When My House Is Not My Home

It was an agonizing decision, but in October, just before Sophie was born, I decided to put my house on the market.  There were a lot of reasons.  The house is a bit far from where my parents and Ryan's parents live, and they were planning to help me watch the baby.  In the months following Ryan's death, I tried many times to get back to living there, but couldn't bring myself to sleep in the bed where I watched him die.  The two times I actually stayed the night, I was filled with anxiety.  The bottom line is that under the distress of a drastically changed life and a baby who needed a home, I had to make a choice, and I couldn't make the choice to stay.

I was fortunate enough to get an offer right away, but the sale fell through because of the buyer's difficulty selling his own home.  Then came the dry real estate spell over the holidays.  I was hopeful that in January, the market would pick up again and the house would sell quickly.  As emotionally attached as I was to the place, I looked forward to having a huge item checked off of my "difficult things to do" list.  And then one day, while I wasn't there, the flex tube on my kitchen sink burst.  The kitchen flooded.  The water soaked the linoleum, and much of the dining room carpet.  Then it flowed  down into the finished basement, where it soaked through the ceiling tiles, caused the ceiling to cave in, then flooded the basement itself.  While it hasn't really been my home for a long time, seeing my house in ruins was devastating, and depressingly symbolic.  My house, in ruins, looked an awful lot like my life- a shell of its former self.  Dealing with the insurance, the contractors,  putting all of the pieces back together, is exhausting.  It's also crushingly sad.  Ryan and I lived the happiest years of our lives together, in that house.  Now, it's a place that, for all intents and purposes, no longer exists.  When I'm done putting it back together, it won't look like it did before.  When I look back on my life with Ryan, our house was the centerpiece of that life.  I want to remember it like it was then; a place where our life together was just beginning.

Ryan and I bought the house in 2007.  He had just been appointed to his full-time position at Montgomery County Community College's Pottstown campus, and wanted a place nearer to work.  I had been trying to scrape together enough money to move out of my parents' house for years.  As big of a decision as it was, I remember making it almost casually. We were vacationing in South Carolina, and we had a sort of hypothetical conversation about living together.  At the end of the conversation, Ryan asked, "So, you think you would want to do that?"  I said I would, and it was decided.  Next thing I knew, we were looking for homes, shopping for furniture, making a list of who owned what and what we would have to buy at IKEA.  It seemed quick, but I don't remember doubting the decision for a second.

Ryan and I on our deck, shortly after we were engaged.
  This was our Save the Date picture.

In not too long, we found a place in Collegeville.  It was a townhouse with a deck, three bedrooms, and a finished basement with a bar.  Ryan turned one bedroom into a library, and we had our first fight when he told me that I couldn't keep my books in there with his.  There wouldn't be enough room, he'd said.  Turns out he was right - the man had more books than I've ever seen.  The basement became our main living area, and we planned on having people over all of the time.  In reality, we did so rarely.  I remember lying on the floor down there before we had a couch, watching a movie together before all of the boxes were unpacked.  It was, strangely, Short Circuit (let's all remember that this was 2007, not 1988 like you might think).

Guest bartender at the bar.

Ryan relaxes in his spot on the basement couch.

The last Christmas in our living room.

When I think of it now, I'm transported to a life that's gone but that I desperately wish I could recapture.  On a night like tonight, Ryan would play video games in the basement on an XBox 360 that I bought for his birthday one year.  I'd sit at my computer in the living room, watching old episodes of The Office, and having a glass of wine, rolling my eyes whenever I heard Ryan get mad at the game.  He'd come upstairs to get his crumpled bag of Spicy Nacho Doritos from the kitchen (he refused to use a chip clip to seal the bag), and I'd make him stop in the dining room and dance with me to no music.  He thought that was ridiculous but rolled his eyes and did it anyway, whenever I asked.  Later at night, we'd go to sleep in our bed with the nice soft sheets, cuddled up against one another, and wake up that way the next day.  What wouldn't I give to have more nights like that?  More mornings having coffee together in our kitchen?  More summer evenings on our deck?  More Friday nights playing Trivial Pursuit?  I loved that house, and our life in it.  

