I just wanted to lay out the plans and ideas I intend to make happen over the next couple of months.
-Eli shirts are available to order for ONE MORE DAY at www.booster.com/love4eli
-Eli's 5th birthday is coming up, which is wonderful and terrible. I am (you are) throwing a party for local kids who are immigrants and former refugees. These are kids who don't often get the opportunity to let loose and just be kids. So we're having the party we'd have for Eli....except the party is on steroids and it's for kids who are still here and who deserve a chance to party. We are expecting over 100 kids. THANK YOU to everyone who has donated food and supplies! And special thanks to www.bouncearoundjax.com for donating bounce houses, slides, a trackless train, and all manner of fun!
-Eli's actual birthday is the 22nd. I'm hoping I'm up to making chocolate cupcakes that day. Eli's favorite. I"m dreading the actual day. The anticipation is probably worse than the actual day will be. I guess we'll find out.
-I would like to have an informal Eli day at a Jacksonville Suns baseball game in April. I'll just put it out there on facebook and the blog and if you want to come, please buy a ticket, wear an eli shirt if you have one, or wear green. Ideally I'm thinking a weekend in mid-April. The schedule is out, but tickets aren't available yet for the season so I'm kind of waiting on that......well, and to get through Eli's birthday and spring break.
-I'm looking to do a bone marrow registration drive this summer, hopefully in July. Another opportunity to wear Eli shirts! There are some things to work out, but I think we can make it happen. Again, gotta get through March before I can start organizing.
So those are the Eli things on the horizon. Thank you so much for sticking with me through this marathon of January-July. I'm constantly aware of what was happening a year ago and it pretty much sucked for these seven months, and then it sucked after those seven months ended. But somehow time marches on and here we are. We do the best we can. Sometimes the best we can is a huge party for some deserving kids. Sometimes the best we can is getting out of bed before it's time for school pick up in the afternoon.
I mentioned once before that Hospice offers grief counseling and support free of charge and how helpful it has been for our family. Our hospice here does grief retreats for kids ages 7-17 twice a year. We made Ty go, which is exactly how all parents/guardians of campers get their kids to go, haha. He was fine, but it was hard for me to leave him there to be vulnerable with strangers. When we picked him up at the close of the weekend, all the kids and teenagers were acting like they had known one another forever, they were smiling and joking. It was incredible. I cried all morning, feeling thankful the weekend had gone so well, proud of my big kid, and tender for all the losses that brought so many kids to grief camp.
The professional grief counselors that run the weekend know exactly what they are doing. The campers get a chance to feel a bit normal with peers who can understand their grief. I am beyond grateful to all those who support Hospice financially, so these types of events can be offered for kids who really need it.
Thanks for checking in!
Sunday, March 13, 2016
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
The Other Side of the Miracle
One of the sanity-savers we employ in Grief Club is humor. Well, humor....morbid death jokes...potayto, potahto. It's called coping skills. But we often recognize and crudely acknowledge a great divide between the miracle-havers and the non-miracle-havers. We're the non-miracle-havers. We're death club. They, everyone not in death club, are miracle club. It's easy to spot who is in what camp as you interact with folks. Generally speaking, anyone who has not yet experienced death nor a miracle is in miracle club. I mean, isn't that the one you'd pick if you had a choice?
It's easy to say those people over there got exactly what they wanted and we're over here drowning in our sorrows, ignored by society. That isn't reality. The things that are dubbed "miracles" are often just the science working the way the medical trials said they would, the way the doctor hoped it would 30% or 50% or 90% of the time. The truth is, the "miracle" often leaves families nearly as shattered as death could have. I know because I know "miracle" families.
It's easy to think if Eli had just gotten past pneumonia he would be here now. But he had so much working against him. IF he hadn't died that Sunday in July and IF his new immune system kept growing steadily all these months and IF he didn't ever develop Graft Versus Host Disease while his immune system grew and IF the antiviral drug kept the adenovirus at bay for close to a year until he developed T cells and IF he got strong enough to withstand peritoneal dialysis and IF we were able to keep a handle on his steroid-induced diabetes and IF he started tolerating enough food in his stomach to be nourished and IF a million other things went exactly right and NONE of the bad options went too bad...we'd still be in Durham, North Carolina now, more than seven months later, waiting on a kidney transplant. Over a year since we first drove up, with 16 hour notice to pack for an unforseeable amount of time in a season we don't even have in Florida. That's a long time to have a wait-and-see plan.
