Children and Beautiful Memories

This is a post I wrote in June of last year on Tiffany's Facebook page.  I was feeling so nostalgic that I just wanted to capture all those memories that were bubbling up inside me from when the children were young.  It's a sort of timeline for me to remember as I take this journey, travel this path of loss.  There are so many wonderful, joyful memories to hold in my heart!

I've been thinking about you a lot today. I really should be outside working on your "Serenity Garden" and the other areas around the front yard where I've planted trees and shrubs in your remembrance but I can't seem to get in the right frame of mind. Maybe I just need to write my thoughts down and then I can get on with the day.

So much to remember...the early years with you and Troy. Going to day care while I worked, picking both of you up and spending the evening home. Trying to find something you would eat because you were so picky while Troy would eat anything. Watching TV, playing video games, reading books and bedtime.

Going to camp every weekend...leaving on Friday and coming home on Sunday. Laying on the beach, playing in the water, making sure the dogs didn't wander too far, going to Sand Island, Troy driving his 4-wheeler off the bank and surviving (LOL), campfires, mosquito bites (which you would itch until they bled and still did even after you were grown), hot dogs and hamburgs...I could keep going. How much you loved the lake and camp, and how much you missed it when you didn't go there much anymore!

Even after all this time, I miss the frantic pace of bringing you and Troy to all your activities. Dancing, soccer, football, cheerleading and the list goes on. Elementary school, Middle school, High school...friends, parties, overnights, school band, games, competitions...where did the time go?

Then college...early HS graduation, Marist College, picking you up every weekend in Poughkeepsie, exploring Hyde Park and Route 9 for things to do, SUNY Albany, dorm living, meeting at the gym in the early morning at Crossgates, finding Duke on the wheel of your Jeep in the parking lot of Crossgates, early college graduation, grad school, living home with mom again (oh no) and job interviews in NJ, CT and NYC!

Finally, you moved to Stamford. You hired a moving truck and moved into a nice little apartment. You started your new job, met new people and things seemed to be going well. The nest was truly empty here. Troy was married to Kelly and soon Hunter was born. But you would call me just about every day...mostly during critical conference calls (of course). You would come home every so often, watch some TV, we'd do some shopping together and you would go back. And every once in a while, I would visit you in Stamford and we'd check out Woodbury Outlets, the Westchester Mall, Stamford Town Center Mall and other places. We'd get our nails done together and shop at the Home Goods store next door. So much to remember!

Now all I have are memories and your legacy. I loved how you were always making plans and goals, and changing them. How you always seemed to know what was just the right thing for someone and had just the right piece of advice for someone in need. And yet you couldn't seem to take your own advice...couldn't see the forest for the trees, I guess. I miss your kind heart, your beautiful smile, your gorgeous blue but hurting eyes. I remember how so very private you were, and how very, very sensitive you were and easily hurt. And at the same time, you had no qualms about telling me (and I'm sure those close to you) exactly how things were but to others, you were a mystery sometimes.

Music and poetry are what help me to express my loss. Just a song can bring me to tears and a meaningful line of poetry can touch my heart. So I close with something I found in a Hallmark store. It was a candle which describes you oh so perfectly:

"Tiffany - She is a woman of vibrant personality. She is an enigma."

With all my love, Mom 

An Angel from God

A Mother's Loving Task

I need to promise myself that there are happy stories to come...that it wasn't all doom and gloom...

In October of 2010, five days after Tiffany moved into her apartment, while she was in Stamford Hospital, I unpacked the rest of her belongings that lay around her new apartment and began to make it a place for her to come home to and relax.

It was probably sometime in the late summer of 2010, maybe even September, when Tiffany began to look at one-bedroom apartments for herself.  She contacted the woman who had helped her find the apartment she was currently in since the woman had been so helpful in the summer of 2009.  The woman came up with a list of places to look at, as well as set up appointments to view the locations.  I drove down to Stamford and we spent a weekend looking at apartments.  It was exhausting work but fun.  I always loved seeing the places and imagining Tiffany living in them, setting up the apartment and putting her little finishing touches on it.

At the same time that it was fun, apartment hunting with Tiffany was draining .  She was always second-guessing and doubting herself and I know she was worried about venturing out on her own.  We had talked off and on for several weeks about her getting a roommate but it seemed that no matter what I suggested, she didn't like any idea.  I recall that she signed up for a roommate website but I don't think she liked the idea of trying to live with a total stranger and I can't say that I blamed her.  I really wanted her to stay where she was and I was frustrated that she was letting her roommate drive her out.  I suggested that she ask her roommate if she could stay in the apartment after all but Tiffany said that she had someone lined up already and she wasn't going to interfere with that arrangement.  Tiffany was a sad, lonely sensitive soul, trying to be respectful of plans already made and not be a burden to others.

