Loss and closure

Summer 2019 was a whole thing.

I got quarantined by the department of public health due to possible measles exposure and wasn't allowed to leave my house (thankfully lifted after a week when they were able to run additional tests and confirm that I had immunity but it was a whole bunch of drama).

Dave died at the end of July, almost 11 years after the accident that made him into a totally different person. The actual death was sudden, although it feels strange to describe it that way when really it feels like it happened in slow motion. I used to mark the anniversary with a post each year but I stopped after year six, when I realized that nothing about that situation was fixable and I needed to spend some time working on acceptance. What that really meant, for me, was accepting that Dave was gone in most of the essential ways. I never was able to let go of the resentment I felt for the new person that took his place. I've tried to stop feeling guilty about that. If we're being honest, the new person was generally an asshole. That wasn't Dave's fault, and it wasn't the new person's fault, but it wasn't my fault either and it was the truth. It's hard to keep loving someone who is more often than not, obstinate, irrational, and mean. In many ways, I still resent that person, because I feel like the last decade has slowly stolen even the memories of Dave away. If he'd died in the accident, it would have been sudden and horrible and we would have grieved deeply but he would have been frozen in time at that moment. Instead, the memories of Dave pre-accident are all buried and mixed up with years of resentment and ambiguous grief. Now that he's truly gone, I'm hoping I can slowly let go of the anger and try to remember him as two separate people. Brain injury is complicated and individual and it'll probably take all of us years to process this experience. I feel like this paragraph reads as cold, a strange, dry ending to what was a huge chapter in my family's life, but that's where I am right now. I have some work to do, clearly.

Moving forward to unambiguous grief, our beloved Circe died in August, and we're still missing her feisty presence every day. At 14.5 years old, she'd been dealing with complicated health issues for a while, and we'd finally gotten a definitive diagnosis of Cushings disease just a week before. That Saturday I'd put Adrian down for a nap and I was freaking out because we'd just noticed the telltale red spots that signal hand, foot and mouth disease, and I was anticipating all the misery that would entail. So I was standing in the kitchen feeling stressed when Circe walked in, stumbled and then collapsed on the floor. I panicked, cradling her in my arms and shouting for Dustin. She was alert but not able to stand, so I rushed her to the vet's office, crying the entire way. They ran tests and checked her out but nothing was "wrong" - other than the clear fact that she couldn't walk and seemed to be getting less responsive. She was peaceful and didn't appear to be in pain so I decided to bring her home and let her pass in her own time (although we did call a vet who could come out to our house to euthanize her, in case she started to seem uncomfortable). It was a bizarre day, because we were hosting a family birthday party and everyone arrived just minutes after I rushed to the vet. So I came home, with a dying dog, and we just took turns holding her all day and eating cake while watching Adrian's spots get progressively worse. Circe finally passed away in our bed, early Sunday morning. We took her to back to our vet's office because I couldn't stand the thought of having her taken away by strangers. Our vet was there when we arrived (she doesn't work on Saturdays so we hadn't seen her the day before) and she hugged us and cried, and told me she'd reviewed Circe's chart first thing that morning and she felt sure it was a stroke, which was what I'd suspected as well. I'm still struggling to adjust to not hearing her little nails click as she walks around the house, to not having her snuggled up against me at night.



And yes, I know it's strange to post about losing a person and losing a dog in the same breath, and I realize that I'm grieving Circe far more than Dave right now. That's where I am. Missing Circe is uncomplicated, pure grief and it's easier to process. She was such a constant presence in our lives, and I'm grateful that she was happy right up until the end, and I feel lucky that she had her stroke on a Saturday because I don't know how I could have handled the irrational guilt if I'd come home from work to find her there alone.

Loss comes in so many shapes, and my struggle is always to accept it, to let myself feel it and to stop trying to rationalize it.