Maybe you were hoping for the miracle for Eli's kidneys? Me too. But it turns out his kidneys shut down due to the toxicity of the chemo that prepped him for transplant, and then when his adenovirus counts were climbing over the summer the doctors switched him from a relatively safe, trial oral antiviral drug, to a highly nephrotoxic antiviral IV drug. Nephrotoxic=toxic to kidneys=kidney killer. So if his kidneys weren't already shot, they would be due to the drug change, which Eli needed in order to not die from adenovirus. The week or two before he died his doctors were already talking kidney transplant sometime next year. This wasn't their first rodeo. They've had a number of patients need kidney transplants after months of recovering from bone marrow transplant.
My point is, kids like Eli don't just wake up healed one day because someone prayed and believed for a miracle. Or even if hundreds of thousands of people did.
Sometimes kids that sick do get their miracle and do get better. But here is what it looks like: months and months (7, 10, 12, more?) isolated at home. Parents trying to work because they are already financially ruined from their child's illness, but having to work at different times so one is always home with their child, who could die from a common cold. Being absolutely insane about sibling germs, spouse germs, pizza delivery germs, bacteria from food that has been sitting out longer than 30 minutes, bacteria from the grocery bags which touched the germy grocery cart before they got home, basically every germ ever because they all have the capacity to kill your child. Not being able to run out to the store to pick up milk, eggs, whatever. 15-20 oral medications each day, many taken 2-3 times per day. Waking up in the middle of the night to give more of those meds. Never sleeping more than a few hours at a time. Feeding your child through a feeding tube. Changing the dressing on their central line (this is a medical procedure done by nurses in a hospital, but many times parents are trained as to avoid getting home health care involved). Taking your child to daily and weekly clinic appointments, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, The constant struggle of trying to get your child to eat because their health actually does depend on it. Frequent ER visits for anytime something is a little out of whack with your kid. And a million other things that I am forgetting. All the while, knowing it could all come crashing down at any moment with any less than ideal blood test.
Does that sound like living the miracle life? You get to keep your kid, for the time being, but you get to lose your mind, your friends, possibly your marriage, some family members, any opportunity to take care of yourself, often your faith community, your financial stability, any kind of stability.
Would I choose that if I could keep Eli? In a heartbeat.
The parents that are in it, that KNOW how hard it is, they would choose it over death, too. Every single time.
It gets better for some kids after a year or two. For others, they have permanent damage. It will always be taxing to care for them.
While it's tempting and easy to roll our eyes at the preachy miracle-clubbers, the true miracle club members understand what it means to live the miracle life. It isn't rainbows and hallelujahs. It's needing help and not having anyone to ask. It's survivor's guilt. It's watching and praying as child after child dies, the ones your child played with in the hospital, whose parents you had coffee and cried with on your own worst days. It's being expected to be grateful all the time when you're mostly just exhausted and scared. It's headaches, it's nightmares, it's waking up to jaw pain from grinding your teeth due to stress. It's living in the ruins of your former life. This is the other side of the miracle.
It's easy to say those people over there got exactly what they wanted and we're over here drowning in our sorrows, ignored by society. That isn't reality. The things that are dubbed "miracles" are often just the science working the way the medical trials said they would, the way the doctor hoped it would 30% or 50% or 90% of the time. The truth is, the "miracle" often leaves families nearly as shattered as death could have. I know because I know "miracle" families.
It's easy to think if Eli had just gotten past pneumonia he would be here now. But he had so much working against him. IF he hadn't died that Sunday in July and IF his new immune system kept growing steadily all these months and IF he didn't ever develop Graft Versus Host Disease while his immune system grew and IF the antiviral drug kept the adenovirus at bay for close to a year until he developed T cells and IF he got strong enough to withstand peritoneal dialysis and IF we were able to keep a handle on his steroid-induced diabetes and IF he started tolerating enough food in his stomach to be nourished and IF a million other things went exactly right and NONE of the bad options went too bad...we'd still be in Durham, North Carolina now, more than seven months later, waiting on a kidney transplant. Over a year since we first drove up, with 16 hour notice to pack for an unforseeable amount of time in a season we don't even have in Florida. That's a long time to have a wait-and-see plan.
