Lessons Learned

Five Things I Learned This Week

1.       Don’t just assume that check you wrote for a coworker’s church fundraiser two months ago cleared your checking account before you close it and open a new checking account.  Guess what…that $8 pumpkin roll that tasted like crap?  Now it is an $8 pumpkin roll PLUS $25 in bank fees that tasted like crap.  Hopefully you have some left now that it is all you can afford to eat the rest of the week.

2.       Don’t leave a brand new jug of laundry detergent in the back of the car, but if you do, maybe you should go check things out when your car suddenly starts smelling like a laundrymat.  Apparently those things explode when they get cold.

3.       Teach your dog not to jump on people’s laps, then you wouldn’t feel responsible for the fact that your boss is walking around with a bloody lip.

4.       No matter how stupid you think they look, some dogs just have to wear a sweater in the winter.

5.       Getting beaned in the back of the head by an ice ball thrown by a five year old with a great pitching arm really hurts.

Five Things Shelby Learned This Week

1.        It’s not a good idea to get out of the tub and stand on the toilet and try to jump back into the tub. 

2.       If you throw an ice ball at mommy’s head, and she picks up an ice ball and asks if you want to know how that felt, don’t say yes. 

3.       No amount of screaming and crying will get Mommy to take you to the McDonald’s Playland at 9:00 at night after she took you shopping for new shoes, a snuggy, a Rapunzel doll, and took you to a movie.

4.       Robitussin is “ees-custing”

5.       Boys are fickle and will break up with you if you won’t play dollhouse with them.

Rest in Peace, Bruce. I've got this.

On December 7, 2005 Shelby’s dad , my fiancée suddenly.  Shelby was 10 weeks old that day.  The day before was his day off, and he spent it with Shelby and for some reason the night before, he decided he was going to take one more day off to spend with her.

Bruce woke me up around 5 a.m. with horrible pain in his arm.  I asked if he wanted me to call an ambulance and he said he didn’t know.  I should have called one then.  After a few minutes the pain subsided enough to calm down and the worst of it was in his hand, at the base of his thumb.  We both calmed down and blamed it on a pinched nerve.  However, every minute or so he would double over in these horrible spasms of pain, but he swore it was only in his hand and arm.  I was going to take him to the immediate care center.  He was on his way to the garage and I was dressing Shelby.  She was crying, raging about being awake so early.  He kissed her and told her he was sorry and that he loved her.  Within a minute, he was dead.  I heard the crash in the garage and found him was tangled up in a cart, the old style TV tray holder thing, and I couldn’t get him out of it to start CPR.  The medics and firemen even had a rough time, had to pretty much rearrange the garage to get to him.  They took him to Community Heart Hospital, but I think they got permission to stop trying shortly after they left my neighborhood, since I heard the sirens stop as they were going across 238 to get to 69.

They told me when I got to the hospital and took me to a room to see him.  It’s not like the movies, where they pull all the tubes out, close the eyes, and tuck them in nicely with a sheet.  He had a tube sticking out of his mouth, his eyes were open, but what struck me the most was the absence of simply him.  I remember thinking “This isn’t even Bruce, it’s just an empty shell.”  My mom was with me.  I brushed his hair off his forehead and kissed him, he was still warm.  He wasn’t scary.  His eyes were at peace.  There wasn’t an ounce of fear in his expression, just peace.  The same look of peace that was in his eyes when I found him in the garage.  I had to be interviewed by the coroner and all that, and went to see him again after that, alone.  I just held his hand and told him how sorry I was that I didn’t call an ambulance, that if I had, he may have gotten another chance.

When I got back home, my house filled up immediately with neighbors cooking food, making coffee, making runs to the store, cleaning, and even cleaning up the mess the paramedics made in the garage.  Friends and family started showing up.  All I could do was sit on the couch clutching Shelby and calling everyone I knew.

It was so clear and so cold.   The sky was amazing.  I remember my mom saying “What a beautiful day to die.”  It’s weird what you remember.  Shelby spent a lot of time in her swing that day, it was the only place she was comfortable that day, I think everyone’s pain and anxiety was too much for her, she felt it when she was being held.  The swing played music.  To this day, if I hear the Fisher Price fishy swing music playing, it instantly takes me back to the day Bruce died.  It was like, this awful background music to that horrible day.  That, and the ringtone on my cell phone.  How weird.

