Realizing the traumatic loss of a loved one isn’t actually uncommon helped me stop living in fear.
The other day, my husband and I were making amends after an argument, something that started small and insignificant and grew into the two of us snarking at each other and not speaking for the day.
As we were talking it out, I mentioned never wanting to waste a day fighting because tomorrow is promised to no one.
Suddenly, a wave of emotion overtook me as I had unwittingly spoken aloud the fear I hadn’t fully realized had been lurking in the shadows of my subconscious for over a year and a half.
I was afraid “Trauma” was out to get me, targeting me or punishing me in a way. I had been living with the nagging fear that I shouldn’t ever get too comfortable with my life because the moment I do, Trauma would return as it has in the past to claim its next victim and force me back into suffering.
You see, I have a history with Trauma. Back in 2010, at the age of 19, I lost my father suddenly and tragically. He was on his way home on his motorcycle when he stuck a car backing onto the roadway. He suffered numerous serious injuries, the worst being a catastrophic severe brain injury from which he would never recover.
My mother, sister, and I spent eight tragic days in the hospital, having our hopes raised and dashed repeatedly. After eight days, the doctors were clear the damage to his brain was irreversible. We were left to make an impossible decision.
Either we chose comfort care and discontinued his treatment, or we moved him to a long-term facility where he may have lived years kept alive by machines but never conscious or aware. We were thankfully clear on what my father wanted and made the decision to stop the machines that were keeping him alive.
The days spent in the hospital were tragic — but the time after was bound to be just as challenging. It was as if someone had picked up our average life, put it in a box, and shaken it. Nothing was the same, and so much was broken.
At this point, so much could have gone wrong for my mother, sister, and me. You hear stories about people who suffer a tragedy and go off the rails. They give up on dreams, turn to alcohol and drugs, or generally disconnect from life and fall into depression.
Many aspects of our lives changed suddenly, and we certainly faced our struggles. We stumbled as we made our way through the stages of grief.
As challenging as the process of mourning and healing was, when I looked back on it years later, I could be proud of how we handled it and how far we had come. Together we attended therapy sessions, supported each other, and grew even closer as a team of women “getting shit done.”
I would often look at what we had accomplished with pride. I naively felt I had faced my life’s “big trauma” (as if we each only get one), and I had come out on the other side, changed but overall okay. Until one day, 12 years later, I realized Trauma wasn’t done with me yet.
After twelve years, we had accomplished a lot despite our hardships.
My sister and her fiancé had a beautiful daughter and recently purchased their first home.
My mother had climbed the ranks at her job and was now the manager of a significant department of the hospital where she worked.
I had realized my dream of traveling the world, earned two college degrees, started a teaching career, and was living with my soon-to-be husband.
We still missed my father, thinking and speaking of him regularly. But, as everyone inevitably must, we picked up the broken pieces and did our best to put them back in order and keep living in honor of the person who cannot.
An oft-repeated quote by Langston Hughes, “Life is for the living,” has served my family as a mantra of sorts, granting us permission to keep living despite being one family member short of complete.
We were in this state of comfortable contentment when, one early spring day, my mom walked across her icy driveway, slipped, and landed squarely on her nose. The X-ray at the hospital revealed not only a small fracture to the nose but also a significant tumor in her brain.
I’ve suffered through many emotions since first finding out about my mom’s brain cancer. One that frequently nags in the back of my mind, threatening my well-being in a way I didn’t think was possible, is fear.
Who’s next? When? What horrific tragedy will steal the next of my loved ones from me? Will my husband be murdered? Will my beautiful niece be lost in a terrible accident? My sister, potentially my last living link to my childhood household, what horrible illness will she suffer before she too is ripped away from me? These thoughts, morbid, selfish, and self-pitying, remained in my head, nevertheless.
How was I ever supposed to feel safe or content again? Now I see lightning strikes twice. I can do everything right, grieve, process, and heal, and then that bully Trauma can still come after me again.
Finally, I found some relief in a relatively mundane and somewhat obvious thought. Live long enough, and everyone you know will die, and few deaths are peaceful. Trauma isn’t actually all that rare, and I am not all that special for having experienced it more than once.
Sure, everyone hopes their loved ones will die contentedly in their sleep at a ripe old age while sleeping peacefully in their beds. The truth of the matter is that’s not usually the way it happens.
This means if you are lucky enough to have many people you care about, you will likely face at least one traumatic loss, probably more than one. It’s simply a numbers game.
For some reason, this understanding has made me feel better. When I feel like Trauma has chosen me as its victim, targeting me, and not content to let me be happy for too long. I remind myself I am not actually that special and that if I were to approach any group of people, someone probably has a similar story and has suffered as I have. And in this way, I suppose misery does love company because I feel a little better and a bit less lonely in my suffering.
BLEW WRITING LLC 