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Strength: Where does it come from? Everyone always wants to tell me how strong I am for how I am today with dealing with the death of Mari. And I used to think the same thing when I saw a parent and how they were dealing with the death of a child. I would think to myself how incredibly strong that person must be to be dealing with the loss. The strength they have inside themselves must be so incredibly strong to be able to get through this incredibly hard time. I know I could never be that strong. I could never make it through the loss of a child.
AND THEN IT HAPPENS TO YOU!
I can honestly say I hate it when I hear how strong someone thinks I am. I have learned that it is not strength. I know some people will be in disagreement with me. However, only another parent who has lost a child will truly understand what I am about to say. It is not strength that gets you through. It is that you don’t have a choice. I mean, my child’s life has ended but I am still alive on this earth. I can either somehow learn to live my life without my child here or I kill myself. For most people, the latter is really not an option. For some reason our child’s life ended before ours. The order seems to be out of whack. Yet, we are still here as the parent and our child has passed away. So we learn to live a new life without them here. No, we may never truly understand why our child is gone but they are none the less. So it is not strength that gets us through but that we have no choice. We have to continue on with our lives. It is like we have died and a new person was reborn in our place.
It is a choice. I know there are some parents out there who felt that once their child died they had nothing to live for so they take their lives. I can honestly say that there were days where I wish God would just take my life early as I did not see how I could live without Mari here but I never wanted to take my own life. It did feel unbearable at times with the pain and grief going so incredibly deep. There were so many at first. Now they have become fewer and fewer being farther and farther apart. My life seems to have happiness in it again. I believe this is a good thing. It is hard to live life if you are always feeling sad and down.
I love you baby girl and mommy misses you very much.
Love Mommy
Well it has been awhile but a long time coming: I have officially starting working out again (of course it is only the first day, but you have to keep optimistic right).
I signed up for personal training this week on post. I went in this morning to have my very first session (or should I say second as the first time I met with my personal trainer she went over some guidelines and what not to get me started right). When I arrived I found out that she, I believe, fell down some stairs and could barely get herself back in her home. I hope she is ok. Needless to say, I DID NOT have personal training today. However, since our appointment was for 6:30 this morning (yes, that would be AM, am I nuts or what) and since I was already there I figured I might as well jump on the treadmill for some cardio. I only walked for a ½ hour but I did walk at 3 mph at a 5 incline. I think that is pretty good since I have not done it in forever.
While I was at the gym yesterday I also saw they have a cycling class. I have always wanted to attend one but never had one in my area I could attend. So I also decided to go this evening and check it out. Boy, you talk about something that will kick your derehre (I know that is spelled wrong, but I think you get the drift). But it was such a good workout. It was 40 minutes of brutality. A spinning class is no joke. I am so glad I attended though. I will probably attend the class on a regular basis.
I told Keith about it tonight. He said he would attend with me the next time I went.
I sit here watching Mr. Holland’s Opus. I think this is one of those movies that just touch you to the depths of our soul. It has true meaning instead of what a lot of these movies out there today seem to lack. I think if you have seen this movie it has touched you in some way.
I have not really watched this movie in several years. As a matter of fact I do not remember the last time I watched it. It is a simple movie about a man named Glenn, or Mr. Holland, who had a dream and did teaching to bring in the income his family needed and then spent the next 30 years doing something he ultimately ended up loving and leaving a legacy behind.
What really struck me tonight though are the similarities between Iris, Glenn's wife, and myself. They find out very early on, probably when Cole, their son, is around 18 months old, that he is deaf. This is a striking blow for Glenn as he is a music teacher and has aspirations to one day be a conductor for his own symphony.
What you witness when Cole is around 6 or 7 years old is that he is unable to communicate with his mom and dad. He wants something out of the cabinet but gets so frustrated and starts to throw things. This leads to a fight between Iris and Glenn and he yells at her and says, “Give him what he wants.” She yells back in return, “I don’t know what he wants. I don’t understand what he’s trying to tell me. Don’t you get it? You go off to school every day with all of your children who are normal. I can’t talk to my son! I don’t know what he wants or what he thinks or what he feels; I can’t tell him that I love him. I can’t tell him who I am! I want to talk to my son! I don’t care what it costs!” The scene continues on because she wants to send their son to a private school for the deaf and Glenn is unsure of the costs.
The part that really struck me tonight is how similar my life was to Iris’. Even though she is a fictional character, I can still relate. I guess that is what makes a good movie truly good is that even if something is fictional it can seem real.
