Candy-Coated Misery

It is the middle of the day, the kids are at school and I should be sleeping.....packing!! I meant packing. I am just oh so tired these last 2 days that all I can think about is sleep. I want to write but I can't ever just write. I am strange like that. I have to write when it hits me. Usually it hits me in the middle of the night but I am much to tired and lazy to get up and write. It is too bad though. It would be some really great stuff....and then it's gone by morning. I would like to think that I can use my free time now that the kids are back in school to write...but if I don't have my feeling then I just sit and stare at a blank screen struggling with writers block. Carissa tells me to keep a little journal with me so I can get it out when it hits. She must forget that I am OCD about my handwriting and it would take me an hour to write the first sentence!

So anyways, last night I started through Chloe's books. I started with the funeral book first. I read through the cards that came with the flowers, the cards that were mailed, the hand-written letters, the newspaper clips and the signatures of people that came to the funeral. I was actually quite surprised at the signatures I found there. I am sorry to admit that I can't remember who came and who didn't. I knew both mine and Jason's families were there, but beyond that......I just can't remember. I can't really remember a lot. The first 2 years after she died are blurry. It is sad. People ask me why I chose the funeral home, or cemetery, or what-not that I did. Hmmmm. Good question. I don't know. I really don't. I remember when she died they asked me all sorts of questions. I'll save that for another post. Back to the books. I started with the one from her services and then moved on to her baby book. I picked it up and read the cover. It reads "Welcome Baby" and under that, "Your first five years". In true Shannon style I read that and then quickly sneered, "or your first six months. You know, whichever." I think my ability to be quick with sarcasm has kept me protected for many years. The book actually made me angry. Very very little of it is filled out. There are some ultrasound pictures in there. Many actually. I had 4 ultrasounds! The one that bothered me the most was the picture they took of her heart. I actually am holding in my hand a picture of her heart in utero??! Seriously? Chloe only had the shell of a heart. How could they, the radiologists and crew, knowing what they are supposed to be looking at, miss the fact that she didn't have 4 chambers or anything that even resembled a normal heart?! So being as I was already getting myself worked up, instead of stopping I pushed through and picked up the calendar where I jotted down notes for and about her. This calendar very sweetly reads "Baby's first year. A keepsake calendar". I open it and flip to the back and stare at the sheet of stickers that never got to be used.

Ok, now I am pissed. The deepness of my anger and the way it quickly rose just by looking at a sheet of stickers, surprised even me. I was very angry at this point. I wonder, why am I doing this to myself? Oh yeah, I remember. Because I need her full and complete story. The health dept. wants me to tell it when I go in to pitch the Pulse Ox plans. In order to tell it I need to remember it accurately. My husband always asks me if I ever really dealt with her death. Of course I've dealt with it! I deal with it every single day! That is always my reply. He will say no.....have you ever REALLY dealt with it. I look at him like he is a moron. He has never had a kid die.....he doesn't know. That is what I always think. I don't have to hide this because he is aware of how my crazy brain functions. But at this point last night I am starting to wonder if maybe he is right. Maybe that is why I never wrote down anything. Maybe that is why her stuff has been shut away in boxes for years. I was busy I tell myself. Jason and I had divorced and I was raising these kids alone. Life moved to quick. I didn't get a chance. It was all I could do just to survive. These are things I have told myself for years. But maybe he's right. He would LOVE to have that one in writing :)  But seriously. Maybe, just maybe, this is where my anger stems from. Or at least it is part of the root? Well......I probably have a BIG root lol. But my root formation is for a different entry as well. SO, I go through her calendar. It was a very sweet pain. It brought back things I had forgotten and made me smile. At the same time, it made me profoundly sad. There is hardly anything in there. I could have sworn I wrote more than that.
When I got pregnant with Chloe, Carissa was one. We lived in Florida at the time. Jason had a traveling job and Carissa and I were just along for the ride. We lived in extended stay hotels and/or rental properties that the company put us up in. Jason worked about 70 hours a week and Carissa and I spent our days shopping and going to the beach. It was a pretty sweet life for us. Jason made good money and I blew it as fast as he made it. We were a happy little family. We had almost lost Carissa when she was born so we were very grateful for her and for her health. We didn't plan on having another child. We didn't plan on having the first child! Ha. I was only 19 at the time and was young and dumb. But we had her and we adored her and were very grateful for our teenage whoops. But she was it. We weren't going to whoops again. Buuuuuutttttttt we did! I had ran out of birth control while in Florida and thought to myself, no biggie because I was going back to Oklahoma (home) within the next few weeks where my insurance would cover it. I thought it would be okay to only be off a few weeks. Young and dumb I tell you. Young and dumb. I ended up pregnant right away. Ummm....what the crap?! That wasn't suppose to happen! My friend Melissa went with me in Florida to have a test done and sure enough it was positive. We laughed at my naiveness. We told Jason that night by having Shimeron (Melissa's son) hand the baby booties that the testing place had given me, to him. Not understanding what was going on Jason tried to explain to Shimeron that those booties probably wouldn't fit him. Shimeron giggled and told him they were for his baby!! Jason was confused saying there was no way these would fit Carissa, so we filled him in. He got excited pretty quick on this one. (With Carissa he had been in shock for hours and just sat silently!) Within a few weeks after finding out, we were transferred to Alabama. I should probably point out that all of my pregnancies were hell on earth. HELL! No joke. Those women that say they have never felt better than when they were pregnant.....well I hate them. My pregnancies were full of non-stop vomiting and constant dehydration. I was sick and I was miserable and I wanted to go home. So after only a few weeks of Alabama, we left. I needed to be horribly ill in the comfort of my own home with my family around for support. Carissa's pregnancy had gone so very very wrong that the doctor went a little overboard in trying to make sure nothing happened to this baby. He was getting on my last nerve with all the extra tests and what not. But after double the ultrasounds and tests and a few hospital observations, it was determined that this baby was going to be okay. So there it was....I was to have a perfectly healthy child. One that was not going to have to be born by emergency c-section 2 months early to save her life. One that wasn't going to spend the first month of her life in the NICU getting blood transfusions and struggling to breathe like my first. What a relief that was for me. Since I was cut up and down during my emergency c-section my first go round, Chloe would automatically be born by c-section as well as any other children I might bear. I was okay with that. I was 21 years old and my whole entire world was about to be flipped upside down.
I will stop here. I will pick back up with her birth and all the details that went a long with that. Some of my posts won't be written as eloquently as others, but that goes back to having to write in THE moment.

Until next time.......