P.S. - Adrian did indeed have a raging case of hand, foot and mouth, and I can say with authority that having to wake up multiple times a night to slather cold yogurt all over your hysterical toddler in the bathtub (because you read somewhere that maybe, possibly, it could help) provides a bit of temporary distraction in the midst of grief, or at least makes you wonder what the fuck you did in a past life to deserve this.

P.P.S. - I know I keep promising posts to people and then forgetting to write them. I'm sorry! If I promised something and didn't do it, let me know! I have a bunch of drafts that I'll try to revisit and polish up when I get a moment (although my moments are few and far between these days).

Year six

I didn't want to write this year either. I actually thought I had a draft where I'd been typing my notes, but no, just this blank page that I need to somehow wrangle my thoughts onto. I thought maybe I'd just skip it, but I can't quite do it. I'm grateful to have posts from each year to look back on even though writing them is hard - years one, two, three, four and five here.

Today marks the sixth year anniversary of Dave's bicycle accident. Last year I had just finished dealing with a crisis and was so, so angry. This year I feel pretty defeated. Nothing is getting better and I'm starting to realize that I have to let go of it a little if my life is ever going to move forward. I've been trying to take steps towards letting go, but it's a terrifying, guilt ridden process. Looking back, I realize that I said I was going to do this last year and I've only been partially successful.

Here's the thing - my default mode is to be a "fixer" in all situations. I can google like a pro, I can make lists of action items and resources and steps to take. But I can't fix this and not only have I exhausted myself trying, I've ended up in a position where all my energy and resources over the last few years have gone towards trying. I just haven't had anything left to invest in myself or my career or my relationships with people I care about, including my parents, which seems ironic, since I spend so much time thinking about them. But a relationship based solely on problem-solving isn't really a relationship, and I'm starting to feel it.

Fixing is comforting. It keeps me busy and distracted. I don't have time to feel sad often because I'm constantly going over a to do list in my head. Appointments and phone calls I should make (when the hell do people who work full time make phone calls when most offices are only open during the hours you are also working? it's a dilemma), places I should check out, strategies we maybe haven't tried yet. My mind is always going and it numbs me out a bit. Sure, I feel frantic and stressed and angry that I have to do all this. But sad? I haven't let myself feel sad in a while. Sad is depressing. Sad is admitting defeat. Sad is something that you can't just fix and I have a hard time accepting that.

So this summer I decided to try just letting myself feel sad. Or angry, or whatever. I would sometimes come home and just lie on the floor in the dark for 30 minutes and listen to music and actually let myself think about my feelings. It was a little bit like being 13 again, but with fewer zits. And yes, it was sad. I was essentially throwing myself a long overdue pity party and not even attempting to distract myself from it. It was uncomfortable and awkward. I am not a lie on the floor and cry type of person but eventually I needed to stop banging against a wall and actually lean into it. Honor the sadness and hope that I could start to move on from there.

I wish I could tell you that I had an amazing breakthrough and am now totally in touch with my emotions and also magically found a solution to this situation. I didn't. I still backslide a lot, and catch myself putting up walls because it's so much easier, this habit, even if it leaves me cut off and angry. I still feel responsible for fixing my parents' lives or at least finding solutions to make them more livable. I'm still terrified because I know that at some point in the near future the burden of taking care of Dave 24/7 is going to break my mom down completely and we should be coming up with a solution in advance of that and we haven't. I don't have the energy. I need to spend a bit of that energy on myself, because I've been paddling in place for the last six years, barely able to get myself to move into a new apartment, let alone contemplate my own future. I keep telling myself that I'll pick up the pieces of my own life later, once I've resolved everything. But this isn't going to resolve. It might only get worse. And I don't know how many years the rest of my life can wait on hold.