We finally narrowed it down to two locations.  One was in the center of Stamford and was pretty generic but had some lovely amenities and a fantastic walk-in closet which was one of Tiffany's requirements...for all her clothes, of course.  The other was a Yale Lock factory that had been refurbished into apartments that sat on the outskirts of the business district.  The apartments were beautiful; 9-foot windows with soaring ceilings that gave you the feeling of sheer white space, original brickwork along the bottom of the windows, a granite-topped island that separated the kitchen from the living room area and shiny, new wooden laminate floors.  Not only that, but it was less expensive to boot.  The only problem was that bedroom closet...much too small to contain all that Tiffany had accumulated.

That closet was a deal-breaker...so Tiffany was going to go with the apartment in town.  However, I think the Yale Lock factory staff knew how much she liked that apartment so they told her they had a one-bedroom apartment coming available right at the time she needed on the 6th floor.  This floor had 11-foot windows and was the only floor with walk-in closets in some of the apartments.  Tiffany took the place sight unseen.  It was worth it because it had an amazingly huge closet and those windows that let in all that light.

So there I was, five days after she had moved in, faced with a daughter in the hospital and an apartment filled with unpacked boxes.  She had bedroom furniture but nothing in the living room except a TV and a wireless router.  But she had a sectional unit that was going to be delivered any day.  Well, I got busy.  I would start work and then go to the hospital for the early afternoon visiting hours.  I would finish up work for the day, do a little unpacking, go to the hospital for the evening visiting hours, unpack until I was too tired to do anything else and then go to bed.

Meanwhile, at the hospital, Tiffany had time to think and as her interest in getting better grew, she began to direct some of my activities.  She described what kind of TV stand she wanted...I think she must have seen it at Target.  So off I went to Target (as if going to Target were a chore), armed with a picture that she drew, or that I drew from her description.  I wandered around the store, looking through the furniture section, taking pictures of what they had so that I could show them to Tiffany.  When I returned to the hospital, she looked at the pictures I had snapped, chose the TV stand she liked (after much deliberation) and then I went back to buy it.  I brought it home, putting it together with tools from her pink tool box (yes, truly it was pink) and set up the TV so it was all ready for her when she got home.  When it was all prepared, she drew, among all the instructions she gave me that I put in my pocket-size composition notebook, a layout of how she wanted the living room to look, complete with stick figure people. :-)

I gradually put everything away in the best place that I knew.  I even had to hang up the clothes she hadn't gotten to, per her instructions, on specific hangers in a specific direction...everything had to be done just so.  In between all this activity, I had to drive back home to return the Jeep she had had in college, and that I was driving when I got the call, because the lease was up and it had to go in for repairs.  Not only that but I had to go get Riley and Duke; Riley because he was only a puppy, just 3 months old and Duke because Tiffany was going to keep him with her.  They were so good on the ride back to Stamford and such a joy to have with me, keeping me company while Tiffany was in the hospital. 

It was two weeks before Tiffany left the hospital but I lovingly and willingly made her apartment into a home.  And I think before we even got to the car after we walked out of the hospital for the last time, Tiffany was already planning more purchases for her apartment.

Over the next 8 months, Tiffany really made that apartment a lovely place.  I wish now that I had taken more pictures of the finished "product".  And it's something that one doesn't think of when completely overwhelmed with grief.  As we all gathered, shocked, in her apartment after she died, no one thought to document and honor her life there.  So unfortunately, before it occurred to us, the dismantling had begun, to our everlasting regret.  Now the only thing I have left to pull from is the video Troy and I took of her apartment when we realized the finality of what had happened.  One can see brief flashes of the painstaking effort she took to put her singular touch into making this space more than just a place to live but what she did now truly only exists in my memory.

As I stood in her apartment before turning over the keys, I knew there was no way that I could give up what she had so proudly made her home so I brought everything from her apartment back to my house.  I used her sectional piece in the living room for a while but eventually it made its way to the family room where it seemed to fit as if it were made to be there.  It joined the lamp from her bedroom in this perfect space, lit, not by 11-foot windows, but by 2 brand-new windows that let in the sun shining from the south...

The Dream and the Welcomer

They say that those who attempt suicide are not trying to end their lives but are trying to end their pain.  If the darkness that I have been through and experienced after Tiffany's death is just a fraction of the darkness of my daughter's pain, then I can truly believe this.

Those who have survived suicide attempts have said that in the grips of their pain that they cannot imagine that their loved ones would not be better off without them.  While this is obviously not true, it is what they believe...I have spoken with those who have survived suicide.  They are not thinking of the aftermath of their death.

The devastation of a successful suicide attempt is far-reaching, long-lasting and life-changing. Those left behind have shattered lives that will never be the same and can never be put back to the way it was before their loved one left this world.  The pieces never fit back the way they were before the loved one left.

