Triggers

A letter to Cade

June 29, 2020

This afternoon I went back in to Chapel Hill Bodyworks for the first time since you died. Ms Chris was going to do some massage treatments on me this time. We would always joke and say how much mommy needed work too, but you were far more important. Your therapies always came first. They helped you so much. I will never forget one of your first reiki/cranial sacral sessions there. The rest of that day you had such a peace about you, you were filled with joy and so calm and happy. I loved it. Some sessions you enjoyed so much that you would be passed out cold on the table. Ms Chris & I always felt so bad to have to disturb you and peel you off the table to carry you out to the car. Today though. Today was the first time I walked through those doors without you in my arms or by my side holding my hand. It was so hard. And that may even be a bit of an understatement. I walked in the door & saw Ms Betty right there in front of me. I almost lost it, but I held it together. Ms Chris took me back to the same room we were in for your last few sessions you ever had there. I payed there trying to relax. But you were everywhere. I saw you everywhere. Running out of the rooms in the halls. Sitting in the front room on the chairs. At the water tank filling up your water that you HAD to have, but would maybe take one sip of and never touch again. Our first session when you were lying on top of me and super fidgety. When you let Ms Betty massage your feet. You practically offered them to her to rub. It was adorable. Then I saw you in one of the other rooms. One of my favorite memories of you there. You were lying down on your side, but you would only stay there if I layed side by side next to you on the table. So there we laid on our sides, face to face. Our faces inches apart. Your beautiful, adorable face just sat there smiling and giggling at me. Your hands would touch my face and I think you would cover both our faces with your monkey blanket and smile and laugh. It reminded me of a scene from a movie. A flashback of a memory you would see the character having of a beautiful, priceless moment with her child. A moment together that she’d never again get to have, because you would learn later in the movie of whatever the tragic story line was explaining the flashback to the audience. And here I was now, lying on the table without you. Having my own flashback of a beautiful memory. A moment I will never get to have again with you. A memory I will cherish forever. Sometimes I think it’s like part of me knew. My soul somehow knew you were going to die. My mind never thought it for a second. But deeper inside me I knew. The thoughts that would sometimes come to my mind & I would think to myself “No. Why on earth would I think that, or I won’t need that kind of title for the caring bridge update, everything is going to be fine.” Or this memory. The fact that I thought that in the very moment of it, then thought how silly because you were going to be fine. You had finished radiation and were doing great. It’s funny how things work out. How truly I believe that we are connected- mind, body, soul. My soul I guess just knew. Maybe yours did too and that’s why we had such a strong connection, you and me. When I was finished with the treatment, I talked a little bit with Ms Chris and Ms Betty. Ms Chris told me how much she misses you. How she fell in love with you the short time she knew you. I told her that was easy for most to do, you just had a way about you that made people love you. As we talked about memories of you there, Ms Betty said how she could see you with me when I walked through the door, but she saw in my eyes that I was struggling when I walked in so she didn’t say anything at that moment. I asked her what she meant and she said she could see your aura with me, around my neck like a little changa or monkey. She said she meant it in the most endearing way. I smiled and said how that was funny because I always called you a spider monkey because you always wanted to be attached to me. Fitting that the only blanket you would literally become obsessed with would be the one with monkeys on it. Not the giraffe or lion one, only the monkey one. I guess you must have known it was going to be hard for me to go back there alone and you came with me to try and give me comfort. And for that I thank you. You were always so thoughtful and loving to me. Like at the very end when you asked me if I was crying and when I said I was sad you asked me if a kiss would make it all better. You were such a beautiful soul. I love you sugar bug.

Grief waves. Or emotional waves as Rylan calls them. They come when you least expect them. Just when you feel like you’re doing good, BAM! It hits you out of nowhere. Hard. And you feel like you’re back at square one. It’s a roller coaster ride. The longest one of your life. The littlest things can become triggers. It can be an object, a song, a place. Even a person. For me it has been all of the above. A particular place like in the letter. Songs that play in the car when I can hear Cade’s voice saying the things he would say for that particular song. Whether it was screaming his favorite part, singing along to the lyrics, or yelling in excitement “It’s I want you to be happier!”, “Thunder!”, or whatever the song would be. I have many of these triggers because we spent so much time in the car together driving between treatments and hospital stays constantly listening to music.

Sometimes it’s grief over the things you never got to or will get to experience. Like a teenage patient of mine with blonde hair who made me stop and wonder what Cade would have looked like when he became a teenager. Or when Rylan was looking through pictures of hairstyles to decide how he wanted to cut his hair and we came across a long, shaggy blonde hair style on a young boy and it made me sad as I thought how that could have been Cade’s hair style with his long, thick, beautiful blonde hair he originally had before he got sick. The grief for things we’ll never get to have, see, or do with our children because they were taken too soon. This time of the year is proving to be a struggle for me. Every holiday, every first, has been hard. It’s going to be. I’m not naive to that. But every holiday or birthday has just been a day. Usually I would feel the heaviness the week of or days prior to the actual day and that would be it. That was how it went with Thanksgiving. Christmas, however, is proving to be different.