Eventually I decided it was time to get out of my sweats and get in the shower.  I went into my room to get some clothes and be alone for a minute.  I was so cold, and my head hurt so bad.  I just sat on the side of the bed, still not believing that this was happening to me.  Worse, I couldn’t believe this was happening to Shelby.  For some reason right then I felt the most overwhelming feeling, like a blanket of reassurance, and I knew it was God.  And I knew that somehow I was going to be okay.  No, the pain didn’t lessen at all.  But I just knew that I was going to make it, not to be scared, and that I wasn’t alone.  Right then and there I handed it all over to God.

A few months before Bruce died he started counseling with a pastor, he accepted God in his life, the pastor told me, and we started going to church.

Later, in talking with another pastor, I realized something.  The pastor even used this in one of his sermons later.  I think that what I felt was the same feeling Bruce got when he died.  I saw it in his eyes when I found him.  He wasn’t scared, and he knew he was going to be okay.  He was at peace.  He was going home.

According to the coroner’s report, he had a lot going on, mostly stemming from the heart defects he was born with and had repaired throughout his childhood.  It’s amazing to me that in the last year he was alive, he got everything he dreamed of.  He got his house, he got a dog, and he got a little girl.  People asked me if I was mad at God.  I even had a “friend” tell me that this was God’s punishment because we weren’t married and yet we were living together and had a child.  But I keep going back to the peace in his eyes and the blessings he received, from the small ones, to the miracle of his daughter and the miracle that he lived long enough to see her.  No, there was never any anger towards God, not the slightest.  I have only been grateful for the time He gave all of us together.

Drawing a Blank

I knew once I started doing this I would get writer’s block.  Sure enough, I have had absolutely no ideas on what to write about.    My life revolves around Shelby, and at the edges are a couple of cats, a dog, and a bunch of horses.  None of them have given me any good material lately.   I could rant and rave and gripe but that gets tiresome after a while. 

I could talk about how much better I am than other people but that’s not true, and I have never felt like I am “above” anyone else, regardless of religion, color, sexual orientation, location, or class.  We all feel pain, we all feel joy, and we all have to wear our pants the same way to avoid getting arrested for indecent exposure.

 My love for the Allstate Mayhem guy is off limits, because it is special and private.  He’s everything I’ve always wanted in a man.  He’s beautiful in an understated way.  He’s funny, and we never speak.  There’s no talk of feelings or wants and needs with him.  He doesn’t ask anything of me, nor I of him, because well…that’s impossible.  His scent?  It’s like making love to a lumberjack. 

I could talk to you in great detail about my two jobs.  Depreciation, journal entries, bank reconciliations, financial statements, profit and loss, payroll tax liabilities…can I get a “holla”?  Occasionally there is a horse thrown in…I get to hold Nick’s head when he gets his monthly arthritis shot, or go stand in front of Patty when she is hooked up to the carriage waiting for her passengers to board.  That way, if she decides to bolt, knocking me down and running me over might slow her down enough to reduce the injuries and danger to her passengers.

I could talk about my cats, but I am only 34 and still have hopes of finding a nice man to marry someday.  I will save the cat talk for when I finally accept that it is hopeless, and accept the possibility that 40 years from now it will be MY house you see on the news, with the headline “984 cats removed from Crazy Cat Lady’s Trailer.”

There is always the dog, but I don’t want Animal Cops showing up at my house and taking him away from all of the mistakes and accidents I make with him.  Let’s just say from now on he will go to a professional groomer, and I am back on Prozac solely to keep myself from going batcrap every time he eats a Barbie, or an entire bag of cat food, or the cat’s ear.

You’ve all heard enough about my car and for the moment it is quiet…it caught me looking at Autotrader on the internet the other day.  We haven’t made eye contact since.

So in short, I hope to get better at this.   But right now I have to go rescue a Christmas tree from the dog and try to get as much of the house clean as possible before the Shelbinator wakes up and destroys it all.