For our family, there is no recovery, only survival.  My daughter-in-law, Kelly, who loved Tiffany like the sister she never had, found moving on almost impossible.  I often wondered if she would make it through the jungle of grief intact.  And then one day, one of her dearest wishes came true - the wish that Tiffany would appear to her in a dream...

"I remember walking into this strange place that didn't have a lot of detail to it - like I wouldn't say it was outside or inside.  It was strange.  Then all the sudden I saw Tiffany in this beautiful black dress.  She looked so happy and I ran to her and hugged her and she hugged me back so tight that I could swear when I woke up that I could still feel it.  I said "Where have you been?" and her only response was "All my relatives keep asking me that."

Then she was in a hurry and ran to get these trophies.  I remember there were a few trophies on this table and she grabbed one and said that she had to go welcome someone new.  I didn't know if this could possibly mean like a new baby on the way or if someone had passed on and she was welcoming them.

She came back with the trophy in a new beautiful dress that was blue (similar to the color at Troy's and my wedding).  Then she was off again and in a hurry but the thing I remember the most is how happy she seemed and content.  After that I immediately woke up which was weird because a lot of times you dream things and can't remember them or have so many dreams that makes it a little hard to recall them but I woke up right afterwards and remembered it all.  It wasn't a long dream but it was perfect."

8 Characteristics of True Visitations Dreams:

1. The most important characteristic of a true visitation dream is that it feels “real.”  It will also be very vivid.
2. If you have to ask whether the visitation dream was really a visitation dream, then it probably was NOT a visitation dream.  They are so real and vivid that you won’t have to ask this question.  When you do have a visitation dream, you may wonder if it was truly real; but in your heart or gut, you will “know” it was real.
3. Because they are so real and so vivid, you will remember visitation dreams very clearly for days, months, years . . . probably for your entire lifetime!
4. The person will almost always appear in the dream to be completely healthy and behaving in a loving manner.  They will rarely appear sick or injured.  They will never be angry, disappointed, depressed, or punishing.  They will be “whole, complete, and perfect” because they are now reconnected with God/Source energy.
5. Whether or not they speak to you verbally in the dream, they will communicate very clearly.
6. When they do communicate (either verbally or non-verbally), it isn’t because they want to engage in idle “chit-chat.”  It isn’t easy for deceased loves ones to enter a dream.  They come with a purpose, and they will convey the message and then be gone.
7. Most often, their messages fall into the category of “reassurance.”  They come to let you know that they are fine and that they want you to be happy.  Occasionally, they will come with a warning; however, when giving a warning, they will give you loving support and you will feel reassured by their presence.
8. After a visitation dream, when you wake up, you will often be filled with a sense of peace and love.

http://www.annereith.com/8-characteristics-of-visitation-dreams/

The Journey Begins

As I start this first entry, there are only two topics on my mind right now.  Realizations, actually, that I truly discovered on Sunday, March 23, which would have been Tiffany's 27th birthday.  Things I must have been hiding from myself during this 3-year journey of grief.  Scary that it's taken this long for my mind to realize what my heart probably already knew...

First, I deeply regret with every fiber of my being that I did not heed my "mother's intuition" that night of June 24th when my daughter called me sobbing.  That I didn't drop everything I was doing and drive immediately to CT.  The problem was that it was not the first time Tiffany had called me crying; what was a bit unusual was that she hung up on me abruptly and then didn't answer her phone.  And while she was certainly battling many issues in her life, in the past there was usually some indication as to what her next action would be.  This night there was to be none.

I should have gone with my gut.  I didn't.  And yes, I may not have gotten there in time but at least I could have said I tried my best.  I may have saved her that time.  Maybe not the next time but at least I would have done my best that time.  Because you know what, perhaps she could have been saved despite what many have said.  If only I had tried.

I know...there are those words...if only, should have, could have, would have.  But truly, the opportunity was there and it passed me by.  I guess I'm only human to mourn a lost opportunity with such far-reaching consequences...

The second thing I dwell on is how much it hurts, deep down to my soul, to look at her picture.  I honestly can't look at her beautiful face for too long before the silent tears start to creep down my cheeks.  Oh my god, I look at her and it's like being punched in the stomach.  Her life flashes before my eyes, I picture all the future potential she had, all the wonderful plans she made, while the air rushes from my lungs.  I gaze into those blue eyes, remember the softness of her skin, the smell of her hair.  That smile that just reaches out and grabs your heart.  And I just cannot fathom that she is really not here.  I can feel the scream building up from somewhere deep inside me, struggling to escape, fearing if I let it out I may never stop.  For how can it be possible that all I have left are memories and pictures but no Tiffany to hold in my arms, warm and soft and sweet?

So my beloved Tiffany stepped into her ruby slippers, clicked her heels and quietly slipped home over the rainbow.