#lostrelationshipstories

Lost Relationships, Story No. 9, Part 3

“[My dad and I would talk] on the phone like two or three times a week. We would just talk and talk and talk. I once told someone, I feel like me and my dad would pick up an idea, like a diamond of a beautifully cut, and just look at it, check it out from every angle, speculate. I wrote a lot about my dad, a lot of memories and stories. I felt like that really helped me a lot, just writing about him. That's the hardest, was just not having him to talk to.

And to this day, like, I've gotten better, but I feel like I spent the first couple years searching for someone and just realizing there isn't anyone who could actually do that, what he did. We looked at ideas like a beautiful, precious gem....Me and my dad, we spoke wonder together. That was our language.

I always love to talk about my dad. But sometimes it's harder than others. Having to come to a place of acceptance and peace with that nobody will ever replace him; nobody can. And that that place is perpetually empty, of him—but it's not.

Probably seven, eight months after my dad died, [I was talking to my cousin]. My mom had wanted to get a headstone. That was a really big deal for her. I was just like this isn't going to bring me any comfort. And my cousin was like, 'What would?' And I was like, 'I think I want to design a tattoo.' I didn't know that I was ever going to get [one]. I grew up in a pretty conservative [home]. We didn't dance. We didn't drink. Very, very conservative. And I became a belly dancer, which is hilarious.

I knew I wanted it. [So] I got a tattoo. I got this last year. I did it all in one sitting. It was my first tattoo, it's my only tattoo. And it took five and half, six hours. I love flowers. Each of these flowers represent someone else.

These flowers are forget-me-nots. I had baby's breath in my hair when I got married. And then this is a lily of the valley for Lily. This is for [my second daughter] Eleanor. This is a fun Lord of the Rings fact: Sam Wise Gamgee had children....His first daughter's name was Eleanor which was a flower in that realm, in that world. It is purported to look like a scarlet pimpernel. I used a scarlet pimpernel, but it's an eleanor from Lord of the Rings. And I got this poppy up here for myself. I just love poppies. Lavender's my favorite smell. I have daisies for my mom and sister. And this going to eventually have a tag that says, 'Speak Wonder.'

I think that's the gift of death is knowing that you will die; hopefully you learn to live....Tomorrow isn't promised. And that can be a good thing if we make it that. I think that's what flowers say. They're beautiful, but they do die.

I feel like one of the gifts my dad gave me was being able to move on, being able to have happy days, and not feeling guilty, or feeling like it's a betrayal if I do. And I think that's really common....I know if I were to talk to my dad, he'd be like, 'Of course I want you to be happy!'

I also think I had the gift of my daughter's life, which served to completely change my life. I think in some ways, a huge blessing, to have my life completely changed pretty soon after my dad died. My life is not anywhere near it was before I had my babies. I felt like it was really helpful to have that complete kind of break.

Lost Relationships, Story No. 9, Part 2

“I think [my dad] was so amazing and that whole, he's still with me. I have things in my life that I feel like he gave me. They have the memory of him in them. And I got them after he died. I have a book I bought and every time I see it, I think of him. It's like he gave it to me. I have movies that I watch, well, Collateral Beauty, most recently.

Have you seen Collateral Beauty? I sat and just bawled. That grief thing...There were a couple really dark days, where I was like, I could just be gone. And I think that was like Collateral Beauty...when [the title character] talks to Love and says, 'You betrayed me.' I said a long time ago, the people we love the most have the best capacity to hurt you.

After my dad died, there was definitely a part of me that was terrified to love. I was mad. There was definitely that element of love betraying me because it cut the deepest. Definitely days where I've felt where the world's just so small now without him in it.

...I was so sad. The world felt so small and empty. I remember we were driving home from something and I didn't want to come home because I was just depressed. We pulled in and I came into the kitchen, and my partner came in after, two minutes later. And he's like, 'Look what I found in the mailbox!' And he holds up this little tiny scruff ball, and it was Peeta. I have picture of me holding him a minute after. His head was just laying my shoulder. He was super skinny.

Kevan [my partner] ran to the store and got litter and food. We just loved on this kitty. We knew it was our neighbor's kitty. They had had a litter but they weren't [town]. We left a note, 'We have your cat.' He was the most loving. He just sat and cuddled and his purr was giant. He'd just sit and clean himself and cuddle and eat and purr. He never had an accident in the house. He used the littler box. He was an amazing kitty.