I don't know how to get over the crippling guilt I feel when I make the decision to cut back on family time in order to have more time with Dustin, or with our friends, or just by myself. I've tried to do it this year because it's the only way forward I know. The first Saturday I woke up and realized I was going to spend the entire weekend in my own apartment, without any trips down to my parents or any major events, I actually felt at loose ends. What do people do with free time? And had I really had so little of it that I couldn't remember how it felt? The enormous, unbelievable luxury of waking up slowly and doing normal things, cleaning the house and drinking tea and walking the dog and reading a book and doing laundry. The lingering anxiety that surely I was forgetting something because not following a complicated schedule of obligations seemed unbelievable. I'm trying to make sure we keep at least two weekends a month free. It's harder than you'd expect and it's still never really enough time, but it's something.

So this is where I am, moving forward in starts and stutters, trying to rebuild my relationships as best I can, trying to honor the sadness without letting it consume me. I need to spend a little time fixing myself before I can keep on with fixing anyone else. I can't really see my way forward right now but I'm trying to believe that there's a path somewhere. I have to start taking some steps in the fog and just hope that I find it.

Five years

It is five years since Dave's accident today and I really, really didn't want to write this year. I don't like where I am in this process. Which is even more dismaying because I thought the "process" was over, that I had come to a point of acceptance. But apparently not. Apparently there are layers upon layers of process I'm still waiting to discover and I'd really like to know when it ends. I'm writing anyways because this annual check in is important to me, personally, and I make it public in case anyone else reading is dealing with something similar. (years one, two, three and four here)

This year I am angry. Angry and resentful and completely ashamed of myself for feeling that way. I'm exhausted. Our family is exhausted. I'm frustrated that every solution I've come up with over the last five years has failed or at best been extremely imperfect.

Over and over again I think I've finally given up hope (which I guess I equate with acceptance, that elusive state) and then I think of something else and manage to convince myself that this time it will be a solution. And then it fails and I lambaste myself for my stupidity. There is no simple solution. My family is not going to magically be fixed.

In August my mom got very sick and we had to scramble to find a way to take care of Dave. In desperation I ended up bringing him to work with me for a week* and then found a respite care facility close by where he could stay for another five weeks. I convinced myself that we would use this time to somehow improve things. I found a self therapy program for brain injury online (patient guide here, family guide here). I read it and felt hugely hopeful** and tried to get Dave to work through it. He was motivated in theory but not so much in practice. I struggled, trying to decide how much I could expect from him, whether the difficulty of pushing through the program might be worth it. Every day for at least an hour I would push him to make a schedule, to work on the exercises, to figure out meaningful activities for his life. I ended up wrung out and exhausted. Dave felt inadequate. We were both resentful. I was putting in long days at work (trying desperately to prove that my family situation wouldn't impact my work performance), hitting the gym in an attempt to knock out some anxiety and then heading directly over to work with Dave before going home to make dinner at 9:30 pm. I don't know how people do this. And there are so many people out here who do this, or something similar.

Here is what I hate about myself, what I don't want to admit to anyone - I'm resentful that this shell of Dave is taking up so much of my time and energy. I want to be able to spend more time with our other parents, who also need us. I want to be able to spend more time with Dustin. Our friends are buying houses and having kids and I'm so damn tired and discouraged that half the time I can't think more than a month ahead, juggling family schedules and trying to make sure that no one feels neglected. I feel hollowed out, right when I want our lives to feel full of possibility. I want to be dreaming instead of doing constant damage control.

I'm terrified and ashamed by how bitter I can feel towards Dave at times. None of this is his fault. And yet I'm still angry with him. I still manage to be hurt by the fact that since the accident he hasn't once asked me how my day went, or how work is going, or how Dustin and I are doing. I know that this isn't his fault, but it still hurts, to invest so much time in someone who has so little to give back. I worry that all this anger has displaced the love we had. But the first night I had to leave him in the respite facility, as I watched him walk into the dining room for dinner, alone, without one of us, for the first time in nearly five years, I had to fight the urge to stay just so I could make sure he was okay. I was so afraid he would be lonely or disoriented, that the other residents wouldn't understand him and he'd have to sit alone. My fear felt physical, like a punch to the gut. I dragged myself home and cried for three hours before giving in and going back to check on him. He was fine, of course. How can I love him so much and still feel so much anger towards him? I want to be a person who loves unconditionally and gives selflessly, who balances work and family and a personal life effortlessly and still has a sense of humor about it. The best I can seem to do is to look like that person at least some of the time. Inside I just feel horribly selfish, fraudulent.

