Today will be the two-week mark since we said goodbye to Hannah. When we began posting about our situation, we were not expecting things to go this direction. What began as updates on her condition seems to have turned into more of a support page for those of us who have struggled with things like this, and also for those with family or friends who have gone through the same or similar trials. I am not sure how long there will remain interest in our situation, but I will try to keep posting regular updates. I do fear that I will run out of new things to talk about sooner rather than later. We will see how things go. This is real life, it’s not really as perfect as we often see on Facebook, it’s not as well “put together” as we would read in a book, and certainly not as glamorous or as epic as we see usually on tv. We will see what happens. I do know that the Lord doesn’t usually show us very much of the path before us. Just a little at a time, and enough grace is offered to help us through. “Sufficient” was a good word choice in the Bible for the amount offered. It is just enough!
At some point I may not be able to post everything first thing in the morning. Do not be alarmed, it only means that I am still sleeping. Yes, sleep remains one of our biggest challenges. A good night of sleep has been about four to five hours for me, but probably closer to three for Janean. Perhaps this is like a PTSD thing, I don’t really know, but certainly there are many things on our minds as soon as we wake up and there are dreams. Dreams are amazing things, they are this false reality, like tv in the mind, and although not typically even true or accurate, they are sometimes as “real” as life itself, especially in the middle of the night. As many already know, the night is a tough time. With our bodies in a weakened state from long days, we are more susceptible to struggling with our thoughts and emotions. I have heard it said, “night is where the monsters are”, and yes, it certainly can feel that way! Anyway, I am saying that I post early because I am up early. There is nothing prepared the night before, so far. So, wake up time plus writing time (this can be a few hours, depending on the post) equals post time. That is just a little algebra of life for our math lovers out there. That being said, if I ever get good sleep again, the posts will come later in the day.
In other news, yesterday we decorated Hannah’s room. Maybe I will interrupt myself here to answer a question someone may have. The question would go something like, “How can you do these things?” or maybe, “How can you write about these things?” Well, I would say the simple answer is, “because we can’t escape them”. After things ended in the hospital two weeks ago, we came back to the same house and back to something that resembled the same life. Again, we cannot hide from what has happened, it is everywhere around us and inside of us. There can be no pretend or denial. Maybe others who have not spent the last 19 years, 24/7/365.25 with her, have the “luxury” of denial, but not us. Ultimately, that is a good thing. Although we are adapting slowly, our inability to hide from or deny what has happened does help us to move forward. Now, back to the story. So, we had the idea that we should decorate Hannah’s room one last time. We recognize that with time passing, healing, and change, pictures are perhaps as crucial to us as memories. I can see that in our minds, Hannah will now always be 19, and a college student. Sure, we will do some basic math here and there to extrapolate out, “how old she would be today”, then, perhaps, play some mental games thinking about, “what could have been”, but in the end she will always be our 19-year-old college student. So, for this picture, we wanted to take as many symbols as possible of her life and then pack them into one photo. Some of the things represented are: games she loved, puzzles that she enjoyed, music things, yarn things (sewing, knitting, crocheting… I’m not sure what she all did, but I always saw her “weaving” yarn), books, MBU things, cards, organ donor yarn blanket things, and then, of course, her urn box in the middle of it all. These were many of her favorite things. Making memories of this time seems necessary to help keep her memory alive. Like the urn itself, we are attached to things that we can see, so this picture is intended to “bring it all together” one last time. It is a memorial, a reminder of a life that will forever be loved.
We were truly blessed with her.
Hannah Helps 