My Name is Kris and I Blah-g

Mike & I were married September 27, 1997. Prior to the birth of my daughter, this was the happiest day of my life. It truly was a beautiful, wonderful day. Honestly, nothing went wrong. There were no mishaps. All of our guests had a wonderful time. Today is bittersweet. It is wonderful to think back on this day 13 years ago. But of course, it’s sad to think this is the 3rd of many more anniversaries to come that I will recognize alone. As easy as it would be for me to feel bitter & sad today, I just can’t. Today will be just another day in my new reality but I will take time out to spend alone time with Mike at his grave. I will thank him for the honor of being his wife and I will remember our happy times.

“I Will Not Say Goodbye”

I, like most moms reflect each year on my child’s birthday – how I was feeling the day she was born, what I did, how she looked, how much love I felt for her the first time I laid eyes on her… Michaela likes to say she loves me more than I love her. I am not sure if that’s possible. I tell her that I loved her before she even knew she was her. Before she was even a twinkle in my eye, I was talking to her. I started to write letters to my children shortly after Mike and I were married. I had always felt that I would have two. It was just this gut feeling that I would have a boy & a girl. I was certain that my first would be a girl. It’s weird how decisions and consequences can mess with destiny. I felt strongly I was destined to be a mother of a daughter and son but that changed for me when Mike died. It’s a heartache for sure knowing that I won’t experience pregnancy again. BUT…I am so thankful…SO THANKFUL that I have Michaela. I am not sure how I would have been able to endure the past 2.5 years without her.Today Michaela turned 8. She has always wanted me to do a special slide show about her. This is it…

