Pictures of You

Dear Mike,

Aunt Martha visited a couple of months ago.  She brought some great pictures.  There is an awesome one of you skateboarding which for me is heartwarming to see.  I guess it's because it's you in your element but before I can remember some of the more difficult times together.  I also love how mom is looking at you in the first picture.

Mom and you

Christmas

Same Christmas

I love how excited you look.

At Grandma and Grandad's, August 1980.

Matt and Mike licking the batter, August 1980.

Reading.

Red hat Christmas, 1982

Mike and Matt playing roller hockey.

Mike, Christmas 1984.

Mike, Matt & Andy, Christmas 1984.

Squished family photo,1985.

Skateboarding, 1988.

I tried to put them in chronological order.  It's a little hard in the middle.  Just looking at these makes me smile.

Love,
Gabby

My Great Sadness

Dear Mike,

I really miss you.  I so often struggle this time of year and frankly it's unfair since your birthday is what starts the fall for me and then the remaining three months are a whirlwind of birthdays, feast days, Saints days we celebrate, the anniversary of your dying and the holidays.  Did you realize that we start with your birthday September 28, our feast day September 29, Kerrigan's birthday October 15, Halloween, The Day of the Dead November 1, and All Saints Day November 2, Corrianna's birthday November 4, Fionn's birthday November 9, Sabrina's birthday November 17, the anniversary of your death is also November 17, Dad's birthday November 28, Thanksgiving, Andy and Drew's feast day is in November I think, St. Nicholas Day December 6, St. Lucy's Day December 13, Andy's birthday December 23, and Christmas December 25?  This is in conjunction with normal life.  It's all important to me.  I appreciate all of it.  I want to share the traditions with my family and with my nieces and nephews.  And I didn't include the holiday baking, crafting, and sewing that my soul enjoys.

BUT, inevitably the great sadness, my great sadness, appears.  And while I don't succumb to it in the way I did before I had kids, I struggle to be present and to have the drive to accomplish and celebrate what I hope to.  I feel badly for my heart not being in it.  I hate just trying to pull off the kids birthdays rather than bathe in the joy that they bring.  I regret that sharing traditions and the joy of this season with my children is a struggle for me to provide even a half-hearted experience.  Kids FEEL that.  They will carry that with them.

I miss you.  I miss you every year, countless times a year, but this year I miss you more.  It's not the same pain as other years.  I miss our family too.  I anticipated Dad, Matt and his family and Mom coming out to visit this Christmas and in February but life happens and trips have been cancelled or postponed.  I totally get it but it's still sad for me.  It's the first time I can remember being truly homesick except there's no home where I'm from.  It's the first year I'm irritated Mom's in Ireland and not closer by.  I'm not mad at anyone.  I just miss my peeps.

When grandma or granddad died, I forget which one, mom asked if we wanted some of the ashes from the cremation.  I thought that was so weird at the time.  Now I get it.  It sucks to live so far away from your grave.  It would have been nice to save some to spread somewhere close by so I could visit you.  I came across your shirt I stole while redoing the closet.  It's the one of the skull with the patriotic top hat, I think.  It's incredibly worn out.  I used to sleep in it.  It has so many holes I had to safety pin it to the hanger.  I should burn it, carefully, and save the ashes and spread them at a river here.  Then I could visit you.  Maybe Kerrigan can help me with it.

Love,

Gabby

P.S. I didn't realize it was the sadness I felt until I discovered the tears chomping at the bit to get through the door, the door of my heart.

I Can Cope, Could You?

Dear Mike,


I often find myself looking back at some of my really tough times in life, struggling to cope.  I didn't even realize I didn't have the skills to cope.  Or, they weren't honed enough for me to reach into my tool bag and grab a tool for the difficult thing I was faced with.  I had a few brief periods where I drank too much.  I just didn't want to feel. Later in life I started cutting.  That was by far the most shameful thing I have done.  While I'm not ashamed of it now...it has taken some time to feel strong enough to be honest about that time in my life.  I just consider that I was really sick.  Struggling so much I could not get out of the very deep dark hole I had fallen in.  It was a release of the self hate building pressure until I felt I would explode. And then I'd cut myself with a No. 11 Exacto blade. Usually at least twice.  I have thirty or forty scars from it all on my forearm.  I don't care that people can see it now.  If someone were to ask me about it I'd first think that was a really bold question, but I'd be honest.  What is there really to be ashamed of.  It's the same as any other harmful coping mechanism, just not as popular and it leaves a permanent reminder of that time in your life.  When I was hospitalized after the first miserable attempt at cutting myself I learned a lot.  I learned it was like anxiety and that when I feel that restlessness inside I should do something with my hands.  I learned you should never reread your journals.  You re-experience all those horrible feelings you may have released and you experience those feelings all over again.  I learned to say what I was needing when my needs from someone were not being fulfilled.

When Fionn was around 2.5 years old his usual meltdowns had gotten especially horrible.  These were not the typical terrible twos tantrums you hear about.  They were increasingly louder and becoming more violent in nature.  I began to feel fear from them sometimes.  After discussing what was going on with someone knowledgeable, whom I respected and trusted, it had never occurred to me I hadn't taught him how to express his feelings, given him words for his feelings, showed him other safer actions he could do to express how he was feeling.  I hadn't given him skills to cope.  It was the second blind spot I realized I had in parenting.  The first really being rather insignificant in comparison.  I was embarrassed and felt so badly that I had partly created what was happening.  We worked for a solid year before really seeing the fruits of our labor of giving him these skills, words and tools to use.  I see now we still have to really keep an eye out and help him to reach into his tool bag and choose a tool to cope with whatever he is faced with at the time.  Sometimes it's dark in that bag and there's no light nearby.

I wonder...could you cope?  What were your tools?  I can think of obvious unhealthy tools you had.  Drugs, alcohol, maybe even some adrenalin rushes from extreme risk taking.  As I think more I would say art and even poetry.  Dad has one of your journals and you have this poem or rap that you wrote about the cops.  Then I wonder how much art is an expression of one's self vs. one's feelings.

I don't bring up this topic to blame anyone at all.  It's just that now that I'm a parent and have been I can see that despite the very best of intentions we all have blind spots or at least I do and I wonder if you LEARNED healthy, effective ways to cope or you happened upon them.  I can imagine how much of what you went through would have been so much more difficult to handle with a missing tool bag.

Love,

Gabby

P.S.  I've taken a somewhat conscious break from this blog.  While I feel it is a good thing for me,  I struggle to find the balance of having the emotional space I need to dig around in this part of me and to be present for my children.  But I was reminded that this great sadness keeps showing up and it may be valuable to listen to it.  I do truly believe that but it's really very scary for me to do.  I don't exactly have a good track record.