To me, the house isn't about one story, or even the multitude of them.  It's about a feeling I get when I think of the place.  Until it flooded, when I walked in there, I felt home.  Even without Ryan being there, even after days or weeks away, I'd come in and sit down at my computer desk, or lie down on my bed, and I'd feel like that's where I was supposed to be.  It makes me think of something Ryan once said when he was away.  In 2009, right after we'd gotten engaged, Ryan spent the summer in Europe doing archival research for his dissertation.  We wrote many emails back and forth during that time, and talked often.  It was obvious to me how much he missed me, and our home.  I remember very specifically a conversation we had close to the end of the summer, when he told me how anxious he was to get home.  "I'm done with this" he told me "I miss you.  I miss our house.  I want to get back to our life, you know?"  I do know, Ryan.  I feel the same way.  

The Dreams That You Dare To Dream

Nearly every night when I put her to sleep, I sing Somewhere Over the Rainbow to Sophie.  I've been doing it since before she was born.  When I was pregnant and in a deep, deep grief, I decided that it was important to spend five minutes every night focusing just on her and nothing else, and showing her that despite my sadness, I loved her.  I don't know what exactly made me choose that song at first - in the beginning I sang a variety of songs, but that one just stuck.  I remember that I liked it because after Ryan died, I thought of "Over the Rainbow" as being a place that I could see him again, and a place that Sophie could meet him.  It was somehow a comfort.  I sang it to her on the morning she was born, and she looked at me in awe, as if to say, "I know that song".  It was our first moment of real bonding.

Over time, she's learned the song well enough to have a favorite part.  I watch her face every night, and I can see that no matter what she's doing, the song gets to a certain point, and she'll stop and watch me, waiting.  Then, her favorite part comes, and she smiles.  Her favorite line?

"And, the dreams, that you dare to dream, really do come true".

You may think I'm imagining it, but I'm not enough of an optimist to make that up.  When I noticed it, several nights in a row, I thought to myself that perhaps in her little child's mind, she is excited that her dreams may come true.  More likely she just likes the sounds of the words.  But, it got me to thinking how great it is that Sophie can have dreams, she can dream anything she dares, and maybe those dreams will come true.

And then today I had an unexpected thought.  I have dreams.

It's the first time in many months that I've realized this.  It may be the first time in over a year since it's been true.  When Ryan died, my dreams were destroyed.  My entire future, wiped away in the course of an hour.  In fact, because of the ridiculous shock I was going through, it took me a long time to even realize how many of my dreams wouldn't be a reality.  I kept trying to cling to something- some shred of the future I thought I was going to have.  But over time I realized that it was all gone, and that I couldn't hope and dream for the same things anymore.  Ryan was at the center of every one of my dreams, and without him, how could I have those things?  I'll never have a family with him.  We'll never move into a bigger house, and have everyone over there for Thanksgiving dinner like I always wanted.  We'll never renew our wedding vows in Europe, or go scuba diving in the Caribbean, or open an Irish pub when we retire.  I'll never get to see the pride on his face if I decide to finally go back to school.  The list goes on and on.

What then?  When your dreams go away, what do you live for?  For me, it was, and still is, my daughter.  But I know that I need to find something to hope for myself as well.  While I've known that for a long time, most of the time, it feels just impossible.  And even if I do manage to hope for something or look forward to something, I'm immediately confronted by the immense mountain that I would have to climb to get it.  When you've lost as I have, optimism is terrifying.  It's been incredibly difficult to try.  What if I climb back up from where I am, and fall again?  What if the universe decides to take from me again?  I'm not sure how I could make it.  

Not only has it been difficult to hope, but I haven't know what to hope for.  Having lost the old dreams, I never replaced them with new ones.  My hopes had been limited to the health of my family, my daughter, and her chance for a good life.  Today though, when I was leaving work, I started thinking about how I'd love to be able to make writing more a part of my life, perhaps even a living one day.  It seems unlikely, but it doesn't mean I couldn't try.  And all at once, I realized that I had a dream.  Then I started to realize that I had a few of them.  Mostly little things, but they still count.  And Sophie's lullaby just popped into my head, out of nowhere.  "The dreams, that you dare to dream...", and the bright smile on her face.  Those of you who know my daughter, or have seen pictures, know the light in that smile.  For just a minute, I thought that maybe when she smiles at that moment in the song every night, it's her daddy, smiling through her at me, letting me know that I can still dream.  Again, more likely she probably just likes the sounds of the words, but that little thought may be the single most optimistic thing I've thought of in over a year.  It's not like me.