There is still so much love in our family that I have to believe we'll figure out some kind of long term solution. (If I can't believe that, how can I keep going forward?) I'm not sure what we're going to do but we'll keep trying. In the meantime, I'm fighting to break myself out of this crisis mindset, to whatever extent I can. The anger and resentment were big wake up calls for me. I don't want to be an angry person and I don't want to resent my family. So I'm trying to set aside more time to just hang out, fighting the (entirely self-imposed) guilt I feel every time I'm out having fun instead of doing something for my parents. D and I are looking at potentially moving to a new neighborhood, which is no big deal when you rent, except that it feels simultaneously impossible and overwhelmingly exciting. This is how I know I need to open up my life a little more, because the prospect of moving 7 miles away feels daring and spontaneous (note that we've been talking about doing this for four years and keep putting it off because it never seems like the right time - I have to stop waiting for the right time and just start doing things).

So I'm not in a good place this year, but I'm going to do everything I can to be in a better place next year. I think I need to stop fighting this situation and just work on changing myself as best I can.




*Um, yes. This was not my finest professional moment. Asking my boss to let me bring my brain injured stepfather to work with me was difficult but taking time off would have been a bigger hardship and I'm incredibly lucky to work in a supportive environment. I try really hard not to bring my personal issues to work with me because I'd like to be known for being awesome at my job, not for being that person with all the family crises. But sometimes it's unavoidable.

** I'd highly recommend this program for people dealing with TBI. It was helpful to me, as a family member, and I think it would be amazing for many patients. I'm not sure if Dave isn't quite motivated enough or if it's my fault for not having enough time to dedicate to it, but even on a limited basis I think it was useful for us. If we could somehow get the system into place, I think it could be even more useful (apparently I'm chronically optimistic, even when I'm trying not to be).

Four years

I guess I'm still writing these yearly check in posts. They do something for me. Articulating where I am each year helps me see our situation more clearly and lets me put it in context. It's the most personal post I put up each year and I always debate whether I want to do it, but then I do. The accident, year one, year two and year three are right here. 

This day four years ago it was a Wednesday and the election results were splashed all over the news and I got a phone call from my mom as I stepped out of the shower at the gym and our lives changed in an instant.

Four years feels like forever and nothing at all. I thought this year would be easier, a plateau where we could all just take a breather, but we're finding that it's just as difficult in different ways.

After last year's post I went on obsessive internet searches looking for solutions. I found an affordable adult daycare close to my parents and it's been a mixed blessing. It gives my mom a break for a portion of the day, but it still isn't nearly enough time to take care of the house, the usual errands and herself. How can you fit a life in 7 hour increments? Dave hates it and rebels by dawdling as long as possible in the mornings, whittling down the time. We hate that he hates it but haven't found a better option. It's heartbreaking. How can I reconcile myself to knowing that there is no good solution for my family? That we're always going to be choosing between competing needs? I cling to my assertion that Dave is a part of our family and even if he isn't fully capable of understanding that anymore, he needs to be part of the team and that means he won't always get what he wants, just like the rest of us. Underneath my skin I feel flinty and bruised, all at once.

Dave has enough of his faculties left to be aware of his deficits, but not enough to resolve them. There won't be any improvement. The doctors can't tell us exactly what to expect, but the consensus is that brain injuries can accelerate the onset of dementia. We're not sure how much time we have and that makes it hard to plan. He needs to be within earshot of someone at all times, day and night. He'll put something on the stove and forget about it, he'll fall asleep in the shower, he thinks he hears us calling to him and he gets up and wanders off, he has seizures that terrify him.

