Once Upon A Time

Once upon a time I had a different family....       

I found him quickly and lost him slowly. We had eight years together, connected like Christmas lights strung around a tree, before our children were born. He was always with me, except when I was hospitalized. The ironic thing is we had no suspicion that he was slowly dying, without warning. On our 5^th anniversary, I booked a cruise with a hike over beautiful Ventura, with the blue October sky and a supposedly easy hike in the mountains adorned by the sea. That day looms over me- when we got to hiking, he couldn’t climb the simple trail. I teased him that was out of shape. But things didn’t seem so funny when an emergency technician had to come and get him down the hill.

It was his first doctor’s appointment in years.

His creatones, the measure of kidney function, were far too high. His heart was surrounded by fluid that should have been excreted by his kidneys. At first he was put on diuretics, but within a short time, he was on dialysis. Hospitalizations became frequent. I was pregnant with my son and would often go to movies alone, crying through the entire show. Everything seemed to go wrong- the dialysis site in his arm kept collapsing and required surgery to open it. When he first started dialysis, a day off would not affect him. When I had my son, he was able to spend two days in the hospital with me. By the time we had our daughter, I had to leave within 24 hours of having her because he would bloat up if he missed one of his three days of dialysis a week.

Right after Brad started dialysis, he was put on the kidney transplant waiting list at UCLA. We all offered to donate him a kidney; myself, my mother, his older children- but we were all ruled out for different reasons. 

He started dialysis in February of 2002, and we desperately wanted a child. We had tried for years, and finally got involved with a fertility specialist who helped us get pregnant. The day I found out I was expecting Hunter was probably one of the best days of my life.  

Everybody loved Hunter, especially my husband. We took picture after picture, of me pregnant, of the baby, of all of us together. These pictures still adorn my walls. 

Then, suddenly, when our son was four months old, I discovered that Brad’s favorite tuna salad made me unbelievably sick. I was in shock, but I knew I needed to take a pregnancy test. I went to the store and peed on the stick right in their bathroom. I started shaking as the pink line turned a bright, unmistakable positive. I rushed home to find my husband rocking our infant son. I simply handed him the stick and he said dryly, “You’re pregnant.” He went back to rocking Hunter and I left the room and shut the door. 

I know now what I didn’t know then- if our children weren’t 13 months apart, I never would have had a daughter. It was nothing short of a miracle from God. 

The endless picture taking never ceased- once I looked at a picture of Brad and thought, “ Am I taking this many pictures because something is going to happen to him?” It was one of those intuitive moments that you stop immediately, thinking, “How could I even think that way???”

But like the first answer you come up with on a test, my intuition was right.  On August 1st, 2006 he lost his battle. And what once I could hardly imagine became my reality. I was the "W" word- a widow. We had to survive on our own. My mom expected that the kids and I would surely be moving in with her, but I am stubborn by nature. I took my kids and moved them up to Washington state where we would have a fresh start.  The cataclysm of grief was not over, not even close. Maybe I was running away, like everyone thought. Maybe I was crazy, which they surely thought as well, as my family had been there and done that with me since the beginning of time. But somewhere in the damp and gray that was to become my home, I found my rainbow. See that is the beauty of the Pacific Northwest, and it follows a parallel with my life. It rains and rains, and the clouds are so dark and gray that you don't think you can take another moment, until it stops. And amid the silence a rainbow appears, colors splashed upon the horizon. They say if you don't like the weather in Washington, wait five minutes.

I guess if you don't like your life, just wait. The rainbow is on the other side of the storm....