indeliblesasha: Black and white sketch of a camera (looks like my dad's old 35 mm) (Misc - Camera)
2020-01-12 08:24 pm
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[sticky entry] Sticky: This is for the mothers

Sometimes you have to stand shivering in the shower under the water long run cold, and write. Sometimes you have to type on a screen slippery with condensation while your teeth chatter, naked under the freezing spray because if you stop to get a towel the words are going to dissipate before you can trap them on the page. Sometimes you rinse the conditioner from your hair and wash the salt from your cheeks and sit on the toilet wrapped in a towel while you tap out the last fleeting words you were able to grasp because the room became too cold to bear so you had to move before you were done.

Sometimes the words come, and you follow.

---------------------

This is for the mothers
By S.R. Davis


This is for the mothers.
This is for the mothers who made lunches this morning.
Or dinner tonight.
Breakfast yesterday.
This is for the mothers who filled their child's lunch account and hurried out the door.

This is for the mothers.
This is for the mothers who did laundry today.
And the ones who didn't.
This is for the mothers walking down the sidewalks and driving up the road.
In grocery stores and on sandy shores.

This is for the mothers.
This is for the mothers who don't remember if they've eaten today.
This is for the mothers who took their meds and the ones who can't remember, because it's been That Kind Of Day.
This is for the mothers who managed to feed the children today and nothing more.
This is for the mothers who could not.
Or went hungry so they could.
This is for the mothers with dead babies.
This is for the mothers of sick children.

This is for the mothers.
This is for the mothers sitting on the porch with a glass of white wine clutched in their hands, who laugh weakly and say, well at least I kept the kids alive today.
This is for those of us who are sitting the same but weeping, because we could not manage even that.

This is for the mothers.

Some days we are given so much.
So much love.
So many hugs they start to hurt.
So many sticky kisses.
So many tissues.
So many baskets of laundry and messy dishes and so, so much glitter on the carpet.

We are given so little, sometimes.
So few tantrums, unlike last week.
So little argument, just tonight, at bedtime.
So little accolades, so little thanks, so little time.
So little sleep.

Let me give you this.

Let me give you your name.

Look into a mirror.
Are you alone?
Now look into a mirror and say, I am...
And say your name.

Look yourself in the eye and say, I am...
And say your name.

Say your name, to yourself.
Say your name, in the silence.
Say your name.

Say your name until you're crying, or laughing, or until it doesn't even sound like a word anymore.
Say your name until you're sobbing on the floor because you've forgotten what it sounds like.

This is for the mothers.
This is for the mothers who learned how to do things the right way by doing it all wrong before.
This is for the mothers who made every mistake with the very best of intentions.
This is for the mothers who struggle, and suffer, and fail.
This is for the mothers who succeed.
Who have it all.
Who are joyous and content and calm...
And still feel like they're forgetting something.

This is for the mothers.
The mothers of foster children.
Adopted children.
Step-children.
Biological children.
Adult children.
Missing children.
Dead children.

This is for the mothers.

Let me give you this.

Let me give you your name.

Look into the mirror and say, my name is...

And say it.

Say. Your. Name.

This is for the mothers
Who sometimes forget who we are.
indeliblesasha: A snowman in a sled. (Misc - Snowman)
2019-11-26 07:10 am

the snow continues to fall

"mommy?" he says, as the gate in the hallway closes. "it's four-oh-four so I came in for snuggles, I didn't want to wake you at three."

"is everything okay?" I ask as he snuggles into my side of the bed for the first time in the three months since the injury. busted knees don't lend themselves well to sleeping next to boys who kick in their sleep.