Maybe you were hoping for the miracle for Eli's kidneys? Me too. But it turns out his kidneys shut down due to the toxicity of the chemo that prepped him for transplant, and then when his adenovirus counts were climbing over the summer the doctors switched him from a relatively safe, trial oral antiviral drug, to a highly nephrotoxic antiviral IV drug. Nephrotoxic=toxic to kidneys=kidney killer. So if his kidneys weren't already shot, they would be due to the drug change, which Eli needed in order to not die from adenovirus. The week or two before he died his doctors were already talking kidney transplant sometime next year. This wasn't their first rodeo. They've had a number of patients need kidney transplants after months of recovering from bone marrow transplant.
My point is, kids like Eli don't just wake up healed one day because someone prayed and believed for a miracle. Or even if hundreds of thousands of people did.
Sometimes kids that sick do get their miracle and do get better. But here is what it looks like: months and months (7, 10, 12, more?) isolated at home. Parents trying to work because they are already financially ruined from their child's illness, but having to work at different times so one is always home with their child, who could die from a common cold. Being absolutely insane about sibling germs, spouse germs, pizza delivery germs, bacteria from food that has been sitting out longer than 30 minutes, bacteria from the grocery bags which touched the germy grocery cart before they got home, basically every germ ever because they all have the capacity to kill your child. Not being able to run out to the store to pick up milk, eggs, whatever. 15-20 oral medications each day, many taken 2-3 times per day. Waking up in the middle of the night to give more of those meds. Never sleeping more than a few hours at a time. Feeding your child through a feeding tube. Changing the dressing on their central line (this is a medical procedure done by nurses in a hospital, but many times parents are trained as to avoid getting home health care involved). Taking your child to daily and weekly clinic appointments, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, The constant struggle of trying to get your child to eat because their health actually does depend on it. Frequent ER visits for anytime something is a little out of whack with your kid. And a million other things that I am forgetting. All the while, knowing it could all come crashing down at any moment with any less than ideal blood test.
Does that sound like living the miracle life? You get to keep your kid, for the time being, but you get to lose your mind, your friends, possibly your marriage, some family members, any opportunity to take care of yourself, often your faith community, your financial stability, any kind of stability.
Would I choose that if I could keep Eli? In a heartbeat.
The parents that are in it, that KNOW how hard it is, they would choose it over death, too. Every single time.
It gets better for some kids after a year or two. For others, they have permanent damage. It will always be taxing to care for them.
While it's tempting and easy to roll our eyes at the preachy miracle-clubbers, the true miracle club members understand what it means to live the miracle life. It isn't rainbows and hallelujahs. It's needing help and not having anyone to ask. It's survivor's guilt. It's watching and praying as child after child dies, the ones your child played with in the hospital, whose parents you had coffee and cried with on your own worst days. It's being expected to be grateful all the time when you're mostly just exhausted and scared. It's headaches, it's nightmares, it's waking up to jaw pain from grinding your teeth due to stress. It's living in the ruins of your former life. This is the other side of the miracle.
Sunday, February 7, 2016
Valentines
I loved Valentine's Day with my kids. On Ty's first Valentine's Day with us I microwaved frozen pancakes and used a cookie cutter to cut them into heart shapes (it was a weekday. Also, a life tip: have realistic expectations). Every year since then I have taped 14 construction paper hearts on his bedroom door with things I love about him written on them. The only year that Eli went to preschool around Valentine's Day I made freaking adorable valentines with swedish fish candy that said, "I'm glad we're in the same school." Gah! So adorable!
Like everyone, I have my strengths and weaknesses. But as a mom I enjoyed looking for simple ways to create extra magic. A big part of that motivation has been trying to somehow make up for the years before Ty was with us. I wish I could say that I'm still making magic for him, but so far I'm not. He deserves better than this.
This year I wanted to do something for Valentine's Day to spread some love. I managed to be organized enough that other people could get involved with a little Valentine's project and just like at Christmas with the food baskets, they blew me away. We're making 100 adorable Pinterest-y valentines for kids in the hospital and 40 for parents. And I'm so glad to be able to do it. I'm thankful for people who bought supplies and people who will show up to assemble the valentines. I'm thankful for my friend who works at the hospital and is able to distribute them. I'm thankful that all this love I have has somewhere to go. I'm thankful that come Friday, the unofficial school valentine's celebration day, some kids in the hospital will know they are remembered and loved.
But I just wish I was making my own valentines for my own preschooler.
