Tag Archives: H1N1

Dear Barry…

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Dearest Barry,

Seems like it’s that time again, time for your letter that I write you every year.  Like always, I start this letter a couple of weeks before your death anniversary as it allows me time to work on my feelings and process things yet again, rather than forcing myself to do it all in one day.  Good thing I am wearing waterproof mascara today!

I can’t believe it has been three years.  I think you started getting sick right about this time in 2009 (late September), and I remember how worried I was.  You just weren’t getting better, and I confessed my fears to you about you dying.  I was so scared.  I remember how you told me “don’t worry, if I feel like I’m going to die, I’ll go to the hospital”.  And you did.  And you never came home.  I’ve had so much time to reflect on our marriage, and after you died, I remembered how I always had this feeling that I wouldn’t get forever with you. You always said you would die young, and I didn’t want to believe it, but deep down I knew, but hoping it would never come true.

I miss you.  I will always miss you, and I will always love you.  Did you know we still talk about you every single day? Not a day goes by that you don’t enter our thoughts or pop up in conversation.  I make sure to do that for the kids, as it’s important that you are kept alive in them.  I still cry for you, though not as often.  I think the third year has been the easiest for me.  The first I was in a total fog and just putting one foot in front of the other.  The second was the absolute hardest for me, so far.  The fog had lifted, and I was left with two broken hearts…one from you, and one from a jackass that took advantage of me.  Everything was so real last year, final…it had all sunk in.  Then this year…while it has been the easiest of the three, it has not been without its trials as well.  Our family has definitely been on a roller coaster, and I am still trying to make heads or tails of it all.

I met a man a year ago on eHarmony.  I didn’t want to join, but several friends pushed me towards it, and I reluctantly joined.  Less than a month after I joined, he and I went on our first date on October 15th, and then this past August, he proposed! Oh Barry, you have sent me such a gift in Andrew.  How lucky am I to find two men who have loved me with every fiber of their being?  He loves the kids, and he is so respectful of your memory, and he also talks about you with them as well.  He is a wonderful man, and has pushed me and pushed me out of my shell, just like you wanted.  Guess what I accomplished this year? I hiked mountains!  Yes, ME!  I look back to the person I was three years ago, and the concept of even thinking about that was foreign to me, but I did it!

We’re getting married next year, and Andrew suggested we have a chair reserved for you at the front where the kids will be sitting.  And a picture of you as well <3 He wants you to know that we will always remember you, and how this family started.  Our son will be walking me down the aisle, giving me away.  Speaking of the kids…you would be so proud of them.  They are growing and changing every day.  V & M will be 12 in a few short months…remember the day we found out we were having twins? “Ya, I zink I zee two in there” with Dr Westerburg? I was only 19 years old and you were 20! we were babies ourselves, and now our babies will be teenagers in just over a year.  The boy is already almost as tall as me! Less than an inch  to go now :) He looks just like you, and I love that. I can see your face through him as he grows up.  He got a much coveted spot on a basketball team and starts in November! He’s 5’8″ now!  The girls….V is such a little lady.  She inherited the short gene from your mother and we always tease her about it.  But the pipes on that girl! Oh can she sing!  I’ve put her in voice lessons and her coach is looking for a spot for her in one of his bands.  She is going to give us trouble when she is older, I can see it now…and all the boys will love her. Oy.

E…E is still her same self that she was three years ago.  She hates the thought of growing up, scoffs at the thought that she has to wear a bra soon, is still a tomboy, and her hair is a wild untamed mess of thick unruly curls.  She has a gentle heart though, and is such a sweetheart who still loves giving hugs all the time. All she wants for her birthday again is Art Supplies!  I can’t believe our little indian papoose will be 10 in less than two weeks! She is having her first sleepover party this year and is so excited for it! A is in first grade now…our little baby is almost 7 years old!  She takes after her oldest sister, and is a total girly girl.  She is reading like a champ, taught herself how to tie her own shoes!, and loves birds.  She’s still as quirky as ever though, and has a toy lizard that she named….Bacon. I can’t believe that our children are growing up so fast, they will be out of the house in a blink of an eye.