We've started looking for residential facilities, with no idea of how we could possibly pay for them once the time comes. We found a place that looks promising but Dave is concerned that everyone there is too old. It broke my heart when I realized that he thought he was more functional than they were, these elderly people with walkers who were clearly still able to hold their own in the lunchtime gossip sessions. He has no idea. We observed and ate our soup with crackers, asking Dave questions to keep the conversation going, as we've learned we have to do. I can't find a place close to us that has residential traumatic brain injury care and I'm not sure Dave would like it any better if I did. Every brain injury is different, experienced differently by the individual. Where does Dave fit in now? Where will he fit in five years?

What Dave wants, what we all desperately want, is the life we had pre-accident. Realizing we have to settle for something very different was hard enough for the rest of us and it's proving nearly impossible for Dave, understandably. My mom is worn thin and I'm afraid that a few more years of this and I'll lose her as well. I suddenly see the appeal of families with seven kids. My sister and I aren't enough, can't be enough. We need hands to trade off, people to step in, schedules that could be coordinated in giant color coded spreadsheets.

I worry about how Dustin and I can keep our lives moving forward, when we're constantly tugged back home. There isn't enough time to give to everyone who needs us, so we exist in a near constant state of guilt, but we can't keep shorting ourselves either. I alternate between thinking we'll never have kids, to spare them this kind of caretaking and then wondering what will happen to us if we don't. I make a mental note to check into long term care insurance, either way. We talk about setting aside a certain number of days each month that are just for us. Sometimes we even manage it.

I feel like I'm in a house with lots of hallways but no doors. Every option that comes up is flawed, every potential solution is unaffordable or impractical. I pingpong between rage, optimism and hopelessness. I know that our situation isn't unique. Caretaking is something most families will deal with in some form, sooner or later. That doesn't make it less lonely.

The sadness is an undercurrent that runs beneath us but we try not to let it pull us in. I'm glad that Thanksgiving comes shortly after this anniversary. My favorite holiday, a chance to regroup and remind ourselves that we're a family, that we chose each other and we continue to choose each other, even when life doesn't turn out the way we'd anticipated. We're going to keep looking for solutions this year, because I refuse to accept that there aren't any. Family is worth fighting for, always.

Three years ago, yesterday

And this year I feel quiet. Not as prone to public weeping, but filled with a sort of bone deep sadness. Reflecting on the losses we've undergone and continue to live with.

Two years is the magic mark in traumatic brain injury, the window of time when you can expect to see the most improvements. Three years feels a bit more resigned, a settling in, an attempt to accept, to figure out solutions, to find a way to reknit our lives, to come to terms with the person Dave is now while still loving and mourning the person we lost. Dave still needs full time care, will always need it, and the burden falls almost entirely on my mom, which concerns me more than I know how to say. This is the year we need to regroup and make plans for the present and the future.

The part I don't like to admit, even to myself, is that it's easy for me to resent the new Dave, to feel as if he has somehow stolen away the person I loved so dearly. I imagine that if I threw a big enough tantrum he would stop pretending to be this new person and come back to us the way he was. I revert to being a child, stamping my foot over an uncooperative parent, angry in the futile way of children.

And then I feel guilty, because we are lucky and I can see glimpses of the old Dave and sometimes he remembers to tell me he loves me, and he means it. We love each other, not because we are a family. We are a family because we love each other, because we share these years and moments and experiences.

And within it all, still, there are moments of joy, bursts of the kind of love that make you want to squeeze someone so tightly that your jaw clenches up.

{dancing with dave at my wedding - photo from melissa}

We are complicated beings.

I'm taking a few days away, back next week with piles of wedding stuff. It's time.

11/14 - ETA - I can't thank you guys enough for your comments and emails and general support last week. It means so much to me and my family. My heart goes out to all of you dealing with similar situations, truly.

