The first birthday..... his and mine
Our Anniversary
Christmas
Mother's Day
Father's Day
All of them
I've had a case of the doldrums since a couple of days before Valentine's Day. I was hell bent on being miserable that day. Which is completely ridiculous since we didn't make a fuss on that day, but I wanted to be mad, or sad, or whatever emotion I could be that was not pleasant. People, new and old, in my life made that pretty hard by doing some really sweet things for me and the boys all day. Mostly, I think I knew what February 14th represented. It meant that Bryce's D-Day was looming. I was 17 days away from the last of my firsts.
And for about 2 weeks, I keep coming back to what was going on leading up to the days that he died. Then, I keep remembering where people were when it was happening. I have been reliving all of the details of the whole day. It was Friday, March 4th, 2016. That morning, Bryce and I had been at his oncologist office. They told us that he was being removed from the clinical trial, because it wasn't working. We already knew it. I didn't want to talk about it though. I didn't want to think about it for just one afternoon. So he went home and I went back to work. We all left the office at 1:00.......
I was eating crawfish and having a beer with co-workers when I got the phone call that Bryce was spurting blood from his trachea/stoma. I knew in that moment that there was nothing I could do to stop it, but I had to try. All that mattered was getting to him.
I ran. RAN. out of Sam's Boat and straight to my car. My friend and co-worker, Monica, chased me down to tell me to drive carefully and keep a cool head. I didn't listen.
I remember yelling at my mom on the phone while I drove 100 mph in rush hour. The only words I remember in that conversation were me yelling "Come here!" and she cried back "I am! I am! As fast I can"
I was absolutely hysterical. Screaming and crying in the car alone. Somewhere in the drive, my hysteria stopped for about 2-3 minutes. Calmness and peace washed over me for those fleeting moments and I said out loud, "You're gone, aren't you? This is you leaving me, isn't it?"
The hysteria returned.
I remember leaving my car at the end of my blocked off street and running to the helicopter sitting in my cul-de-sac. A cop stopped me. Bryce was already on it......I didn't make it in time. I am late to something else. again....
Thank God his mother was on there with him though..... He's not alone.....
I remember that I walked into my room where it looked like a massacre had occurred. I was bare foot in my husbands blood....Where are my shoes?....
I went to AJ's room where he was playing with Bryce's cousin, Kari, to tell him that I was here. I sat on the floor and held him...... I will have to tell him that his dad is dead. Not, yet, though. Not, yet....
I remember that I sent Bowen to Denise's house to be with his buddy, Avery. I didn't want him to come home to this....I need to get AJ there, too... They're brothers. They need to be together.....
Back in my room..... I need to find the DNR for the EMS guy.... Where are my shoes?.... There's so much blood...... There's no way he could have survived this, is there?..... I'll never look at his mirror without seeing the blood spatter....
I remember Keith driving myself and Bryce's dad to the hospital. Again..... rush hour traffic. I yelled at Keith in that car about things that were irrelevant. The three of us crying.
Jerrie called us to tell us that Bryce was officially gone. She didn't want me to show up hoping for something different.....OK... you have to tell his dad, Jess.....
Then there was him. My beautiful Bryce in that ER room. He was already gone, but he was still warm. His full and wonderful lips weren't blue. I just wanted to crawl into the bed/table with him. I tried.....It's not wide enough for us. Come to think of it, this is either really narrow or Bryce is really big. My husband that has been diminishing from cancer now looks HUGE on this table.....
I held his hands. I cried on him. Then I finally had enough of them not cleaning him up. He had been covered in his own blood and knotted up undershirt for too long. I started dipping kleenex in my styrofoam cup of water to clean his hands and face myself. Someone in the room asked again when he could be cleaned up.....Just get the damn tube out of him!!!!!.....
I yelled at my mother in law. I yelled at my preacher. Then I bailed out. I couldn't do it anymore.
My head hurt. My preachers wife rubbed my dirty feet. My mom and dad got there.
Then everything starts getting blurry. The pain of all of it causes time to not make sense.
My best friend held me until I feel asleep. again.
Why am I reliving this? There's a sick part of me that doesn't want to forget a single detail of that day. But that's what life is, right? It's not all sunshine and rainbows. To understand the beauty of a rainbow, you have to accept the storm for its hand in it.
I said from the beginning that I wasn't ever going to pretend that Bryce was always perfect. That's one of the things that made him great though. He said inappropriate things to everyone. Literally everyone he met. He was rude. We fought and he would be a complete asshole sometimes. There were some real ass hat decisions he would make that would cause me to shake with anger. But.... there's not a single person in this world who was putting up with my bullshit when he met me. He didn't either. He was the only person on God's green Earth that would put an end to my shenanigans. And I was the only one that would tolerate and squash his. He was the most stubborn person I had ever met and I loved it. He challenged me in a way that I needed more than air. He sustained me like air. When he left this world, it knocked the air right out of me.
Saturday, March 4th, 2017, marks 1 year since I was late to his departure from Earth. I won't be pleasant tomorrow. I will, however, be forced into public for a little while in the morning. The rest of the day though, I will be drowning myself in my tears. I want it that way. For whatever reason, I just want to be surrounded in all of the ugly memories. It makes the beautiful memories even prettier. It makes his life big again. It reminds me to live boldly every other day, because he damn sure did.