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Hey there. Remember me? I have not posted in what?…almost 2 months? A lot has happened. My last post probably sounded kinda scary. At the time it WAS scary. It’s been a roller coaster ride since the middle of May. I was thinking about that today about how when this drama with Mom’s health began we were still getting snow. In fact, it snowed when she was in the hospital the 1st time!A quick update….Mom initially went to the hospital on May 19th. She had lost use of her left side and we had thought it was a stroke. The doctors diagnosed her with Lactic Acidosis and pumped her full of fluids. When she had been there 7 days they told her she could no longer stay (thank you Medicare… grrrr!) so she was released to a rehab facility to recover. Nevermind that she wasn’t anywhere near better and the ineptitude of the staff at said hospital had made it so mom developed a serious bed sore (more on that later). 8 Days after her admission to rehab I found her slumped over and shaking and just totally wigged out. I can’t think of a better word other than to say she was messed up bad. We were told we were overreacting by rehab staff but insisted that her blood be taken and results sent to her doctor. Her doctor called and urged us to take her to the ER ASAP. So, off to the ER but this time at a different hospital where she was admitted for another week. The doctors took her off all the meds that the previous hospital had given her aghast as to WHY they would put her on drugs that would kill her. Yeah…NICE. And to top it off, her bed sore was gigantic AND the fluids she was given in the 1st hospital had made her balloon to an unspeakable size. Another week in the hospital and she was released. This time she came home. She started to make progress and within a week had lost almost 100 pounds of water weight. Yes, that is ONE HUNDRED POUNDS! She was progressing well but then after yet another week, she started to act strangely again, bumping into things and couldn’t for the life of her use a fork when she ate. Not good. My sister and I insisted on another ER visit.. Back to the hospital….and learned that mom had suffered from not one but at least TWO strokes. Things did not look good. That’s where I left things in my last post.I would leave the hospital in tears. Mom wasn’t mom anymore and we were helpless unsure what to do. Again her week in the hospital was coming to an end before medicare would kick her out and we had to figure out where to take her. We traveled all over the valley looking for a facility that was not only covered by medicare but specialized with stroke victims. Guess what? THERE ISN”T ONE! Every single one was old…cared for crazy people (literally) and in one, it was over-run with animals. They called them therapy animals but let’s get real. It was a zoo. As cool as Theodore the therapy kangaroo sounded, it was not a good fit for Mom. So we brought her home. And since then we have had her here. My sister and I tag team her care and I am proud to say that after diligently changing her dressings each day, her bed sore is FINALLY getting smaller and maybe by Christmas she won’t have it anymore. I’m serious. Those things are nasty. It’s bad enough that she had to endure what she did but to be left with this terrible wound is awful.The good news….Mom is doing FANTASTIC. All things considered when she left the hospital she couldn’t even form a sentence. She could only say one or two words and she couldn’t see. Mom is back. She is strong and she is recovering. I am so grateful. It’s been hard. I won’t lie. I have moved my office to the family room that mom calls home. She still can’t climb lots of stairs yet so her bedroom is off limits.Last week was Mom & Dad’s 50th anniversary party that we had been planning for a year. Mom had been facing it with a lot of doubt and fear. She didn’t want so many people to see her this way but she bravely attended her party and it was probably the best thing that she could have done. She had SO much fun! The 150 or so friends and family that attended were so gracious and kind and she just had a ball. Her outlook and demeanor is so much better now!Last week my sister also started a new job. That means that during the day I am here alone with Mom. This will provide new challenges when school starts for Michaela in a few weeks because we will have to totally readjust our schedules and Mom will again be faced with having to spend some time alone while I tend to Michaela’s needs. I will say that this isn’t the life I had planned – really who ever gets what they want? 2.5 years ago I said goodbye to a life abruptly when Mike died. I lost my husband, lost my home and had to sell nearly everything I owned. I have learned to just roll with the punches. Life throws things at you. What can you do? I mean, I still freak out and stuff but I have found that it’s easier now to just take a step back and let the chips fall where they may. What else could I do?So what does all this have to do with the banner above about a Happy Birthday-versary? Well, I have made a decision to celebrate things differently this year. December 2nd represents two significant events in my life. First, it’s the day I was born. 2nd, in 2003, Mike and I chose that day to go to the temple and be married again. We decided that this particular anniversary would remain something sacred. We would acknowledge it in a reverent way each year. Mike didn’t want to take away from my birthday celebrations each year and most of all, this ceremony was more intimate and personal. It was about our family and our belief in being together FOREVER.In hindsight, this was the most special of birthday gifts. I knew it was special then but now that he’s gone and how easy it would be for me to fall into a faithless depression, it holds more significant meaning. When your spouse is taken from you so suddenly, it feels like abandonment. You really start to question what you believe. And the conclusion that I have come to is that it has to be true. It has to be because it is what will help me in keeping on. I don’t know how long I will be here…but I AM HERE. I have a life to keep living. I have a daughter to raise. And I have to believe that one day when it’s my time to leave this world, I will do so holding the outstretched hand of my husband who went before me. December 2nd is an important day.An opportunity has presented itself for me to go to California on December 4th to participate in a Habitat for Humanity project along side some actors from General Hospital. Yes, it is a little self-indulgent for me to schmooze with actors but on the flip side, it’s a legitimate charity and it’s for a young family in genuine need. So, that’s what I am going to do for myself on my birthday this year and it will be how I recognize the commitment Mike and I made to each other 7 years ago.So, Happy Birthday-versary to me!