Both my husband and I have allergies to cats. But we weren't allergic to him. We didn't react to him.

So my husband was like, 'We should take him back' when he saw that [our neighbors] were there. I know he was just trying to be responsible, because we're having a baby, you know, like, what if the baby's allergic to the cat? And I remember we brought him over [to our neighbors] and they were like, 'Oh!' They didn't even know he was gone!

I was so mad at Kevan. I was furious that night. And the other thing—I was terrified. I was going to have a baby in March. And I didn't know how to do babies. I didn't really hang with kids. And I'd always been kind of like, I'm not good with kids. I was going to be responsible for this human in like T-minus. There was like a baby in my belly. And I didn't have my dad. I was so sad. I was really mad [at Kevan] because I kept thinking, this cat can be with me, it can help me through the days.

We had agreed that if [our neighbors] were going to get rid of him, if they were looking for a home, then we were going to have him. So [the next day] I went over and talked to [my neighbor]. And she was like, 'Yeah we're looking.'  And I was like, okay! And she was like, 'Do you want to take him over to your house, just for a little bit? Cause I was like, 'I have to talk to my partner but yeah, okay just for a little bit!'

So I brought [Peeta] back over and I was  cuddling him. And I was like, 'Okay we need to take you back so that Kevan doesn't think I made any decisions without him!' I turned around, and I hadn't heard [Kevan], and he had come right in the kitchen door. I was like guiltily holding this little kitten.

Lost Relationships Story No. 9, Part One

“My dad died when I was sixteen weeks pregnant with Lily [my oldest daughter]. He died October 15, 2013. He knew I was pregnant, so that was really cool. We'd been trying to get pregnant for almost three years, so it was really exciting to get to be pregnant.

He had a pretty severe stroke in February of '13 and that had definitely impacted his ability....He definitely had changed a lot....There was still a lot of himself. I think that he knew. I think he was in a lot of pain. I think he hid a lot of that. His brain, that was such a huge part of him....And I think that he kind of put on a brave face for all of us. But I think it was really scary and frustrating. My mom would call me sometimes crying, and be like, 'He was mean to me today.' And that was like not my dad at all. It was hard, too, because I wasn't there. He couldn't drive, so my mom had to drive him all over. It was just really hard.

That day [before my dad died], I had been doing yoga, and I felt Lily kick for the first time. I called my family, and I was so excited. And they were at a restaurant eating lunch. And so I talked to my Mom, and then I talked to my sister, and then I was going to talk to my dad, but I was like, oh, they're eating, I'll just call them later...And then I didn't ever talk to him later. That was really hard for awhile.

I remember because we'd tried so hard [to get pregnant], I was really careful...I was really scared of losing Lily, and I was scared of being too connected with her. I just didn't know. I was scared. People were like, you should talk to your baby. I felt really weird, talking to my stomach. I wasn't showing yet.

That morning [the day before my dad died], when I had felt Lily kick, I wanted to start to try and connect with her. So I had taken my iPad out and recorded it, and was like talking to her. It's weird because five hours later my life changed. It's so cool to have that moment where I talked about my dad to her....It's just kind of neat to have that 'me' to share with my girls, before I lost him.

That day, I had a migraine, too. I would get migraines during my pregnancy, and I would lose a lot of my vision, like I couldn't see. So I had to just kind of chill. I remember going to bed around ten and just being glad to go to bed. And then my phone rang. It was a number I didn't recognize. I could hardly see. It was like 10:30. My phone rang again. And then [my partner] Kevan's phone rang, and it was somebody from my dad's church to tell us....

[My dad had] gotten a stomach ache and it had gotten really bad. My mom was at work, so my sister, I took him to Instacare. And when he got there, part of his intestine had started to die. I loved the way the doctors handled it. They were amazing. When my mom got there, they were like, 'This is life and death....We can replace heart, we can replace kidneys, we can replace lungs, but we can't replace an intestine. If the intestine dies, you die.' And so the doctors were very honest, but compassionately honest, like, 'You need to understand this is life and death.' And he just kept saying that so she was very aware that he might not live.