I cried writing this to you, as I always do.  I promise to always hold you close to my heart, to always remember you and make sure you are remembered.  I will always talk about you with the kids, and anyone else who will listen.  You will live on forever because you will always be loved.  Thank you for watching out for us, and sending Andrew our way.  As hard as my life has been the last few years, I feel blessed to have, and have had, the love that surrounds me.  Thank you for giving me four wonderful children, who at times make me want to run away forever and forget I am a mother, but also allow me to see you through them every single day.

Love forever and always,

me

xoxoxoxp

A Winding Down Summer…

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Less than a month till my kids go back to school, and I am eagerly counting the days.  I don’t do well during summer break, as it throws my entire schedule out of whack.  I can never get to bed on time, or wake up on time either, which leads into me feeling like a big ‘ol slob!  Needless to say, I am definitely looking forward to September 5th, when all four of my babies will be back on a normal school schedule.

Fall is my favorite time of year, but it also brings a lot of heartache and joy for our family.10 years ago, I was 8 months pregnant with our third child, a girl, who was born on October 8th. Three years ago, we were a family of 6, and I was again, looking forward to summer break being over.  Little did I know that the next two months were the last two we’d have as a family of six with my husband.  He did October 10th, 2009 due to severe and horrific complications from H1N1 (Please, get your flu shot every.single.year).

I was only writing about this because on twitter today, a friend of mine asked me about his death, and how our daughter handled it.  You see, he died on the day of her 7th birthday party.  Not many people can say they have had that “privilege”, can they? I woke up on the 10th, the day of her party, and headed to the hospital for a short visit before the party festivities began.  She was having a halloween themed birthday party at a local glow-in-the-dark mini golf place here in town.  Thankfully I had prepped all the party stuff beforehand, as all hell broke loose less than an hour after I got there.  I’m not ready to share the gory details yet, and I am not sure if I ever will be, but what I am about to write will be a true testament to my strength.  Strength that I didn’t even know I had, strength that came out of the depths of my soul and heartache, strength that made me keep putting one foot in front of the other.

My husband died less than two hours after I got to the hospital.  The party was supposed to be at 1PM.  Shortly after he died, I had to call my mom at my house to tell her I couldn’t make it to the party.  I remember standing at the nurses station, phone in my left hand, tissue in the right, and steeling myself as I made that phone call.

“Mom, B is very sick.  I can’t make it to the party, they don’t want me to leave.  You’re going to have to take care of it for me.  Everything is ready and in the bags by the front door, and you can pick up the cake at Safeway at noon.  Tell E I’m sorry and I love her”.

But he had already died.  I couldn’t tell her, I couldn’t tell the kids, and most of all…I COULD NOT ruin her 7th birthday party.  I just couldn’t do it.  So I bore that heartache by myself till two friends came to the hospital, and thankfully the nurses called them to be at my side.

I don’t remember much of the timeline after that, but one friend went to the party and told my mom, and took my mini van to pick up the kids, leaving my mom to drive her car.  She told my mom privately, and my mom sped home to meet me there.  Another friend drove me home and forced me to eat some yogurt.  To this day, I can not stomach yoplait light yogurt, the taste and texture of it makes me gag and feel like I am going to vomit.  The kids probably came home at 3 something, I don’t remember much of that.  They burst into the door with my friend Sara, all excited and full of sugar.  But they didn’t see me, my mom, Angela, Lisa…all of us sitting around the kitchen table.  All four ladies grabbed a kid and held them as I told them the worst thing I have ever had to tell them.

“Your daddy was so sick, and the doctors couldn’t fix his heart.  He died this morning”.

To see their little faces crumple into sorrow was one of the worst things I have ever had to experience.

