April 2013 – Delana Maynes.Com

April 16, 2013

Boston

To honor the victims of the Boston Marathon tragedy, a lot of folks will be wearing race t-shirts today. As a pseudo-runner, I have tons of shirts to choose from but instead of one from a race I ran, it seemed more fitting to choose a race for which I volunteered. So I chose a shirt from Josh and Gus’s Run for a Reason.

Back in 2004, I decided to volunteer for a cause in a completely altruistic manner. Helping with something that did not directly effect me. I stumbled upon Josh and Gus’s Run through my mom’s group. Little did I know that what I gained through my 4 years would benefit me far more than any help I gave to the organization.

Josh and Gus’s Run taught me about grief. Josh and Gus were two toddlers who died unexpectedly and for no apparent reason. With no explanation available for their deaths, the deaths were ruled Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood, a cousin of the much more well-known SIDS. The run was founded by Josh and Gus’s moms who had lived through the unimaginable, the death of a child.

I had never lost a significant person in my life when I started working on the run, so I was unprepared for the level of grief these moms were dealing with. I was still in the mindset that you “heal” from grief.

I learned that you never really heal or get over a significant loss. You just learn to deal with that absence in your life. The tiniest thing, talking about a book, re-reading sympathy comments or looking at pictures could re-open the wound in your soul, a wound that never heals.

I learned that it was important to say something when someone has lost a significant person. Just a simple I am sorry will do. Stumbling over words and a few tears with your words are better than no words. Recognizing that person once existed by remembering the family on the birthday or “angel date” means a lot to those grieving.

I learned that grief is a life long journey.

Yesterday as I watched the news coverage from Boston, I felt empathy for the volunteers. For 4 years I helped on the course committee for Josh and Gus’s Run. I felt a huge responsibility to make sure “my” runners and walkers had fun and were safe on the course. When that last walker crossed the finish line, I felt a great sense of accomplishment. Working a race is supposed to be fun and fulfilling, not terrifying.

So it seems fitting that I honor those lost in Boston by wearing a shirt that symbolizes so much to me.

April 11, 2013

Feeling Bad

In my new journey as an adult orphan, I have never felt bad about feeling happy. I enjoyed Christmas with my family two days after Mom died. I enjoyed a birthday lunch with my sisters and fun with my cousins in the days after Dad died. I never once felt guilty or bad about enjoying myself. I was able to do this because I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that is what my parents would want.

My parents had a knack for moving on. No matter what had happened in the past, what tragedies had befallen them, they felt very strongly that one should not dwell on the past. I can remember breaking up with a boy in high school and my mom, after a week of my moping, said “It is just a boy, get over it.” That is how we were brought up. Life knocks you down, get up, dust yourself off and move on.

So it is no surprise that I feel bad about feeling bad. When I get sad, frustrated or depressed, I hear my parents telling me “Get over it”.

On Sunday, going through another box of their kitchen ware, it was like they were being erased. Their house is empty and their possessions are scattered as we decide what to keep, donate or throw away. I felt very empty and sad. Then someone asked a question that implied my brother, sisters and I should be healed from our loss by now. So then I felt empty, sad and guilty. Guilty that I was sad that I missed my parents. Ugh.

Should we be over this by now?

April 2, 2013

Easter

I tried very hard yesterday to remember my last Easter with Mom. I could not remember it. I could not remember if I hosted, what we ate and who was there. Even after looking at the pictures, I remember little about Easter 2008. Only one picture brought back any kind of memory. It seems that such an important event should have been burned on my brain but it isn’t.

I do remember with great clarity the rest of that spring. In late April, Mom and Dad went to Ohio for my cousin’s wedding and Mom was experiencing back pain. By graduation season that back pain grew to the point where she went to the doctor. Mom was one of the toughest people I have ever met, so for the back pain to constitute a trip to the doctor (and a missed graduation ceremony), it must have been excruciating. Months of physical therapy, pain killers and unanswered questions ended with the discovery of a lump near her hip. In July, the doctors discovered that she had lung cancer that had grown and spread to such an extent that it was breaking her hip. Two hip replacements followed and by the time she started chemotherapy in October the tumors were literally coming out of her skin. Instead of cancer eating away at her, it seemed to be engulfing her. She died a day before her birthday but was gone long before as she was lost in pain and fatigue for months.

I have an almost photographic memory of the conversation with the doctor about hospice and how proud Mom was that she was awake and aware throughout the conversation. I remember trying to find a hospice facility and a cemetery and I remember calling quite a few people. The conversations were hard. It was in these conversations that someone reminded me of a simple startling fact.

When one spouse dies, the other spouse is more likely to die.

No one could imagine my parents apart. They had been such a team in life that it seemed impossible that either one could go one without the other.

For 49 months, I knew Dad would join Mom. It was just a matter of time. Too bad that knowledge did nothing to prepare me for the reality of his death.