So they were going to do a surgery....We get there, found out they had done the surgery, it had taken like twenty minutes, it was pretty successful...They were going to do another surgery... The doctor came out two or three hours into the [surgery] and asked my mom, 'Was he an alcoholic?' And my mom was like, 'He was a minister. He was teetotaler. He didn't touch alcohol.' And he was like, 'Well his liver's like completely shot.' It was just like organs were failing. It was time to die, I guess.

He was on a ventilator...My biggest concern was that some of my family wouldn't be ready to take him off life support. And I know there are worse things than death—because I've seen it. Just like when families can't get on the same page. I feel like the person they love suffers because they're not ready to say goodbye....I felt like there might be some resistance. But I feel like my mom spent those eight months kind of preparing for his death. And she really surprised me.

I'd read an article on hospice and it talked about making sure you communicate with the person you love and asking them, 'What is enough for you to want to continue to live?' Like, what do you absolutely need to be able to do or can't do, and that's when we know we stop trying. Thankfully my mom had talked to my dad, and he'd wanted to still be a pastor.

All the organs are failing, he'd already been struggling, maybe silently, I don't know...I asked the doctor when he came out, 'At what point is it not worth continuing? At what point does he not have any type of quality of life?' The doctor said, 'Well, if he were my loved one, I would stop now.' I loved how he handled it, too; I thought that was so beautiful. My mom was just like, 'If he can't do this, if he can't love on people, and be a pastor, and be a part of their lives that way, I know he wouldn't want to continue to live.' I feel like it was pretty clear.

So we decided to take him off life support. The doctor said it would probably take like five hours for him to die. And it was really cool, because when we were saying goodbye, my brother laid his hand on my father's head and blessed him like my father used to do to us at bedtime. I leaned over and whispered in his ear, 'We'll take care of Mom.' Because I was just like, if there's any part of him that's still there, that would probably be his fear, I think. So they took him off life support and he died in fifteen minutes.

A friend of mine had said this to me: 'You are the evidence of how wonderful your father was.' At my dad's funeral I spoke. I had written this thing on Facebook the next day. I wrote about how hard that day was. But I said, we handled it: my mother and my sister and my partner and my uncle, my friends. These people, we went through a really, really hard day, and we did it with grace and compassion and empathy and love. And that is the evidence of how wonderful my dad was. The people who love him, the people who did this, who went through this process, helped us, who will help us, and have helped us—you all are the evidence of how wonderful he was.

“I pregnant with B. when my grandma got sick and she had to stay with my mom.

I don't think a lot of people know my story either, with B. Not a lot of people know what happened, or who she is, or anything....I still don't know exactly what to tell her when she gets older.

I had just gotten out of this crazy relationship... It could have gotten pretty bad, I think. So I'd just gotten out of this relationship and I didn't know what to do. I found new people to hang out with.

I got called over [to a party] one night. I was really inexperienced and not very smart. And someone offered me a soda. One thing led to another.... And I remember waking up at about five o'clock in the morning and the first person I thought of was S. [my best friend]. I was scared to death, I was like, I don't know where I am...

[S. and I] had a great connection. But I would go through these little bouts where I totally was just like, this kid is way too good for me. He treats me way too well.  I don't deserve this. You need to find somebody else that's not going to cause you any trouble. And so that's kind of where I got in my little limbo state where all of this happened...

And so I called S., and I remember acting like, no big deal. It was so weird. I was like, hey, how's it going? It's like five o'clock in the morning. And he's like, what are you doing? And I'm like, hey you know, I'm just really tired. Been hanging out with some people. And I just... Can you just help me get home? And so I had him on the phone with me while I drove home.

I didn't think anything of it. I didn't find out I was pregnant until I was about six or seven weeks along....It was really strange because I had this little two week lapse where I was in a relationship and then hanging with these people. It was like the worst feeling in the world not knowing what was going on, basically. I didn't ever see those people.  I was just kind of living life. I was of ignoring everything that was going on.

[My mom] was super supportive. They didn't, obviously, love my ex, and there was a time period where I didn't know... She kind of had this whole talk about how, basically, it was going to be a good thing. It's a blessing. And even though it's not ideal circumstances, amazing things are going to come from it, you're going to grow up... All this stuff, right? She really put a good perspective in my head about how, basically, you're not tainted. It doesn't change your value or anything like that.