104 weeks

I wasn't sure I was going to write about it this year. I was waffling back and forth. This blog is personal to me, obviously, but I'm a surprisingly private person most of the time. I was going to write regular posts this week, but I don't think I have it in me.

This week sneaks up on me. I know the date, of course. But it's more than that - I think my body responds to the season itself, picking up on the tiny cues that let me know the day is approaching. Pumpkins and trick or treaters, the Santa Ana winds in the air, election ads running constantly. I find myself feeling restless and stressed and then the crying starts, out of nowhere. 

A partial list of places I've cried in the few days: in the grocery store, on the bus, at two different airports, in my office at work, in the car, in various bathrooms, over dinner in a restaurant, at home. I almost never cry, so it's shocking to me every time. It hits me randomly, and I feel the tension build up behind my cheekbones and suddenly there are tears. I hate this loss of control. I feel weak.

Two years ago, Dave had his accident. Last year, we had only just managed to get the physical injuries under control so that he wasn't constantly being sent back to the hospital - I wrote a little bit about our experience then, as the big healthcare debate raged. We were at the one year mark, and while we certainly knew that the brain injury was impacting our lives, it had taken a backseat throughout the recovery process because the physical injuries were immediately apparent, demanding of attention.

After that first long day of waiting, while the doctors worked furiously to figure out exactly where all the injuries were, they sent a resident out to talk to us. He was young, with bleached hair and ear stretchers. He was muscled and hardcore and I remember being relieved, because hardcore seemed like exactly what I wanted. Someone tough, someone willing to take risks. He sat us down and tried to talk to us about the various injuries. We wanted to know about the leg, about the bleeding, about his face. He kept trying to talk to us about a brain bleed that they hadn't noticed upon admission that had rapidly bloomed. We would go back to the other injuries, relieved that they had stopped the bleeding, that he might get to keep the leg. The subdural hematoma was just a speck, a tiny little spot of blood in the brain. It was hard to focus on it in the midst of everything else.

Two years later and that speck is front and center, long after it dissolved. We're lucky. Dave came back, he came home. In so many ways, he is still himself. He has his memory, he loves the same music, he has his bizarre sense of humor, he writes just as beautifully. And yet.

He is utterly different. A brain injury changes a person, in ways that are hard to predict or explain. Dave has no temper problems, no inappropriate behavior, for which we are incredibly grateful. He simply isn't Dave in certain indefinable ways. He remembers that he loves us, but the brain injury makes it difficult for him to think of other people, so the generosity and care that we'd come to rely on no longer exists. The love feels like an artifact, rather than an action.

Dave married my mom when I was thirteen, old enough that the transition wasn't exactly seamless. I have a father, and I adore him. My mom and my sister and I had been an independent unit for most of my life, and I was happy with it. But Dave brought so much joy into our home, unexpectedly.

He loved music of all kinds, including Nine Inch Nails, which instantly endeared him to me. He took us on camping trips to the desert and taught Dustin how to rock climb. When I crashed my first car (I was fifteen, sans learners permit, let alone a license, it wasn't my car, and I rammed it through an actual wall, leaving a VW sized hole in an apartment complex laundry room) I told Dave first and he helped me tell my mom. He got me an interview for my first real job, at his company (but in a different department) and when I landed it we carpooled to work every summer while I was in college and then for a few years after. When, while working on my thesis, I accidentally filled my entire lab with hydrochloric acid fumes, Dave is the one I called. He was so calm - How badly are your throat and eyes burning? Is there anyone else in the building that you need to warn? Okay then, I think everything will be fine.

I miss that Dave so much. I miss knowing that I can call him when I have an emergency. I miss his voice, which has a completely different tonal quality since the accident. I miss having him ask me questions about what I've been doing at work. I miss him loving me and being proud of me.