But I just wish I was making my own valentines for my own preschooler.
Tension
I haven't written much recently because I was told that I make people uncomfortable. And while I already knew that my presence makes some people uncomfortable, and that sometimes the things I write can make some people uncomfortable, it is another thing altogether to be told that.
A friend told me recently that whoever you are before your grief is who you are in your grief, just more so. I have never been meek, so my grief response is not meekness. I'm passionate and opinionated, so now I seem to have acquired an emotional megaphone. haha...oh geez.
I sat down to write today after I received a couple of nudges from people who had no idea I was feeling like I was supposed to be more quiet about my grief. If that was you, thank you.
Recently I was talking with a friend in the dead kid club who was struggling with guilt. Here's the truth. Nearly all of us struggle with guilt. Almost every mom of a dead kid I know lives with this tension of knowing she did her very best while simultaneously feeling like she could have loved more and tried harder. Here is what I said to my friend:
She is gone, but she is so happy now. She has nothing but love for you. She doesn't believe any of the coulds or shoulds or woulds that hold you hostage. Her suffering doesn't matter to her anymore because it is gone and she will never experience it again.
I think as mothers one of the hardest parts of this shitshow is the images of our kids' suffering seared into our brains. It doesn't go away. It torments us. But we're the only ones it affects anymore. No one else is plagued by memories of the specific suffering we witnessed or absorbed. And it isn't affecting our children anymore. They have been completely released from suffering. So what do we do with it? What is it doing hanging around? Mostly I think it harms us and it is good to tell it to leave. I don't know if it will ever totally leave us, but I think we can hope for a loosened grip.
My friend has this mantra, "fear is a liar". I think anxiety is, too. When it gets bad I yell at it. I tell it it's a liar. And I tell it the truth. That I was a good mom and I took care of my kid and I did my very best with the information I had. You did all those things, too. We just didn't have all the information we needed when it would have been needed to change the trajectory we couldn't see."
I wish I could adequately explain the memories of sheer suffering that regularly play in mind's eye. The things that Eli had to bear that I witnessed. It is crippling. And most moms of dead kids share this experience. We know we did everything we could. But it doesn't feel like it.
A friend told me recently that whoever you are before your grief is who you are in your grief, just more so. I have never been meek, so my grief response is not meekness. I'm passionate and opinionated, so now I seem to have acquired an emotional megaphone. haha...oh geez.
I sat down to write today after I received a couple of nudges from people who had no idea I was feeling like I was supposed to be more quiet about my grief. If that was you, thank you.
Recently I was talking with a friend in the dead kid club who was struggling with guilt. Here's the truth. Nearly all of us struggle with guilt. Almost every mom of a dead kid I know lives with this tension of knowing she did her very best while simultaneously feeling like she could have loved more and tried harder. Here is what I said to my friend:
She is gone, but she is so happy now. She has nothing but love for you. She doesn't believe any of the coulds or shoulds or woulds that hold you hostage. Her suffering doesn't matter to her anymore because it is gone and she will never experience it again.
I think as mothers one of the hardest parts of this shitshow is the images of our kids' suffering seared into our brains. It doesn't go away. It torments us. But we're the only ones it affects anymore. No one else is plagued by memories of the specific suffering we witnessed or absorbed. And it isn't affecting our children anymore. They have been completely released from suffering. So what do we do with it? What is it doing hanging around? Mostly I think it harms us and it is good to tell it to leave. I don't know if it will ever totally leave us, but I think we can hope for a loosened grip.
My friend has this mantra, "fear is a liar". I think anxiety is, too. When it gets bad I yell at it. I tell it it's a liar. And I tell it the truth. That I was a good mom and I took care of my kid and I did my very best with the information I had. You did all those things, too. We just didn't have all the information we needed when it would have been needed to change the trajectory we couldn't see."
I wish I could adequately explain the memories of sheer suffering that regularly play in mind's eye. The things that Eli had to bear that I witnessed. It is crippling. And most moms of dead kids share this experience. We know we did everything we could. But it doesn't feel like it.
Thursday, January 21, 2016
To the doctors
I went to a service at Christmas for those who were struggling with the season- due to loss, illness, what have you. There was a time of sharing and a doctor who worked in trauma spoke about the uptick he saw in suicides around the holidays every year. He talked about how grievous it is to him personally, to see a patient brought in by rescue, only for it to be too late. He continued that having to tell the family and witness their pain was especially hard. And it felt worse to him to have to do that during the holiday season.
