My sister Carina will begin telling you the story beginning on October 2nd, the night Hannah was rushed to the ER, and even recall days before when she began showing mysterious symptoms. But for me it was the morning of October 3rd. I woke up to an unknown caller at 6am so I ignored the call. When I woke up at 9am I listened to the voicemail of Carina calling from the hospital. It’s late night calls and early morning voicemails that always indicate trouble. No one calls with inconsequentials at these hours. No, these calls carry with them the most serious of consequences. After failing to reach my sister I called my mom who proceeded to calmly administer the news. This woman has been through the fire (her own cancer included) enough times to deliver life-altering news in a steady and even tone. “Hannah’s in the hospital. They found a mass on her brain. She’s having an MRI as we speak.” After receiving instructions about where to go and how to reach my sister, I hung up the phone and leaned over to tell Daniel, I didn’t know how to begin my next sentence for I was now the one delivering this nightmare to a new victim. My life was changed and now his was going to change as well. Before I could find the words, a word, anything to utter aloud, the weight of it all hit me and I simply cried. (This is really hard to write even now as just remembering that morning is like reopening up the wound and getting sick to my stomach all over again.) Daniel asked what I wanted to do and I said I didn’t know. I just wanted to cry and grieve for a minute before I attempted to think beyond what I had just learned. He went downstairs to call Jason, our brother in law, and returned to the bedroom more wrecked than I was. He had happened to catch Jason in the midst of a momentary breakdown and the two men wept together over the phone for a brief few minutes.
Next thing I knew we were in the waiting room at Children’s Mercy waiting for Hannah to emerge from the MRI. We sat there numb listening to Carina retell the events of the last 12 hours over and over as each new member of the family arrived. The next handful of days were spent at the hospital crammed into Hannah’s tiny room watching cartoons and faking smiles through our “game faces”. We didn’t want to scare or alarm her, so all grieving was reserved for private moments caught alone. For me it was the half hour drive back and forth from the hospital where I did most of my weeping. My prayers took an interesting tone during these drives. They were not serene petitions like when praying for the sick members of other people’s families, “Lord, please comfort them and bring peace and healing and whatever they need during this time.” When it was my own family I was praying for, when I could see the face of the sick 3-year-old, when I could hear her laugh, and when I knew the helplessness of her parents, my prayers were much darker. They didn’t really consist of words but usually all I could do was cry and scream at the top of my lungs in a dark car. I heard myself a few times yell the words “why” but more often I heard myself insisting times insisting “no”. If I could somehow yell loud enough and insist earnestly enough, maybe God would take it all back. Despite all my “fist-shaking”, he didn’t.
My sister Amy said she wished we could just fast forward to six months from now and see how everything would turn out. It was this statement that helped me to articulate my opposite thinking. During those first few days I kept picturing Hannah playing at her neighborhood pool. It was a memory from a summer afternoon just 2 months before. She had been wearing her swimsuit and life jacket and instead of actually swimming she was playing with the little fountains that sprayed in the kiddie pool. It was this reoccurring memory that triggered the tears most for me. I had been rewinding to memories before news of the brain tumor. I kept wanting to go back while Amy was wanting to see ahead. I told her, “You want a fast forward button and I want a rewind button.” Over the course of that first week, the two of us threw out our fast forward and rewind buttons and landed on a phrase and idea that I continue to cling to now, “a new normal”. We cannot go back and we cannot foresee the future. Things are forever changed from here on out. We cannot reclaim naivety or innocence lost. Instead, if we are to survive, we have to accept reality and begin living new, different lives even if we loathe the changes that have occurred.
Though it’s hard to get started on this, I could probably write for days. And over the course of this year, I will surely write about Hannah frequently. I did mention that she and this experience were pivotal in taking on this year of living imperfectly. With anxiety and depression I have wasted so many days stuck in bed, too many days. It may sound cliché, but for anyone who has experienced something like this you know it to be true, I don’t deserve to waste any more days. Hannah is only 3 and she deserves so many more days than she’s gotten, so what gives me the right to throw away my days so carelessly? In addition to “The get out of bed everyday” title, another idea for the name of this project was “Not another day wasted”. That is a challenge to at least give each day a try. But I have more motivation to live life well when I’m viewing things from the lens of a new normal.
Hannah in July with new kid sister Callie.
Hannah's Caring Bridge Site
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