I felt that way for most of Mari’s life. The day Mari was officially diagnosed, the dreams Keith and I had for her officially flew out the window into never never land and never to return. Our lives had to become filled with new hopes and/or dreams for our little precious ones. And even those seemed to change all the time.
I think many parents take for granted sometimes how something like being able to communicate with child really means. I told Mari I loved her all the time but she never understood what that meant. She knew Keith and I were the ones to take care of her and in her own special way I think she somewhat understood somehow that we were mommy and daddy but she never really understood what a mommy and daddy really are. She would say, “Let’s go potty,” but usually not for the reasons that most people think of. It was usually to get out of doing whatever she was doing in that moment. We would go into a store and I would try to let her pick out a new DVD. The problem was that she would only pick out movies that she already owned as she was familiar with those. She did not want any new ones that she had not seen before. If she had her way I would probably own 10 to 20 of the same title of each DVD. So you have a child that has a meltdown in the store because she cannot do what is the simple act of communicating. The sad part about it is when this happens in a store and you have a 7 or 8 year old child throw what seems like a big temper tantrum, you have everyone looking around at you probably thinking, “Can’t you control your child?” Or “Man that child needs to learn some proper manners.” Or whatever else people might say when they see a child acting up in public. I know this happens because I have done it myself when I see a child really acting up badly. Before Mari, I never once thought to stop and think maybe there is more to this child’s acting out than you can tell just by looking at the child.
I mean to look at Mari you would never be able to tell she had a severe disability in the fact she had severe autism. She just looked like your normal, everyday child who was both beautiful and precious all wrapped up into one package.
Even though Iris was a fictional character, I relate to her so well. I sat here trying not to cry as it really touched me as I am watching her yelling how she just wants to be able to communicate with her son and I have felt so many times in Mari short lifetime.
Well, I sit here at home today by myself as Keith has left on his first trip for his new position today. He will only be gone until Thursday, another words 5 days and 4 nights. When you put it into overall perspective, that is really not that long considering he is in the Army and he could be being deployed instead and be gone for a year or two. But still, I hate it when he has to leave.
I am not one of those wives who actually looks forward to their husbands leaving for a few days or if he has been home on vacation days to where you just can’t want from him to go back to work. Personally, I love it when my husband has time off. I like having him home.
It is not that we even do all that much stuff when he is home. However, we are together and to me that is all that really matters. We are either watching one of our TV shows we like to watch or we are watching a Blu-Ray/DVD from our huge collection of movies. Or he is playing Bang-Bank Shoot-um Up (In other words: Modern Warfare 2: Call of Duty) as he likes to call it while I am watching one of my shows or playing on my computer. Or we might both just be sitting in bed reading a book. So it is not really about doing something together as much as it is just being together spending time together.
It seems like most people today if they have been married for any length of time that is just not the case. To me it is kind of amazing that after 16 years of marriage that we both feel the same way about each other. No, we are not delusional about each other as we can still drive each other nuts, but overall, we just love each other more than we could have ever imagined possible.
I can truly say without hesitation that Keith is the love of my life. The other thing I like to say is that even though there is not one person on this earth that is perfect, Keith and I are perfect for each other.
I guess you could say I am one lucky woman to have found the man of my dreams.
The last few days I have just been sitting here thinking about how I have come to truly love writing and then sharing it will all of you. It gives me a peace inside that I never knew it could bring me.
When I was growing up, school was very hard for me, especially english. I would say that english was my very hardest class and then history was next with trying to remember all those little factoids. I can remember right after I graduated high school and I started to attend the local community college, I took their placement test and I was placed into the lowest level english class they offered. I was three classes away from being even able to take English 101. I felt so dumb back then.
That semester I decided to go from the Army Reserves to go on active duty. I left for Ft. Hood, TX, on March 30, 1994. I did not attempt to go back to school from many years and even when I did I stayed away from English classes until I absolutely had to. I took my first college level English class in the fall of 98. I was attending Prairie State College in Chicago Heights, IL, at the time and when I took their placement test I was able to jump right into English 101. I am not sure how I learned enough to get into college level english class but it sure felt good.
The last english class I took was actually American Lit 2. I can truly say I throughly enjoyed that class and was even considering taking another english class just for fun. Talk about a total turn around.
It amazes me sometimes how ones life can change so much in such a short (or long) period of time.
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