Christmas is blasted in everyone’s face from the middle of October through Christmas Day. So instead of feeling the ups and downs of the sadness for a few days or a week, I have been feeling it for weeks already and Christmas is still weeks away. It’s making it so much harder. I can feel myself struggling. The sadness is heavier. And just like that roller coaster, I suddenly find myself going from a smooth straight path to being upside down and screaming. That’s just how grief works. And like I have said before- I know that the only way to survive the rough patches is to walk straight through them. Which I’m trying to do. Rylan caught me off guard Thanksgiving night during our bedtime routine. My low was being sad having our 1st Thanksgiving without Cade. His reply was that he didn’t really feel like he was missing, quickly followed up with that he doesn’t at all mean he wishes he was never in our family or is happy that Cade died, but just that he didn’t really feel sad because he didn’t feel like he was supposed to be there. I completely understood this. We don’t do the whole fancy place settings where everyone has a special seat, so it wasn’t like Cades empty seat was there as a reminder. Thanksgiving was just another day of food, treats, and playing with his cousins. It was like any other time we have got together with my family to hang out or have a BBQ. I completely understood how he could have the perspective he had. He did follow it up with, “I’m pretty sure I’ll have some emotional waves around Christmas though. I think Easter and Christmas will be my hardest holidays because we always looked for Easter eggs and our Easter baskets together and always opened presents together on Christmas morning….it would be really nice if someone could maybe spend the night and then we could open presents together on Christmas morning and I wouldn’t be alone.” Valiant effort on his part. Haha. I told him it didn’t really work like that on Christmas Eve, there will be no sleepovers, but that we would handle the hard times together as they came.

Fast forward to today, December 27. Christmas has come and gone and we survived it. I continued to pray to God asking for strength to get through this holiday season. To help me let go of all of the heaviness and sadness and try and find the joy that is still there with the people around us. It was hard to decorate the house, putting out his stocking and favorite decorations. Unwrapping those personally made ornaments that are now more sacred than ever because they are my last keepsakes of Cade. Ornaments with his fingerprints, handprints, and footprints. I tried to find ways to make the holiday special still by finding a perfect little stocking hanger just for Cades stocking, and getting a special ornament from Cade for Rylan to start a new tradition, which Rylan loved. We survived the holiday because God answered all of those prayers of mine. He sent me strength to hold me up. And he sent us all strength through beautiful and thoughtful messages, cards, and gifts sent to us from so many people. Christmas Eve was spent with great friends of ours ordering delicious take out and enjoying yummy Christmas cocktails and laughter, creating new memories between our families. Christmas Day I was anticipating the heaviness and sadness to be overwhelming….but to my surprise, it wasn’t. I was sad, don’t get me wrong. But I wasn’t heavy. I didn’t want to crawl back in to bed and sleep the day away. The sadness was there, but at the same time I felt peace as well. We had a nice day at our home, which was where I wanted to be- where I feel Cade most. Here I felt we could feel surrounded by Cade while we were surrounded by the love of our families. At bedtime we did our usual high’s and low’s. My high was having a beautiful Christmas all together with us and our family, and my low, of course, was not having Cade with us. But I went on to explain that I wasn’t as sad as I expected to be and that I think that was because Cade was here with us all day surrounding us with his warmth and love. Rylan said the same. He said he thought he was going to be really sad and crying in the morning when he woke up and had to open presents all alone without Cade, but he wasn’t as sad as he thought he was going to be, and he still had a really good Christmas. I told him that Cade must have been here all day for all of us, we all felt the peace he was trying to give us to help us have a good Christmas without him. Ry must have continued to think about this though because his low last night was that we didn’t get Cade for Christmas. I said I know. But gently reminded him that we all knew he was still here in his own way with us on Christmas Day.

I truthfully can’t even imagine how hard Christmas Day was for him. How different it probably felt waking up and coming downstairs alone without Cade. I’m proud of him for his honesty and awareness of his feelings and that he is acknowledging these things as he learns to walk through this life without his brother by his side. I know he has his own triggers and although he will continue to, they will hopefully get easier with time. I try to help him work through them when I can notice them. I also remind him that he can always talk to God when he is having a hard time, and often times he’ll say “And Cade. I can talk to Cade too mom.” Which I tell him is absolutely true. I hope that everyone had a beautiful Christmas, and for those of you missing loved ones too- I pray that your Christmas had moments of peace that you felt your loved ones with you too ❤️