I wanted to talk to him before he left that night, but I missed him after the service. What I would have told him is that it matters that it hurts. It matters to the family that you feel pain in the loss of a life. Not pity for their loss, but pain for the loss to humanity of this one life.
I have spent much time in hospitals, interacting with medical professionals. I am sure they are generally taught not to show emotion. I am also sure that for most people in that environment, you feel you have to operate a bit disconnected as a sort of self-preservation tactic. And as someone who has seen many fellow patients die, I get that it's hard to keep feeling and weathering death. But it's also noble.
Death in a hospital is ugly. They tape a handwritten sign with the family's name on a door of a cramped multi-use conference room. You hate that sign. You want to rip it down, as if that would change anything. Someone comes and discusses autopsy with you. Your head is spinning and you aren't sure what the right decision is for any question they ask you. I have a friend who says planning a funeral is exactly like planning a wedding, but the worst wedding ever. It starts with all those questions and decisions at the hospital.
Of all of my friends who have lost a loved one in a hospital, do you know what everyone says about their experience? There was a doctor who shed a tear, or whose face betrayed their pain briefly, and the family saw that their hurt was shared. And it comforted them. For us, it was the morning after Eli died. We were still at the hospital, and many doctors were coming in Monday morning after a couple days away. One doctor ran to see us as we were leaving. He had just heard Eli had died and he was surprised. After everything Eli had been through, surprise seemed to be the common reaction among his medical team. Another doctor was walking into PICU as we were heading out for the last time. He saw us and for a moment his face crumbled. Then he hugged me. I can still see his face breaking in my head. And it comforts me.
So to the doctors, I'm not telling you how to function. Just know that it matters that it hurts you. In the end, it matters more that it hurts you than that there was nothing else you could do for that patient. Words are cheap. Honest human emotion says everything.
I wanted to talk to him before he left that night, but I missed him after the service. What I would have told him is that it matters that it hurts. It matters to the family that you feel pain in the loss of a life. Not pity for their loss, but pain for the loss to humanity of this one life.
I have spent much time in hospitals, interacting with medical professionals. I am sure they are generally taught not to show emotion. I am also sure that for most people in that environment, you feel you have to operate a bit disconnected as a sort of self-preservation tactic. And as someone who has seen many fellow patients die, I get that it's hard to keep feeling and weathering death. But it's also noble.
Death in a hospital is ugly. They tape a handwritten sign with the family's name on a door of a cramped multi-use conference room. You hate that sign. You want to rip it down, as if that would change anything. Someone comes and discusses autopsy with you. Your head is spinning and you aren't sure what the right decision is for any question they ask you. I have a friend who says planning a funeral is exactly like planning a wedding, but the worst wedding ever. It starts with all those questions and decisions at the hospital.
Of all of my friends who have lost a loved one in a hospital, do you know what everyone says about their experience? There was a doctor who shed a tear, or whose face betrayed their pain briefly, and the family saw that their hurt was shared. And it comforted them. For us, it was the morning after Eli died. We were still at the hospital, and many doctors were coming in Monday morning after a couple days away. One doctor ran to see us as we were leaving. He had just heard Eli had died and he was surprised. After everything Eli had been through, surprise seemed to be the common reaction among his medical team. Another doctor was walking into PICU as we were heading out for the last time. He saw us and for a moment his face crumbled. Then he hugged me. I can still see his face breaking in my head. And it comforts me.
So to the doctors, I'm not telling you how to function. Just know that it matters that it hurts you. In the end, it matters more that it hurts you than that there was nothing else you could do for that patient. Words are cheap. Honest human emotion says everything.
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Six months
Six months. 184 days. I can hardly believe I'm still alive.
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In my daily routine I usually drive across a set of railroad tracks. Every day just before I do I wonder if today is the day I will get hit by a train. I am not trying to die or wishing for my own death, it's just hard to want to keep living.
I'm sure it's alarming to read that, especially in our sound-the-alarm culture. I've talked a lot about it with my counselor. There is a huge difference between "being suicidal" and just not really wanting to be alive. My counselor tells me that it's pretty common after an out of order death. (I'm safe.)
