Where do your thoughts go when you stop to reflect over your day?
Do you stop to remember a kind word spoken to you?
Or do you remember giving someone a smile to brighten their day?
Or, do you just dwell on all the wrongs that were thrown at you today?
How many times you were upset about something, frankly not worth being upset about? …
But that’s where your thoughts lay….
Now…. Close your eyes for a moment…. And pretend to be small again, small enough to depend upon others, but big enough to think you could conquer the world.
Right there!
Now…. Think of your worst fear…the thing or event that stops your heart and takes your breath away…. And magnify it by 1000!
Are you paralyzed?
Is your voice the echo of silent screams?
STOP!
Try to push it away… Away, deep inside.. So you can be pleasant as someone is interacting with you and telling you all will be ok…as they begin to shove cold, steel, needles into your small veins. You can hear the sounding beeps of the machine getting ready to pump toxic chemicals into your tiny body.
Wait! You scream, as your little arm at the site begins to swell and burn as the chemo leaks into the tissue that encases your now collapsed vein, only to hear the words, ” we have to do another IV”.
And … One point you remember feeling exhausted and sore… You close your eyes only to open them… Tied to a bed with wires and tubes attached to almost every part of you body.
You start to gag… But can’t move your arm at all to pull this massive hard breathing tube lodged in your mouth and throat.
Again, they pump you full of medicine to keep your body free from pain.
Your days are twisted together with your nights, dreams and nightmares….”
“what is real? Where are you?”, goes racing through your mind.
“Momma” you scream…only to not recognize the one face that calms your racing fear.
Keri McEwen
Oct 2014 Sitting in ICU CHEO… After her first Code
I’d to share a moment with you guys…
Just down the road from CHEO… On the way to the Queensway… There is a road called “Freedom”.
Paytan noticed the sign on our first drive home… And started to cry. She asked me to turn around, and pull onto the street. I did and parked facing the street sign… She sighed and asked me to play the song “Home”, by American Authors”… I sat giving her a …huge hug… Listening to her sing along. My eyes filled with tears as she said “I love you, Mommy. To the moon and back. Forever and always”
**********
I’ve got these letters tattooed on my arm
That remind me each second of where I come from
And the long hard road to get me back home
Back to my mama who raised me up right
And back to my lady who I held every night
It’s a long hard road trying to get home
I’d been gone now for too long
I’m not trying to stop a hurricane
I’m not trying to shake the ground below
I’m just trying to find a way to make it back home
I’m not trying to part the ocean waves
I’m not trying to overthrow the throne
I’m just trying to find a way to make it back home
I’m just trying to get home
I’ve got this image engraved in my mind
Of a light that I had in a whole different time
It still breathes and lives at the end of the road
I’ve seen mountains and valleys through my missing days
But I never once parted with how you begged me to stay
I will run down that long hard and treacherous road to get home
I’ve been gone for so long
But my heart it carries on
As it pounds like a drum
On my journey back home
I’ve been gone for so long
But my heart it carries on
I won’t give up
After last weeks successful book fair, John Young School Council is donating almost $600 worth of books in Paytan’s name to the library at CHEO. The photo I attached are labels that Kirsten Farago created that are being placed in all of the books. If the flowers look familiar, that is because I replicated line for line the drawing Paytan did for her Mom when she was six
My dearest Paytan….
You were a gift from God that I cherished every single day. I waited longer to have you than I had the honour of having you with me.
My heart is in a million pieces … And yet I have to find the beats to carry your sister through the darkness.
My screams are silent as I can’t even find the words to express my devastation of loosing you.
My thoughts are like the swirling whirl of water pulling me under the helplessness I have, as not to have been able… to make it all better.
I’ve lost my breath, and feel faint and sick at the same time.
My memories are surrounded by your smiles and love.
I have no words to say how much you meant to me.
Mommy
To say what I am feeling… Or to describe the black hole that blinds my thoughts…..
That brief moment when your eyes blinked… Your mind thought a thought… And… Then… The incredible sick to your stomach, over whelming blackness of helplessness and panic hits…. The gut wrenching, knees giving out from under you….
you thought you lost your child in a crowded mall.
Well… That’s kind of touching my heart’s pain
I waited so long to have you… you were “My Sunshine”.
When I look at your pictures, I know exactly what was happening at that moment.
I can tell you everything about it.
A year has gone by now and yet time stands still for me. I can reflect on the events that
all lead up to your passing… thinking about the “what ifs”, and mostly the “whys”.
Why did you have to have cancer? Why did you have to have so many complications?
Why did it have to be so bad? And why did you have to pass away? No answers…
The stillness of the quiet thoughts embrace my fountain of tears.
I love to see my friends and their kids… the same age as my Boo Bear.
I must say I am jealous of their time with their children. Entering into the
teenage years and all the wonders of growing up.
I do so thank God for the time I have to live and share with my youngest daughter.
To watch her growing up to a young, beautiful, smart woman.
Together our heart long for Paytan … together our tears of sadness comfort each other.
And together we will pick ourselves up, carry each other forward…
until we meet again.
I had a dream last night you were here with me.
You were walking, and giggling… no pain, no cancer.
You were whole and happy …. happy again.
You were playing with your sister,
telling her how beautiful Heaven is.
Only then did I realize you were not really here with me.
You were in my dream.
Well…. I’ve lived my 47th birthday, and the One Year Passing of my Daughter, as of January 6th, 2017. And now today as I write, I am living the one year anniversary of the viewings and funeral for my daughter. One year…. one full year. To be honest, this past year has been a blur. I really don’t remember too many specifics…I think I was just existing. How do you continue to keep the memory of your daughter alive when you are supposed to “live” with the living? How do you move forward without the one person you long to see and hold? How do you rationalize the loss? Where do your feelings of sadness and lose go? If you can get through the day without crying, are you forgetting her? What happens if you can’t hear her giggle any more? There are so very many questions that ran and sometimes still run through my head… As Facebook pulls up the memories for me to remind me… I sit still in my quiet room and shed tears for what could have been. And then remember all that she went through. If she had lived… she would still be in the hospital. She would still be in a coma…. if she was still alive. Would that be fair of me to demand her to have stayed? No! I did that once during her first coding…. I cried to God, “I can’t bury my daughter! Don’t take her!” And he didn’t take her then… nor the two more times she coded did He take her….. Only at the end did I realize that it was for me I requested her presence…. for me. And look at what she went through…. I had a friend say to me after I shared this thought…. maybe it was for her. Maybe it was Paytan that requested to stay… maybe she didn’t want to go. She was a fighter. So, I thank you my friend for those beautiful words…. She was a fighter.