"yup, just wanted snuggles."

eventually he wandered back to bed, but unfortunately the gate locked noisily, and in only another moment the dogs let me know they were awake and would very much like a potty break. my robe waits by my bed for these occasions.

just as they came back in, the lovely child in the next room closed the door behind him and said, "i decided i'd get up and take care of them so you can go back to sleep."

which was very thoughtful, since he woke them up. but, "they are going back to bed, my dude, and you need to s l e e p."

it was nearly six before I was able to fall back to sleep, and six fifteen when my darling girl woke for the day, like she always does. i ignored her for a minute and she settled back down...just in time for the cat to vomit in the bedroom doorway.

it's nearly seven now. my vantablack boy has been out four times to play in the eight or so inches of snow, coming back in damp from the flakes still falling.

as I sit here in the quiet, tucked under my blanket in the soft glow of my pretty electric fireplace, I can't help but think, why didn't he just come in at three? three is the magical hour of snuggles and conversation that always leads back to sleep. when he wakes again I'm going to tell him that: not to wait in the future, just to come get me when he needs me. especially at three.

the dogs are at the door again, asking to track in more snow, to drip on the floor and jump damply into my lap. the alarm is going off to wake the kid for school he doesn't have today.
indeliblesasha: Bright highlighter-pink tulips with yellow tulips in the background surrounded by bright green foliage (Default)
2019-02-27 09:59 pm

So I went back to school

I'm only taking one class, a writing class because LOL. But I have to start somewhere and a class that will be relatively easy for me to get my feet wet seemed like a good idea.

So far the teacher changed her syllabus on the first day and told us she would be changing it regularly the whole time and that? Has me feeling more than a little dubious.

But whatevs, man. I shall endure and do my damn best regardless.

How are you?
indeliblesasha: (Gus)
2018-09-16 10:03 am

For My Son, On Your Second Deathday

 Before my son died he asked me to do five things for him.

1. Get his tumors to Dr. Foreman so that he could save the other children. I did. 
2. To NOT bury his body: he was having nightmares about "rotting in the ground" - a direct quote, mind you - because he knew too much. So I had him cremated.
3. To scatter his bones across the world so he could be like the dinosaurs he cherished so much. I do, and many of you have helped.
4. To give Grace and Charlie the specific stuffed animals he wanted them to keep safe for him. I did that too.
5. To visit his grave every Tuesday.

Which is a weird request period, and at odds with number two besides.

I put him in a cabinet in the living room instead, and called it good. But as we draw closer to two years without him I've found that leaving that last request unfinished has made me uncomfortable. The simplest explanation is that a child's understanding of death according to society is that when you die you are buried in a grave and people visit. And Gus wanted that of me specifically. But he also knew too much about death to be comfortable with those societal standards. I assume he had enough faith in me to figure out a way to achieve both, he expected the impossible of me a lot. 

Through sheer happenstance I discovered we can inter his ashes in a niche above the ground in the cemetery that he'd indicated he'd like to have for his final resting place.

Not burying his body, not in the ground, and a place to visit every Tuesday. Boom. Go me.

And there's no requirement that we place ALL of his ashes there. So we can continue with number three as well.

When he made that Tuesday request I had promised him a year of visits. In my head, of course. I'd been setting requirements for myself as well. That I would focus on doing the hard work of grieving for a year - I would give myself space and peace and grace to grieve however I needed for one year. And after that time was up I could continue in whatever way I wanted, but I HAD to for that first year. That worked out really well, honestly. I felt free on October first. Which isn't to say that I have stopped grieving, or feeling awful. Just that I hadn't been repressing any of it, hadn't let anyone make me feel like I should start "moving on."

There's a reason I'm doing as well as I am, you know. 

And a year of cemetery visits felt like it fit just right. 

This year for G's Deathday we are not throwing a party - I'm trying to get the house really truly finally finished and I don't want to rush. And besides that we found something we need to do more. 

On September 29th we will be placing Gus' ashes in his permanent home, a marker sharing his life with all who come to visit their loved ones in the years to come. For as long as the granite lasts everyone who sees it will know he lived.