My poor grandma though, she died when I was pregnant with B. [She'd tell] me, I'm going to help you with that baby, I'm going to help you with that baby....When B. was born, she looked so much like [my grandma]. I remember being really upset that she couldn't meet B. I feel like her grandkids were everything to her. That's just what she loved the most.

I ended up telling S. [about the pregnancy], and he's just like, I'm here for you. I'm here. I made up my mind a long time ago. And I was like, you're insane! You have no idea what it is to have a kid!  I told him, wait 'til I have the baby, wait 'til I get stuff figured out... And I said, and you can see what it's like, because it's not going to be easy, you know what I mean?

So I had B. And not too much longer later S. and I started hanging out a lot more again. It was a strange thing, but it was good.

Finally at like six months, any kind of reservation that I ever had [about S. and I], I was like, okay, I'm going to go in 100%, and if it works out, then we'll do it. He was just completely sold from day one. It's crazy. And he's still to this day, like, I don't understand what's the big deal about it. And I was like, then you don't understand. There's a lot of people who will run the other way. That's scary. He was always really unique that way.

Lost Relationships Story No. 10, Part 1

“[My grandma] had a stroke. She'd had diabetes. I think around forty or fifty she was diagnosed with Type 2. And then when she actually had a stroke and they actually did all the testing, they found out she had Type 1. She had had it her whole life and nobody knew. It just eventually took a toll. She kept having little mini-strokes.... And she ended up having one massive stroke. It left her brain pretty much mush; she was a child, basically. So the left side of her was paralyzed.

After my grandma got sick, we realized things weren't getting taken care of in their house, so like, their bills weren't getting paid, nothing was happening... So they ended up losing their house and having to short-sell it and move in with my mom. They took over the master bedroom. All of us were still living there, except for my brother; my brother was married. There was four girls, and my mom... how did we even do that? I don't even remember, to be honest. My mom has a four-bedroom, but it's tiny.

My mom has been single since I was like six-years-old and she's had five kids by herself. Actually, she found out she was pregnant with my little sisters, the twins, after she filed for divorce.... Life was crazy then. But that's when my grandma was there all the time....So I lived by her my whole life pretty much. She was kind of like a co-parent, basically. I would spend almost every day there.

And it's so funny because my girls have the same relationship with my mom....They just love her to pieces. I love it, probably because I experienced the same thing, I'm assuming. I just think there's something about her, because both of my girls are just crazy for her....She's good at being a grandma.

[My grandma] ended up passing away, it was kind of just random. There was nothing that really did it.

When she died, it was a lot of mixed emotions. It was good, because man, it was rough. She was a 24/7 job. She wasn't, obviously, well. She didn't have much life other than sitting in her chair pretty much all day. And so, at first it became a relief. But then grief hit really fast. It was really intense. You know how there's like stages of grief, where you go through like, sadness, and then you get kind of angry...

I miss her guidance. I think she absolutely represents my childhood, which was carefree and loving. She was a nurturer. So I have this huge piece of me that did all those did all of those things for me gone

Once she died, they lost that house where we had all of our Thanskgivings and Christmases with all of our extended family. Super sad, because the people that are there now completely trashed it. And a piece of me really and truly one of these days, we want to get together and buy it back, because it was that important to us.

Cheeseburgers were her favorite food of all time. Out of anything and everything, a good cheeseburger  made her life. We do this thing every year, we go to Frost Top, because Frost Top was her favorite place, for the day that she died and then for her birthday.

When she first died, I could only remember her the way she was then. It was really hard for me. That was part of my [anger]. I was like, I don't want this to be my last memory of my grandma. I don't want to remember my grandma as completely disabled. But as time has gone on, I kind of go back to childhood memories and now, where, yes, I remember how she was, but it's not the first thing I think of anymore.”

It seems fitting to share this story today, as it’s “Grandma’s” birthday today, and yes, her family did celebrate with cheeseburgers at Frost Top. 

When I asked what photo I should include with the story, this was the reply, “A red rose. A picture of a red rose. :-) She loooved red roses. She was also a dancer with my grandpa.” And this was the picture she chose to include. 

A few weeks ago, I had a beautiful opportunity to sit down with Hillary  and talk to her about her father. I'd never met her father, but it was powerful to sense the love and respect Hillary has for him. More of her story to come soon, in greater detail, but in light of it being Father's Day, I wanted to post at least a little of Hillary's story today.

