profound sense of thankfulness for the people God put into place to lovingly pour themselves into our son-in-law and grandchildren. When I hold my daughter's children, I am holding a part of her. Seeing our grandchildren without their mother and our son-in-law without his wife makes me cry; but that is okay. I have a God Who has strengthened me and sustained me and comforted me during my darkest hours. 

As I write this, it has only been eleven months since the passing of my daughter. I don't know if I have handled it well. I don't know where I am in the stages of grief. To be honest, I haven't really tracked my progress in that way.  I will say that I have hurt more deeply than I thought a human being could hurt and still be able to breathe, let alone function. I have shed more tears than I thought humanly possible. There have been many days when I have not been my best self. There were some days it was an accomplishment to function as my worst self. But this I can honestly say - to the best of my knowledge, every day I have been able to say, "It is well with my soul" and "God is good."

I have become hyper-aware that life is short and that it can change at a moment's notice. For many weeks after my daughter died, my heart would start racing and anxious thoughts would flood my mind if my husband got home from work later than expected. I am now able (usually) to take a deep breath, whisper a prayer, and remember all the times God has sustained me and claim the promise that He will ALWAYS sustain me - regardless of the situation. 

 Going forward, I want to live my life intentionally.  I want to improve at being intentional in telling people how much they mean to me. I want to be intentional in sharing how God's grace has sustained me in the moments that I felt as though I would not survive the perpetual pain that tore at my heart.   Ironically, intentional was going to be my word for this year. Funny how I spent the first half of the year feeling like I was floundering, drowning, surviving - anything but being intentional. 

The verses in Hebrews 4 about Jesus understanding our suffering have come to mean so much to me: 

  "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.  Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."  (Hebrews 4:15-16 ESV).   

For many weeks, I clung to the shortest verse in the Bible - "Jesus wept."  (John 11:35). I found great comfort in the fact that Jesus was moved to tears.  I felt as if Jesus wept for his friend Lazarus, He understood my tears for my daughter. 

Death is so incredibly final. I treasure and embrace the promises that we are given in Scripture. I understand that we will be reunited. I love hearing all the songs about Heaven. The words bring such healing and comfort. But for now, in this moment in time, it is hard. It is still really, really, hard. 

Until we meet again, my precious daughter. Until we meet again! I love you!  Always and forever!!!!!