Tidal

It was a miserable rainy day, but I had a hall pass for the day.  I was out with one of my closest friends to a beer/punk music festival.  Combining two of my favorite things...beer an music was a genius idea.  Until we heard the weather forecast.  That said, nothing was going to ruin the day.  We were out, without any worries of the world at home or work.  We were going to drink beer and listen to music.

Until the phone call came.  I had spoken to my mother earlier in the day, so I didn't know why she was calling.  She sounded off, so I knew something bad was coming next.  She told me that my sister was bringing my niece down to the local hospital as she has been diagnosed with Type One Diabetes.  I felt as though the wind was knocked out of me all over again.  All of the feelings from diagnosis day for my eldest came rushing back.  I would never wish this upon anyone else...most especially family that I love very much.

The clouds hung over the day bringing a lot of rain, but this news would hang a heavier cloud over my soul.  As much fun as I would have during the day, there was a lingering sense of doom about what my sister's family would be going through.

In my writing practicum class last year, I had to do a piece of writing that was personal.  I wrote the piece below.  I have shared it with very few people, but it seems incredibly important now as families that go through this, need to know that all of these feelings are normal and real and appropriate.

So, here it is...Tidal:

The edges of my vision looked like the sun peeking through an eclipse.  The grains of sand wrapped around the contours of my spine.  The heat, usually so unwelcome and the darkness, so contrary to the day…felt like home.  The sounds of the rhythmic drum faded away as did the voices of the children and the ocean crashing.  I lay in peace and surrender.  No thoughts of work.  No thoughts of the fear of returning to another year of school.  No thoughts of family finances.  Most importantly, there were no thoughts of the meaning of the day.

This day, August 27^th stands in familial infamy.  It was four years ago that I had received that call from Missy.  It was tough to understand what she was saying.  There were tears and the shortness of breath that you get when the world seems to be closing in on you.  I don’t even remember the words, but I remember hearing the words get caught in her throat, then get muffled as they bounced between the strands of blonde hair on the way to the receiver.  It was the fear that we had both had for days.  Parental intuition, with a healthy dose of Google…it all made for a dangerous cocktail in 2013. 

We had been down this road for a week.  We were all exhausted.  It seems as parents, the failure to sleep train our two boys had come back to haunt us as every time he had to get up to go to the bathroom…one of us had to snuggle into bed with him until he went back to sleep.  He was getting up six to ten times a night, which meant we were getting up three to five times a night each.  We had cut off all water after dinner as it had seemed as though the excessive drinking might have been contributing to the excessive urination.  It hadn’t made a difference though.  This was the third time.  Thankfully, it was midnight and I hadn’t gotten to sleep yet.  I was nestled in close, almost hanging off of his twin sized bed.  There was silence.  Until there wasn’t:

Daddy?

Yes buddy.

Is it almost morning?

(Concerned) No.  In about six hours.  Get some sleep.  (Pausing) Why do you ask?

(Groaning) I’m sooo thirsty.

He eventually drifted off to sleep and I slowly tiptoed away, hearing every creak like an orchestra on our hardwood floor.  When I was free and clear, I got into bed and reached for my Kindle.  Google.  Search.  Excessive thirst and excessive urination.  Enter.  Type One Diabetes is the first thing that appears.

We both knew what had been coming, but there was the hope that it was just a miscellaneous infection.  It was the hope that you have as a kid that your parent won’t find the note from the teacher buried in your backpack…but they always do.  It felt like a hurricane.  You knew it was coming, but you weren’t sure of the impact and all you could do was hunker down.

We spent seventy two hours trying to understand how life would be different for everyone in the family with a child that has a busted pancreas.  The doctors and nurses and educators would use the door of the room like a revolving door in a department store.  It was a blur of colorful hospital scrubs.  Every time someone entered, we sat at attention and listened…and asked questions…and got overwhelmed.  It was the panic as the peaceful wave in the ocean that you were going to ride, somehow crashed on top of you. 

Your job as a parent is to keep your child happy and healthy, but suddenly it had become a lot more difficult.  You now have to, without prior medical training, calculate and dose your child with insulin.  Insulin had overnight become the life blood of your child.  Without it, they will die.  It’s said that children are like bees and dogs, they can smell fear.  This six year old child smelt it like the chum in the water in front of a shark.  He knew that you have no training and absolutely no idea what you are doing.

The tears rolled.  They moved like the senior walkers in a mall prior to open.  Slower than expected, but still with a purpose.  I tried to cover it up, but I wept…uncontrollably.  Head in hand, in a hallway that reeked of alcohol.  Suddenly those blurs in scrubs came into focus and asked if I was ok.  I wasn’t.  I mourned for our previous life.  It was a life that had dropped dead suddenly, in a doctor’s office with a urine specimen on a desk.

They tell you it gets better.  It doesn’t.  It gets easier.  The new normal becomes the only normal.  The life that died is replaced by a new one.  One filled with love.  One filled with hope.  It’s a life that has calluses on its feet from having walked over thousands of little needles that are at first shocking and painful, but in the end just make your skin tougher. 

The heat becomes unwelcome again and begins to irritate my eyes.  The burning makes the tears roll down my cheek.  I reach to push them away with the back of a callused hand and they move in a circle, having taken a lap or two.  The grains of sand start to shift and move.  No longer wrapped around my spine, I am suddenly surrounded.  Sand, salt water, children, heat and noise.  There is no peace.  There is no tranquility.  And happiness is not a destination, it is a series of moments.