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The one thing I've been able to do for the last six months is sleep. Trouble sleeping is one of those things that everyone assumes is part of grief. It is extremely common. In some stroke of ironic dumb luck, I seem to have been the exception to that. I've been able to sleep even if sometimes it comes with unsettling dreams. Well, grief is a monster that leaves no part of your life untouched, so as of the last couple of days I've been having trouble getting much sleep. I'm hoping it's temporary. Usually every month I become agitated the week leading up to the 19th. Anticipation grief. Then after the 19th I have a couple of good days. Here's hoping.
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I've been reading Harry Potter. I've never read any of the books before last month. It's not really my genre. But a friend bought me the whole series last summer. So last month I picked up the first book and started reading. It is oddly cathartic to read. I think it's because it's really just a story about pain and suffering and the humanity of living with that. Or at least that's my lens right now. I'd probably see the same thing if I read Jane Austen.
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We had dinner with Eli's immunologist in North Carolina last week. He is an incredible doctor and an even better human being. He's been a pediatric immunologist for over three decades. He has seen a lot of suffering, and has had well more than his share of patients die. He treated kids who had HIV before there was much treatment for HIV. He fought for all those kids and he watched them all die. And I wonder what that must have felt like? But then he also saw treatments start to work. And he saw his patients live. And I wonder what THAT must have felt like for him.
At one point this summer he and I were standing in the entryway of Eli's PICU room, discussing viral loads. I don't remember if Eli's adenovirus levels were going up or down at the time, but I remember asking this doctor if he had ever had a transplant patient with adenovirus survive. He looked directly at me and after the slightest of hesitations said plainly, "No." I wouldn't have guessed that would've been his answer. He always acted like Eli had a chance. He really did believe Eli had a chance. It wasn't just that he was confident in his abilities as a doctor. He does not give up. He seems to always have a shred of hope that if you keep at it and you try to look at the puzzle differently, eventually you'll get it. It's a remarkable quality in any person, much less a doctor who has seen so much suffering.
At dinner he toasted to Eli.
Wednesday, January 13, 2016
Writing his name in the sky
When Eli turned 4 last spring while in bone marrow transplant, I felt lament that he couldn't write his name. It doesn't need to be rational, I was just emotionally exhausted from living in the hospital and watching my kid get worse and I hated that he couldn't write his name.
After Eli died in July I was desperate for assurance that he was okay and that I was going to be okay, eventually. I asked (God? Eli? I don't know) to see Eli's name in the sky. I wanted to see it clearly, so I would know for sure that Eli was okay and he could write his name. This would give me peace. This is what I thought. Again, it wasn't and didn't need to be rational. It was just how I felt and what I desired. So I looked for Eli's name in the sky for a month or two as I became more and more cynical.
Then I stopped looking. What did I really think I was going to see? It was dumb anyway.
My mom started a tradition/ritual of releasing a floating lantern each holiday in honor of Eli and now my grandma who passed away suddenly before Christmas. She has my complete blessing to grieve Eli however is comforting. But I won't participate. It's too much for me.
So on Christmas late afternoon my entire extended family set out for a park to release two lanterns. On their way they saw Eli's name in the clouds: ELi.
I wasn't there. I was at the beach with what seemed to be most of the rest of Jacksonville. The weather was weird and foggy. When I got back in my car I had a text from my mom that they had seen Eli's name in the clouds. She didn't know I had asked for that. No one did.
How am I supposed to feel about this? This one bizarre thing I asked for actually happened, but not for me to see. There is a picture. That is not much consolation.
I have a lot of questions. What am I supposed to do with this? Accept it because that's how life goes- you might get what you want, but rarely in the manner you wanted? Be grateful that it happened at all and there is a picture I can see? What if I had been there? Would I have been able to receive it or would I have found a way to discount it like I do everything else? Mostly, why did it happen this way?
Here is what I either know or presume: This thing that happened has not strengthened my faith or brought me comfort. It pisses me off. I do think I would have discounted it somehow because Christmas was terrible and I was so angry and generally on the warpath that day. But I don't know what to do with it now. Look, if it was God or Eli that put Eli's name in the sky, then why was it somewhere I wouldn't see it. What is that about?
I really don't think there is a simple answer, or an answer that would make sense to me here and now. But I do wish I understood what that was all about.
I'm not sure I wish I was there, because like I said I don't think it would have been the comforting experience I desired. But maybe that's all I really want is some true comfort. I don't know.
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| ELi |
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