There will be no ceremony, it won't be An Event. Just us, quietly fulfilling his final unfinished request. Another step on the path through grief. One last thing for me to do for my stardust child, who had more faith in me than I did sometimes.

He never asked me to save him, just to make him immortal.

I think I've done pretty well. 
indeliblesasha: Bright blue background with lemons filling and spilling out of a glass pitcher. (Misc - Summer Lemons)
2018-03-11 05:32 pm

The Things That Happen

There's this thing that happens, more often lately than before. It's not a bad thing or a good thing, it's just...a thing.

As we've started focusing really hard on cleaning and sorting and shedding all of the *stuff* we collected over the years we're uncovering all sorts of things. Stuff that makes me say, "why on earth did we keep that!?" or, "oh wow, I've been wondering where that went."

We don't need this anymore, that was a stress purchase, this is from when they were toddlers, wow.

Those jeans haven't fit in ten years! Heh.

But the thing that happens as I pull boxes out and sift through the usual opened credit card applications I meant to shred, and the water bill from two years ago - the piles of paper that were covering the counter and you just don't have the energy to sort so you chuck it in a box and call it good.

There's a drawing with Gus written on the back. And all of the air leaves the room in a flash.

It's a box you put together purposely before he even died, of things that you knew you'd want later.

And it's just unexpected. You forget you'd been stashing those things since May of 2015.

You had his signature tattooed over your heart because you knew deep inside that one day you would let go of the papers he'd written on and it would never get any more advanced.

And now you were just going to shred all those old bills but without warning you have to decide whether to keep this piece of paper or put it in the recycling bin. It's easy with Charlie's. His will be replaced over and over again, only the really unique things are kept so that he can look back many years from now and see his history. Then decide if it's memories he wants to keep longer or let them go.

Memorializing your child changes your perspective on letting go. Some parents can never let go of anything again. Sometimes it gets easier. 

That thing cannot replace my child. How much of his memory does it hold, and does it bring me joy.

The seventeenth "weekly work" page is easy. No, jesus, chuck it.

But this drawing, do I know when he made it? Do I know what it is? Is it just his name that catches me?

Once the first page pops up and you breathe through the surprise and make the choice, you spend the rest of your sorting preparing to find more, to choose. The further you get the easier it is to smile and file it in the recycling.

It's a thing that happens that every parent goes through to some extent, usually at the end of the school year when everything comes home.

But it's just slightly different for us.

It's a thing.

Do I keep the last prescriptions he was given for the intense drugs we used to keep him comfortable while he died? 

Or not. 
indeliblesasha: Bright highlighter-pink tulips with yellow tulips in the background surrounded by bright green foliage (Default)
2017-01-01 01:03 am

So now what?

There it goes, the last minute.

Every single person I love now resides in 2017.

2016 will forever be the worst year of my life, and 2017 has the distinction of being the first year of my life I will live through entirely with only one living child.

I think, though, that I will be okay.
indeliblesasha: Bright blue background with lemons filling and spilling out of a glass pitcher. (Misc - Summer Lemons)
2014-08-05 02:01 pm
Entry tags:

You can take the girl out of the desert...

I've lived in Colorado for eight years in October. It is my home, I love it here so fiercely I cannot imagine living anywhere else, and that includes my hometown even though I love it dearly. I am continually in awe as we drive just about anywhere. Coming around a curve, or over a hill on a side street can be breathtaking. It hasn't gotten old and I doubt it ever will.

I have often heard people who didn't grow up in southern Arizona wax poetic about the landscape that I took for granted my entire life. It's brown, guys. Even the green of the trees is brown. The saguaros are cool, I guess, but they are EVERYWHERE. We decorate with rocks. We wear flip flops on Christmas day. I've never quite understood people (particularly those from the eastern part of the country) who called our boring desert "ethereal" and "beautifully alien" and "it's like being on a completely different planet" and "the sky is so BIG and so BLUE." Uh, okay?