I haven’t posted in a while. There are so many reasons but mainly I haven’t felt like it. Lack of time. Lack of interest. But primarily it’s exhaustion because for the past 5, almost 6 weeks, I have been in and out of hospitals & rehabs trying to help my mother who in mid-May fell ill. It’s been a frustrating experience not really knowing for sure what was wrong with her, having countless doctors poke & prod and none of them giving a correct diagnosis. She’s been shuffled to and fro and not once has she been able to understand what was going on with her. Her frustration has turned to fear and in the interim it has spiked her blood pressure, then dropped it. Spiked it. Then dropped it. It was a cruel trick played on the body and the end result has put her yet again in the hospital and this time enduring the effects of a stroke that has pretty much shut down the part of her brain that provides her her memories.  Oh, it’s only the most precious part, if you ask me. Sure we can sit back and say that at least she’s not paralyzed. For the most part her debilitation could be so much worse and I guess it could be. But it’s heartbreaking to see this. A few days ago, as frustrated as she was with this process she was still MOM. I could talk to her and she could look me in the eye and talk back. When this all started she would tell me how upset she was that her body was failing her and I told her, “Yeah, but you still have your mind! That is so much to be thankful for.” I can’t help but resist the urge to shake my fist at the sky and ask “Oh yeah? You think losing this last thing would be a fun challenge too, eh?”I don’t do that of course. What’s the point? I KNOW that no one brings on these things. They happen. They happen because the body is designed to do it. It fights off what it can and succumbs to what it can’t. They also happen because our lives, however they end up are consequences for the choices we make. It seems to be human nature for people to blame others for their misfortune. On so many levels this is wrong and makes me mad. It goes with the saying, you have nobody to blame but yourself. Could Mom had taken better care of herself? Of course. Hindsight, ya know? I reflect on my own life and as difficult as the past 2.5 years has been, I wouldn’t change the decisions I have made because I know that I wouldn’t have what’s most important if I didn’t make the decisions I had made. What if I hadn’t pursued Mike when we met online? Well, I may have not moved to Tennessee. I wouldn’t have married him. I wouldn’t have my daughter. Would my life be better without those things? NO! I am sad he’s not here but I am more HAPPY to have known him, had him in my life, even if it was for a short time. As much as it’s easy for us to second guess, we shouldn’t.As a bystander watching this happen to Mom is frustrating. It’s maddening and to be honest, for me it’s deja vu. I understand how people could think that dying quickly is merciful. Yes. I do believe it is. Usually the person doing the dying doesn’t know what hit them and those who have to endure the aftermath don’t have to go through the process of watching the suffering. The suffering is terrible. Some could argue that Mike’s death was a quick one and to those who weren’t around him on a daily basis, I would say that yes, it probably was. But the reality is that I had been watching him slip away for quite a long time. I was seeing his choices pull him further away from his family. His choices, in the end kept him from making the ultimate choice and that was the choice to seek help, accept help and admit responsibility and the consequences for his past choices. In many ways he had reached the point of no return – the point where hope is overcome by fear. Mom is quickly approaching this point, too.Let’s get real. What has happened to her is scary. To all of a sudden have virtually no eyesight, to be told that a fall could kill her and to not remember yesterday is frightening. She has strangers coming in and telling her what to do, when to do it and how. It is oft times painful. It is frustrating. It is frightening. She is, I am sure thinking that none of this is worth it. Perhaps it’s time I just give up. I am heartbroken to think that this could be so. I remember so vividly Mike telling me that he didn’t want to even try – that he couldn’t do it. In the end he said he would but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it. I see the desperation in my Dad’s eyes as he looks for any glimmer of resolve from Mom. I used to have that look in my eye too. It hurts.This may sound like a foreshadowing of what is to come. It’s not meant to be. I am not predicting an end to the road. This will certainly be a long and bumpy journey. Mom’s still here. She is resistant to facing the difficulties ahead but she must. And just as I didn’t give up on Mike, I won’t give up on her.

Ya know when you’re watching a movie and the main character is either desperately looking for something that is like RIGHT there in plain site or they’re sitting on a ticking time bomb and haven’t a clue and you’re sitting there yelling at the screen (as if they could hear you). “It’s RIGHT THERE, you dummy!!!” And then you start to wonder how anyone could be such an idiot and not see what’s right in front of their face.Yesterday I spent several hours compiling music for the big 50th Wedding Anniversary party that we’re having for my parents in August. I was working with literally over 1500 songs and trying to find certain ones that would do well for the dance soundtrack as Mom has told me that she wants to see people out there on the dance floor getting jiggy with it. I’d think of a song and then go see if I could buy it and it wasn’t long that I was just chipping away at the ol’ bank account. Every once in a while I would think of a really cool song and I’d be like DOH! Mike would so have this song! But I’m a moron and melted our harddrive. This is so depressing! This went on for hours… Then I started to wonder if he actually WOULD have the songs I was looking for and instinctively reached over and grabbed his silver iPod that sits on my alarm clock. When he died, I vowed to NEVER take what was on the iPod off. I was going to leave it exactly as he left it. I began to peruse the files that were on there and discovered that he had over 5000 songs on this iPod. Crap. I just found the Holy Grail. It’s all right here! But how am I going to retrieve it all??Google is my friend. I Googled instructions on how to pull music OFF of an iPod. As many are aware you hook an iPod up to a computer and iTunes launches and starts to synch. I didn’t want that to happen and was very paranoid about erasing Mike’s iPod as he had spent hours compiling his music library on it. I found a freeware program that will pull the music off and organize it according to the settings you give it. Not leaving anything to chance, I set up a new account on my computer and made sure to turn off the auto-synch in iTunes. For the first time in 2.5 years, Mike’s iPod was attached to a computer and I started up the program. About an hour later I had restored his library on a new external drive. I may have lost some photos but as for the music? I’m back in business….I have a feeling that maybe someone was watching a little movie called the Life of Kris and yelling at me to find this. What do YOU think?