Lost Relationships, Story No. 9, Excerpt

"My dad died when I was sixteen weeks pregnant with Lily [my oldest daughter]. He knew I was pregnant, so that was really cool. He died October 15, 2013....That day [before], I had been doing yoga, and I felt Lily kick for the first time. So I called my family, and I was so excited.

I remember because we'd tried so hard [to get pregnant], I was really careful...I was really scared of losing Lily, and I was scared of being too connected with her. I just didn't know. I was scared....That morning when I had felt Lily kick...I had I wanted to start to try and connect with her....So I had taken my iPad out and recorded it, and was like talking to her. It's weird because five hours later my life changed [when I got the call about my dad being lifeflighted]. It's so cool to have that moment where I talked about my dad to her.... It's just kind of neat to have that 'me' to share with my girls, before I lost him.

[When my dad was in the ICU] I think it was really interesting when I was trying to connect with my daughter. [A friend] said, 'I believe that that life in you is a human being, a being and knows and can sense that something is going on. I encourage you to take a few minutes, lay down somewhere and just tell her what's happening, and tell her that she's okay, that you're okay.'

I remember laying down and wrapping my hands around my stomach and breathing....I connected with her in a way that I had never done before. I was just like, 'You're okay. This is really sad. This is not fun. But you're okay. I'm okay. So you're going to be sensing something, but we're okay.' It was so powerful, my friend's wisdom.

...[That same] friend of mine had said this to me: 'You are the evidence of how wonderful your father was.'...I don't know how much more successful as a parent you can be. I still know that my dad loves me and I know he's proud of me and I know that I delight him. I don't really think you can do better than that."

Lost Relationships, Story No, 7, Part 2*

“The divorce ended up being harder for me than I had expected.

At first, before my ex-wife had refinanced the house, I had just moved down to the basement and slept on a futon. Basements are generally pretty dreary, and my moving downstairs, in retrospect, was not good for my mental health. I sank into a little bit of a depression. My ex-wife was starting to repurpose her environment upstairs, but I couldn’t yet. I was just in the basement. I was not able to progress. I think that was a big part of my depression, that missing sense of ownership, that sense of space. She was moving on—rightly—but I was stagnant.

But I was finally able to buy a house. On my birthday, my 43rd birthday, I moved into my new little house. And then things started getting better. I re-painted the rooms and put in new carpeting, really making it my own place. I decorated how I wanted. I painted my kitchen bright yellow, and I put Lord of the Rings movie posters in my kitchen. I bought my first coffee maker, which was this crazy, new, liberating thing.

I painted my bedroom purple. I love purple, and it’s a nice lavender shade. I got the carpet I wanted, I bought a bed, and I was able to take ownership of that space. I let the kids make all the decisions about their rooms. They picked their own furniture, carpet, paint color—whatever. But I was able to do the rest of the house the way I wanted. It allowed me to start to re-own my life and take myself on a new path.

And I got a tattoo, which is an essential part of the story. ‘You rarely win, but sometimes you do.’ It’s an important line from To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s what Atticus says to his son Jem when he tells him why he took a hopeless court case. You rarely win, but sometimes you do sums up a lot of my life. It was really empowering to get the tattoo, to repossess myself in a way and to remind me of that. I wanted it where I could see it, where I could read it, so I had it applied to my right forearm.

I’m now living a post-marriage life, but it’s also a post-Mormon life. I do have the coffee maker, I do have a liquor cabinet now, and I don’t have any iconic information in the house that would lead anyone to believe I was a religious person.

That was the other thing I forgot. That summer, my dad died, my marriage ended, and I left my religion of forty years. It was all pretty major. But I’m not bitterly anti-Mormon. I mourn the loss of that faith. I recognize that it is my heritage, and I continue to identify as Mormon. I’m the descendant of handcart folks, afterall, and I’m totally cool with that.

But it’s all definitely a loss. I was married for 15 years. I do not regret the marriage at all, but I do not regret the divorce either. In retrospect, my ex-wife and I were quite different in a lot of ways. But we were very compatible, as well. We were good friends, and we still are good friends. We’re rebuilding our relationship, and it’s hard, but we’re communicating now. On the one hand, that’s so trite, but communication is everything. If you get to the point in a relationship when there’s something that you can’t tell your partner, there’s a problem. No matter how small it is, it’s a problem, and it’s just going to get worse.