But I've been away just long enough, I've visited huge cities just enough, I've grown so used to my new environment that despite my frequent visits home, it has finally sunk in.
A few weeks ago I snuck into Arizona for a week to hang out with my dad after his knee surgery. We took the back roads from Sky Harbor to Oracle Junction and as I drove along quiet, tidy blacktop - mostly alone on the road with the music of my childhood softly playing on the radio, my dad silent and sleeping in the passenger seat - my breath caught, gooseflesh raised on my arms, and I felt a little teary eyed.

The whole area had been drenched in unseasonable rain in the week preceding my visit and the desert was alive in a way we usually only see in the spare weeks right before it hits a hundred degrees. The sky was crisp and brightly blue, wild flowers lined the roadside. It was good there was absolutely no one else on the road because I caught myself many times leaning far forward over the steering wheel and gazing in awe at the pristine white clouds; massive blinding thunderheads building higher and higher, climbing far into the cobalt that stretched all the way to the horizon.

We don't really get clouds like that here. Our storms tend to crawl across the sky in a great grey mass, overtaking the pale blue steadily, light drizzles giving way to heavier rainfall.

It was breathtaking. It was ethereal. It was alien. It made me so homesick I nearly shook with it.

It was hot that weekend, right before I left. It wasn't so bad in Mammoth, dad lives right next to the river, but I drove into Oro Valley to have lunch with Amanda (we've gotten to see each other three times this year. It's kind of surreal to be honest) and get some groceries for dad and it was hot.

It wasn't quite a pleasant sort of hot, especially since fall was beginning to march its way steadily into Colorado, but it was a familiar kind of heat. Hot in Colorado is sharp, occasionally damp and cloying. But it *is* only a couple of months.

Hot in southern Arizona is total. It envelops you completely, not just where the sun touches your skin. It radiates from the ground, the plants, the *air* is furnace-like. It wasn't comfortable, but it was *comforting*.

Today I got caught in a link spiral through a series of lists about the truths of Tucson. They're funny because they're so true. The end result, however, is that now I'm sitting here waxing poetic about the place I grew up even though I was glad to leave and am glad to be where I am.

I present, in a vague sort of numerical order, a glimpse of my hometown to amuse my Tucson-native friends, and those who've never been there, alike.

Nine Things Only People From Tucson Will Understand
Ten Tucson Stereotypes that are completely accurate
Twenty-nine Things People From Tucson Have To Explain To Out-of-towners
Thirty Things You Need To Know About Tucson Before You Move There
Fifty Things You Probably Didn't Know About Tucson
indeliblesasha: Tinkerbell resting her head on her arm, looking sad. (Misc - Tink)
2014-08-05 02:01 pm

There is no Amber Alert for children taken by cancer.

They are simply gone.

Hazel Anne was seven months old when she was diagnosed with Anaplastic Ependymoma. She and Gus shared the same doctors, and nurses. From diagnoses to surgery, to radiation and on, we have shared our entire journey with the lovely Miss Hazel. Sadly, she had recurrent tumors diagnosed when Gus started chemo in January of 2013.

I put her MRIs on my calendar so I knew when to be there to support her mom through the stress. Her mother was who I reached out to when I scheduled Gus' - only she knows what that day feels like. It was through Hazel's mother I knew of Campbell Hoyt, whom I spoke of previously.

Recently Hazel's disease progressed and she had another round of radiation to hopefully shrink the tumors a bit, and give her relief. She was doing so well.

Last night Hazel was admitted to the hospital for pain control and quite unexpectedly...left. She was just three years old.

There are not words enough in any language to express what the loss of a child does to your heart. There is no way to say "I am so sorry" to her parents with the weight if what it feels like to know that she is gone, and there is nothing at all that will console them, and her grandparents, her entire family.