I honestly don’t know how I held my composure as I called my mom that morning.  And I hope one day that the kids, and E especially, will understand why I did things the way I did. Out of a mother’s love.  Every year since then, I’ve made it a huge point to make a big deal out of her birthday.  All we have are bad memories of her birthday now, but hopefully the following years will help negate some of that.

I think I rambled a bit… I had a 2nd point to this blog post, but the first half got away from me!

My other point was that, though we have so much tragedy surrounding the  month of October, our lives are also changing, and some really awesome things are starting to happen already that will be fully implemented this fall.  He would have wanted that, for us to move on and be happy.  B was the beginning of my life, my 20s, the man that gave me four wonderful (yet very annoying lol) children, but I am ready for more.  I am ready to LIVE again, I want to be a wife again….but I will always remember and love him.  Always.

Mr eHarmony and I are coming up on a year of dating, can you believe it? I never thought I’d find someone who reminded me so much of my late husband!  He is a real blessing to this family, and I can’t imagine life without him.  He makes me laugh and snort in ways I thought would never be possible again.

This post is getting quite long already, so I’ll just give you some “teasers” and write about them later on…. We’re taking the next step in our realtionship! And taking an amazing family vacation to LA/Disneyland in November.

More on that…..soon!

The Dark Side Of Motherhood

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Despite all the bullshit I’ve been through the last two and a half years, today I learned something that made my heart literally stop.

My friend’s daughter has pneumonia.

To the normal person it might seem like not much of a big deal, but that…coupled with the fact that my oldest daughter has been feeling like poopy the last couple days, plus having very labored breathing, made me really worried (plus all our kids play together).  I was paranoid she had pneumonia, and when I found out this morning about our friend, I wanted to run and run and run away from my bad memories.

When Barry died, I had a major fight of flight adrenaline rush, and I had that this morning too.  I just wanted to run away from all my bad feelings because I was too scared to face them. But I had to take care of my daughter, who stayed home from school today.  One of the three causes of death for my husband was  ”Bi-lateral multilobar Pneumonia” (the other two being cardio respiratory arrest and a blood clot).  All caused by H1N1.  He was the hospitals sickest patient the entire time he was there.

All I could think about while I was getting ready to take her to the doctor was deep, dark stuff, that a mother often thinks about, but rarely share with the general public or anyone for that matter, because we are worried about being labeled a crazy lady.  I wondered about her funeral, how I would fall apart and never be able to be normal again.  I wondered if her absentee grandfather would show up, and how I would finally get to yell at him and say my piece about how horribly he would treat us.  I wondered about counseling.  I wondered where I would hold the funeral, and who would come.

Yes, I went there.  I was that scared this morning, and had to force myself to not think about it.  I had so much adrenaline that when I went on my elliptical, I was holding an RPM of almost 70 the entire time I was on there.  I never go that fast, I just had to do it and get my energy out.  I know all mothers fear their children dying, and I hope I never ever have to go through that, because I don’t know how I could possibly deal with that after losing my husband as well.  I was so scared this morning.

When we got to the doctor, they said it was not pneumonia (thank you!!!), but something else they weren’t sure of, so they wanted to do some tests.  And guess what she tested positive for?

The flu.

Again, not a big deal to any “normal” person, but the flu and pneumonia are what landed Barry in the hospital.  They are what killed him.  In many ways the flu is worse for me than pneumonia, and especially so because we’ve all been vaccinated every year since then.  But this year her vaccine failed.  And now all 5 of us, me included, are being put on Tamiflu because of our family history.

Now that we have tamiflu, I’m not as scared because I know she’ll get better.  She won’t die yet, and hopefully not until she’s an old lady in her 90s who has lived a very full life.  It’s amazing how just one word…pneumonia in my example, can elicit such a strong reaction in us and make us think of the worst.

When the other kids get home from school, I get to run all over town to two different pharmacies picking up five different prescriptions for tamiflu, lots of crackers, 7-up, and whatever else a sick kid needs.

If something like this happens to you, what do you do, and how do you bring yourself out of that dark corner?

Happy Mothers Day to Me!