I talked to a friend about my divorce right after it happened. She said, ‘You know, you posted like a hundred photos on your trip [the last family trip before the divorce]. You didn’t post a single photo of you and [her] together.’ Pictures of me. Pictures of the kids. Pictures of me and the kids. But not a single picture of her and me together. That’s pretty telling. It’s so interesting to me now. If you went back through my Facebook feed, I bet you could find the point when the marriage started to fall apart.

Whether my ex and I stay friends or not, we will stay in each other’s lives, forever, because we’ve got these two amazing kids. We will always be a family. The four of us will always be a family. But she’ll have something else, and I’ll have something else. For now, the kids are fine and she’s fine, and I’m almost fine.

This is the happy ending, I guess. I feel like right now I’m authentic for the first time in my life. I’m not trying to please my parents. I’m not trying to please my ex-wife. I’m not trying to do what’s necessarily expected of me. I’m just trying to be who I am. It’s been really empowering and interesting to redefine who I am as an individual and to be more at peace with that.”

Lost Relationships, Story No. 7, Part 1*

“My now ex-wife and I met when we were twenty-six. We had both been pretty active in the LDS church [Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints] at the time, and we had met through a mutual friend. We really hit it off and we liked each other a lot, and, relatively speaking, we had a pretty short courtship before getting married in an LDS temple.

At first, we were in love. We were excited to be married, we had good income and no kids, and we were able to travel a lot. We went to New Orleans, we went to Europe, and we went to Hawaii. For about three years, it was just us, and it was pretty great.

We had our son when I was thirty, and that naturally changed things quite a bit. Three years later, we had a second child. We then bought a house with a big yard, we were doing quite well financially, and things were going pretty smoothly.

After ten years of marriage, though, things grew a bit mechanical in the marriage. I think we gradually started to become roommates, and, as often happens in marriage, we began to drift apart. In addition, I started having some pretty severe doubts about my faith, and I really didn’t know how to talk to my wife about them. I was really worried that if I lost faith completely, she would leave me over it.

It was summer of ‘15 when a lot of stuff shook up. The Marriage Equality Act went before the Supreme Court, and the LDS church kind of kicked back a little bit, and then there was some controversy about the Boy Scouts. I was really, really struggling with all of those developments, as I am a strong advocate for the LGBTQ community.

It turns out, however, that my wife was also struggling with the changes in the LDS church and her own beliefs. While I thought sharing those doubts might bring us closer, we in fact realized the faith was what had been holding us together. We talked about getting a divorce. On the one hand, we could have both gotten lawyers, we could have fought over stuff, and we could have come out the other side hating each other and having no money. Instead, we resolved to put the kids’ well being first. We looked into things, and we found out we could just go online, and fill out a PDF divorce decree, and file it through the courthouse for around $325. Because we had young kids, we also had to go to a class.

That got me thinking a lot: why does the state require people to take a class when they get divorced, but it doesn’t require them to take a class when they get married? That would have been a lot more helpful. It seems to be much harder to get divorced than to get married.

All in all, though, we were pretty positive about everything. We both realized it was sad, but that we had had ten really good years and that we were both young and could still start over. We agreed on full joint custody, 50/50, with no child support or alimony. We agreed that she would refinance the house and pay me half of the equity so that I could buy another house. I agreed to buy a house within a mile of her house so the kids could walk back and forth. We figured out we’d alternate weeks, Sunday to Sunday. We’d trade off on the kids. We’d share expenses. We wrote it all up in the divorce decree. I even agreed that I would still help her with some of the stuff around the house.

We filed at the courthouse together. She signed, I signed, we paid them the money. And then, just three days later, we were divorced. We picked up the finalized paperwork, we went home, and we had shots of rum. That was the first time we had ever had alcohol together, but we wanted to commemorate the end of our marriage.

We went on Facebook and simultaneously shared a paragraph we had written together explaining the divorce. We’ve decided to go our separate ways. We’re going to stay friends. Please don’t take sides. No one is at fault. No one is to blame.

And then we started to adjust into our new, 21st-century family.”