Charmed Life

Playing in the snow when you are a child is a rite of passage. My daughter is no exception.  Today, Sarah wanted to play in the snow. And to be honest,  I love it too. It  brings out the kid in me. So today, like any good parent would do I dressed my five-year old as if she was going on a trip to the Antarctica. tights, socks, extra sock, pants, undershirt, turtle neck, coat, hat, gloves and of course snowboots. It use to drive me crazy when my mom would do that to me, and yet here I do the same. I feel like it’s the scene in The Christmas  Story when the little kid can barely catch up to his friends because he has so much stuff on.

The snow has almost melted away here, but there is still enough for a five-year old to play in. Today, Sarah has made snow angels, we had a snow fight, and yes she ate some snow. It reminds me of when I was little and mom would give me a big bowl and tell me to get some snow. Only two rules applied, make sure no one had stepped in it, and that it wasn’t yellow. I would bring the snow in and mom would start the magical concoction. While she added the vanilla, eggs, sugar, etc, I would go out and get another bowl of snow that she would add to the tantalizing mixture. And before we knew it, snow ice cream was the snack of the day. Yum …

Sarah is now taking a nice hot bath and I am about to make some hot chocolate for the two of us. How blessed I am to have such a wonderful little girl, to play with and love. How I treasure these moments.

As I lay down for bed and look out my window I see the snow on the ground,crystallization of snow sparkles like twinkling stars in the sky and I drift off.

Then the memories unfold in my mind, as if relying on yesterday will help me get through my tomorrows.

I sometimes wonder, How? Or why? Has so much happened in our family. We are very close and love each other very much, but it seems as if our demise is always health related. How do I begin? What do I say? I suppose the first I remember starts with me. I was young and afraid and am lucky that I am alive today. Being nine and going through so much can effect a life more than people give credit for. People are cruel and mean especially when they do not understand illnesses and when they are children.

Jump to my senior year in high school and now my families world is about to change forever. My mom has breast cancer and goes through chemo and radiation. I never let mom see me cry. She was going through enough herself I didn’t want to burden her with anything else. My friends, my prayers, but most all my God heals mom and she is in remission. This time in my life changes me. It’s when I find strength I never knew I had. It’s when I realized that it hurts you more to see someone you love go through so much and you can’t control it, and all you can do is have faith.

Freshman year in college dad’s diagnosed with lung cancer. Misdiagnosed with lung cancer, right before the Denver Livestock show. Mom and Dad take a second honeymoon to Colorado instead. They finally tell the family. We are all in disbelief. Dad never smoked or drank. Later, we find it is not lung cancer it is Multiple myeloma/Bone Marrow Cancer. Dad takes radiation, his immune system is down – he gets shingles. Later that year,  with immune system still down dad falls into an unexpected coma they say could be next 24 hours before he dies. My cousin gets me from my dorm at school and my hell begins. I wait for my brother-in-law and another cousin to pick me up. Road conditions are bad and I am five hours away from home. We spend the next two weeks at the hospital hoping and praying for a miracle. A lung collapses what do we do? Mom has my brother and I talk to the doctor with her. He lives. Weeks later he wakes up. We found out it was meningitis and now he has brain damage. I go back to college and am a complete mess the rest of the semester bursting into tears at the drop of a hat, while in the meantime, during all of this “my boyfriend” was cheating on me. I can pick ‘em can I. You never know what to expect with your friends. Some friends that I thought would be there weren’t. Some friends kept me from going insane, and then some people became my friends because of the dark circumstances in my life. Medical bills are intense. I take the money left from my college fund and medical bills arepaid with it. Due to this I do not graduate, though I only lacked 13 hours. The next six to seven years my dad lives in a nursing home. His long-term memory is as good as ever, his short-term memory, not so much. He get’s me confused with my sister. I think times will never change. He has a small improvement, enough to go live at home. Which is tremendously hard on my mom. She has now become the care giver, and it takes a toll.

When I was growing up, I hardly remember my dad with a cold and now this. It’s as if he is a modern-day job case. Words cannot even express the feelings going in and out of my mind every day. When dad fell into a coma so may years ago, it was Halloween. So ironic. I remember talking to my then”boyfriend” in the chapel on the school campus and in comes my sorority sister and my dorm buddy Aricia and Amy. I head back and Melissa is waiting. No words are needed. She calmly puts her hands on my shoulder and I know. I live that moment over and over. I feel such guilt and remorse because before dad fell into a coma, a week before we had an argument over the phone. The next time, he woke up – well, he was never really dad again and my heart is broken.

Now I am married and happy. After a little over a year my husbands father dies unexpectedly and the remorse and the stress in unbelievably tough. The next year, my father dies. A 13 year battle. It has now been eight years since my dad died. It took him from Amarillo to MD Anderson in Houston back home. Ending in hospice. The day I find out my husband and best friend are  moving us  to our Grandmother’s house to save money for a while is the day he died. Within two weeks our car gets taken, and I lose touch with a friend for a while. Strength only comes from God and a little paxil.

Now things have leveled out – or so it seems.  And I find out my mom also has multiple-myeloma The memories come flooding back and I am afraid. Will it be a re-run of the past? Or will it be a whole new future.  All we can do is have faith, pray and go through it. God takes care of the rest. Please pray it’s a lot to go through.