There is a hole in the world today.
indeliblesasha: A sled dog playing with a polar bear (real picture). Text: wanna play? (Misc - Wanna play?)
2014-04-28 01:30 pm

I may have figured it out

I wound up rambling at [personal profile] dine a couple days ago about my need for a project. It rather helpfully pointed me in the right direction, so thank you. :)

Camping and fishing and cleaning. These are my projects, in addition to my writing challenges.

I'll tuck all this musing behind a cut, kay? )

So. Do you go camping? Tell me things. It's been a long time for me, and I was never in charge.
indeliblesasha: Methos lecturing Duncan, thought bubbles around Duncan's head: blah blah blah (HL - blahblahblah)
2014-04-26 07:33 pm

I need a project

I realized today I was contemplating adopting a puppy because it would take a lot of attention and work.

My house is relatively clean, the Cup is a slow build to the gut wrenching anxiety part, the garden is in the spring holding pattern that always happens until early May, the pigs don't require a whole lot, I'm not writing, and I'm taking a break from fandom.

I need something to do.
indeliblesasha: Methos with his eyebrows raised. Text: (plots) (*plots*)
2014-04-22 04:22 pm

Plans

There's a thing I want to do and I wonder if I have the ability to follow through.

I want to record a video on my birthday every year until I die, for my children. )
indeliblesasha: Gif icon with Rodney looking excited, alternating with Yay! text (SGA - Yay!)
2013-05-21 09:10 pm

My four year old is a cancer survivor.

We got the call today, his bloodwork has already returned to normal, a full month+ sooner than expected.

Until one of the many many (many) MRI's he has in the next 6 years says otherwise, my child has survived, beaten, and fully recovered from BRAIN CANCER.

I? Am a proud and relieved mother today.

Yay.
indeliblesasha: Bright highlighter-pink tulips with yellow tulips in the background surrounded by bright green foliage (Default)
2012-09-20 04:07 am

Thursday, September 20, 2012 at 4:07am MDT

Why yes, I am awake at 4:00 am, how kind of you to notice. Parked on the couch with Gus, waiting to see if he's going to throw up again, and Charlie who notice the commotion and insisted on joining us. We're watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Thank god for 24/7 preschooler programming I guess. :/

I recorded our entire journey through our son's cancer diagnoses and eventual death, and the grief that followed. In an effort to make our story publicly accessible I am slowly transferring all of those posts here from Facebook - starting at the beginning. Some posts may be lacking greater context as a result, and the story may be incomplete for a long time. It is a very slow process, but I feel there is value in presenting the path as it unfolded
indeliblesasha: Reboot Spock and Kirk looking intense. Text: Kirk and Spock can't hear you over the sound of how awesome they are (STXI - Awesome)
2012-08-10 09:20 am

Things I would ordinarily have posted to FB #3

I'm a little back on Facebook, but not really because it's that horrible time of year where people get sick of the heat and everyone is fucking grouchy about everything and the political climate in the US is basically poisoning everything.

So even people I like are posting shit that irritates me. So I'm largely avoiding.

Here's some more stuff I'm not posting on FB (and that I'm also not a hrefing to make pretty because I want to knit):

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jtes/jared-loughner-pleads-guilty-wont-face-death This pleases me. That he was found competent, that he has the wherewithal to see that pleading guilty will save his life, and that there was never any chance he was going to get off.

http://www.dailycamera.com/editorials/ci_21266181/third-time-is-not-charm-personhood-measure-puts I'm really sick of the freaking Personhood Amendment.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/world/14509384/beautiful-photo-goes-viral-online/ A man and his dog. And the things we will do for our furry family members in order to help them feel less pain. ♥

http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/the-gay-rights-revolution-arrives-at-fox-news This is a pretty cool article about the winds of change in media where gay rights are concerned.

http://tankisclean.tumblr.com/post/29127193857/ireallyhatecornnuts-calico-kat Go watch this video and revel in the greatness of humanity, and send a silent congratulations to the people who raised this young man.