The gamut of emotions are all over the place these days. A lot has happened of the course of the past couple of weeks. Mom entered the hospital 2 weeks ago quite sick – VERY sick. It was scary. She’s not totally out of the woods yet but at least she has gotten better and at least she is more like herself now. She remains in a rehab facility working through her weakness issue and trying to get enough strength to come home. I don’t know when that will be. I am grateful that she is in a facility closer to home and even more grateful that she has taken the bull by the horns and is giving a sincere effort to improve. This would have been a lot harder if she had just given up. But she hasn’t. I know it’s hard on her but I am proud of her for the bravery that she is showing.Yesterday I learned that the hard drive issue that I mentioned in my blog a couple weeks ago was not going to be resolved in a positive way. The company that I sent the drives to could not recover a single file. The good news is that I won’t have to pay $2400. The bad news is that I lost pretty much all of my photos from the past 15 years. I do have access to a small fraction of them because I had pulled some of them for a project two here and there. But the majority are lost forever – wedding pix, birth photos, birthdays, vacations…Michaela’s whole life has been documented with digital photos. The thought of this loss makes me sick to my stomach. I feel like in some ways I mourn even deeper now because now it’s all just memories. In many ways I feel like I have let Mike down by letting this happen – especially with his music collection. He spent so much time digitizing all of it. I no longer own the CDs. His whole music collection is GONE. Devastating doesn’t even remotely describe how it feels.So, as Michaela would say “Isn’t there any GOOD news to talk about?” Yeah…there is. The ray of sunshine in all this doom and gloom is her. Michaela just graduated from the 2nd grade. She had a very good year! It ended on such a high for her and I am so happy that she got to experience what she did. When Mike died I felt an even bigger responsibility. I am not sure why it should be even more important than before but it’s just how I feel. I had made a promise to myself when this happened that I would do what I could to give Michaela experiences. I am happy to say that in the past 2 years she has been able to go to many places, see many things and meet different people. I am not sure if that resonates with her but I suppose later on it will. One of her most recent experiences was our trip to Washington DC.This is a place that for many 7 year olds may not be all that exciting. But it did leave an impact. She was able to tour the White House, see George Washington’s farm, see all of the monuments and museums and visit the capitol and one of our Congressmen. In doing so, the Congressman offered to come visit her school. Of course when these things happen, the likelihood of follow through is small. But it couldn’t have worked out better. We returned from our trip hopeful that Congressman Matheson would actually be able to visit the school. I told the school of the possibility and within a day the congressman’s office was calling the school to set up the meeting. A couple weeks ago I gave a presentation to Michaela’s class about American Ingenuity. I told them that many great things were developed in America – from the chocolate chip cookie, to flying the first airplane, to the creation of Disneyland to the very foundation of our government. It was an interesting segue but it worked. The kids were intrigued and it offered a good preview into the Congressman’s visit. To top it off, Michaela was asked to introduce Congressman Matheson at the lower school assembly on June 1st. She did fantastic! And I am really proud of her. It isn’t easy getting up and talking in front of people but she did it in front of all of the K-5th grade students. I am guessing that was about 400+ people. She did it mostly memorized too. I knew she could do it but I think even the school administrators and the Congressman, himself was impressed. I don’t think words can adequately express the depth of pride I felt in watching her do this. It was AWESOME.The rest of the assembly went great. I was happy that the Congressman didn’t turn it into this boring thing for the kids. He briefly introduced himself and explained what he did and then let the rest of the assembly be a time for the kids to ask him questions. The questions were hilarious. They ran the gamut of what is his favorite place to visit in Washington DC, to what he thought of Obama’s healthcare bill, to how much the president weighs (he doesn’t know), to whether or not he likes cheese. He got participation from all of the kids – even the little ones and it was a wonderful experience. All I can say is he ain’t bad for a democrat. LOL. Check out the introduction here:

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So, yeah….there IS good news to report. The other good news, in case you were curious is that despite the stress of the past few weeks, the lack of exercise and eating crap, I haven’t gained anything…the loss is minimal but at least I still fit into my new jeans. Yay!