I'm still horribly sad, most of the time.  I'm completely devastated that the dreams I had with Ryan won't come true.  Even when I think about having new dreams, and I get excited about them for a moment, the next moment is filled with an aching sadness that Ryan can't be in them.  I wanted that future.  Not the one I'm trying to scrape together now.  I'd give up every seed of a dream forming in my heart now if it meant I could have Ryan and those dreams back.  Of course though, I can't.  But maybe, if I try, I might have some of the other things I'm just starting to hope for.

A Little Unsolicited Advice, On My Birthday

Despite its many pitfalls, one of the benefits of Facebook is that you never again have to worry that you'll forget someone's birthday.  You get a nifty little reminder that one of your friends has a birthday, and have an easy way to wish them well.  Never before Facebook have I had so many well-wishes on my birthday, which happens to be today.  To all of you who took a moment to say happy birthday, thank you for the kind thoughts.  Thank you especially to those who had the compassion to notice that this would be a tough day for me.

Unfortunately though, my birthday is not exactly what I would call a happy day anymore.  Last year on my birthday, I went out to dinner with my husband, spent the night relaxing with him, went to sleep, and woke up four hours later, to his last breaths.  It will be difficult for me to ever separate my birthday from that memory.  Today is the first birthday I'm having to be without him, and it also means that as of tomorrow, he will have been gone a whole year.  

I've tried, unsuccessfully, to think of a way I could celebrate my birthday under such circumstances.  When the birthday wishes started rolling in this morning, I started trying to think of something I could ask people to do in Ryan's memory, a donation to a cause, or something of the like, as a birthday gift to me.  If Ryan had died of cancer, a donation to cancer research would have been the thing, for example.  But Ryan didn't die of something that there is a research foundation for.  Though it was a heart problem, it wasn't really heart disease.  Research probably wouldn't have prevented his death, as we didn't know he was ill.

So, instead of being an activist for a cause on this day, I would instead ask that as a birthday present to me, you let me pass along some unsolicited, though well-intended, advice.  I advise everyone, today and every day, to follow the steps below.

1.  Think of the person you love the most.  It's probably a significant other, or a child.  If you're very lucky, you will have many people who you care intensely for.  Try, for now, to just focus on the one person who means the most to you. *

2.  Think of what your person means to you, and then, what you mean to him or her.  What would your life be like if that person wasn't here?  It's an impossible thing to imagine.  What would that person do without you, should something happen to you?

3.  Now, for that person, if not for yourself, take care of yourself.  Get a check-up.  Get up to date on your medications, vaccines, whatever it is.  We don't know for sure, but there's a chance that Ryan's death was a result of a post-viral infection that started with the flu.  At least once a week I wonder if things would be different if I'd have pushed for him to get a flu shot.  I got one.  Why didn't I insist that he do the same?  What's crazy is that he wasn't morally opposed to getting one; he just didn't see the point, and thought it was a waste of his time.  Taking care of yourself is never a waste of time.  The person you love most wouldn't think so.  For the record, I don't think that Ryan was negligent in his own health.  He took care of himself as well, or better, than most men his age do.  We can always do a bit more though, if only for our loved ones.

4.  Whenever possible, don't put things off.  It's a busy world we live in, and it's easy to think you'll get to things later.  There are so many things Ryan and I never got to, I can't even tell you.  It's a cliche to say you should live in the moment - that's hard to do.  It's hard to not plan things for the future, impossible even, and you should plan for the future as much as you can.  But if there's something that'd really important to you and your loved ones, do it.  I have a hard time taking my own advice here, especially now.  I don't know what it is that I'm supposed to not put off.  But before Ryan died, I knew what the important things were, and we put a lot of them off anyhow.  Try to not do that.

5.  Don't leave anything on the table.  Everyone says you should never go to bed angry, but that can be really difficult as much as you try.  But, even if you do fight with the person you love, still tell them how much you love them as often as possible.  At least every day.  That way you'll know that you did it, you'll know that your person knows how you feel about them, and hopefully your person will reciprocate.

After today, I can certainly say that one day, I'll be able to celebrate my birthday again.  That's not this year yet, but eventually.  That's a good step forward for me, as before I wasn't sure if I ever would want to even acknowledge the day.  For this year, thank you to everyone who has read what I've had to say this year, and supported me.  And thank you for letting me pass along this advice.  I hope someone out there takes it.  I'm done now.  Consider my soapbox stowed away, back in its proper location.

*Though I lost the person I care about the most in the world, I will strive to follow my own advice with my new most important person.  Sophie, everything I do is for you.