It's hard, this ambiguous loss. Dave is here, he is alive, and everyone expects us to be grateful. And we are grateful, but it's possible to be grateful and also incredibly angry about what you've lost. When someone dies, everyone around you understands the script. It is a tragedy and you grieve. When someone miraculously survives, it is a miracle and you celebrate. We aren't supposed to grieve because we had a miracle. We're supposed to be happy, joyful, overwhelmed. But it's unbelievably hard, seeing Dave walking around, taking care of him, hearing him sound almost but not quite the same, and then being hit over and over again with the realization that he is only partially here. It forces us to live with the loss, constantly.

So much of what we love about people is the way they love us. When that love is gone, or completely changed, it's hard to figure out how to go on. What we have left is the knowledge that he adored our family and that he needs our love now. We continue on as best we can, which means some days are better than others. We live with that commingled loss and love, trying to appreciate what we have left while somehow allowing ourselves to mourn what we'll never have again. Yesterday Dave carved pumpkins for us, just like he always used to. We ate dinner together and he told a joke and we all laughed. He didn't call me girl in his old tone and he forgot to hug me tightly before I left. I have to be okay with that. I don't waste time thinking about how things could have gone differently. There are a million ways in which it could have been worse and a million others in which it could have been better and you can say that about everything in life.

And I am learning. I have always loved control and plans. I like to make schedules and lists and try to find the right time for everything. It's humbling when you realize that everything you've planned can be changed in less than a second. It's taught me to value resiliency. I want to be a person who can set goals and move towards them wholeheartedly but is willing and able to change as necessary, bending without breaking. I am practicing doing my best and then letting go, because I can't control outcomes. I am admitting to myself that above all, above anything tangible I might be able to accomplish in life, I want to be a person who loves well, and who is loved, and who does things right as often as possible.

This all sounds sort of hippie dippy and I prefer to identify as kick ass rather than new age. So I approach it more like that, as a challenge. It's a process, and sometimes it feels like zen and sometimes it feels like I really want to hit someone, hard. I am a naturally anxious person, so training myself to focus on the process and not just the outcome is difficult. But I keep reminding myself that I am moving and changing and growing. This is hard, I am allowed to feel sad, but I'm also allowed to have joy in my life, and I do. I am going to figure out how to keep moving forward.

But I'm taking a break until next week, when I'm over this crying in public business. It's hard to feel kick ass when you catch yourself weeping in the produce aisle.

Health issues, personal and public

This week marks the one year anniversary of Dave's bicycling accident and it leaves me feeling like a giant ball of emotions - weepy and grateful and angry and sad in turns.

When my mom called early in the morning to tell me Dave had been in a biking accident, we were both pretty calm. He's been an experienced cyclist for years and he knows the ways of the road. He biked over 30 miles a day year round and he had all the right gear. We figured he'd had a small accident and maybe had a broken leg or arm. I went into work as usual. When she called back to tell me it was worse than they thought, and that the doctor recommended that we all get there as soon as possible, the entire world froze for a moment. I don't remember the 45 minute drive. I was shaking so much I could barely breathe.

Dave was brought into the hospital with a broken nose, missing teeth, broken ribs, a collapsed lung, a leg that was crushed and fractured in multiple places, extensive internal bleeding, and a brain injury that left him completely paralyzed on the left side for over a month. It took the doctors almost 8 hours in surgery just to stop the bleeding and stabilize him. He needed 40 units of blood during the first week alone. When they finally let us see him for the first time, he was literally unrecognizable.

Dave's first two hours in the hospital cost over $100,000. I know because we spent days attempting to organize the huge piles of medical bills and cryptic insurance statements that started flooding in. He was hospitalized for over 2 months, and we quickly lost track of the total.

We were extremely lucky - lucky that he had gifted surgeons and excellent nurses, lucky that he had worked at the same company for 30 years and had excellent health insurance that covered almost all of our costs. We were less lucky to be caught in the midst of a financial downturn, and Dave was laid off while he was still in a rehab facility, putting the health insurance into question.

Fortunately, Dave turned 65 a few months after his accident and he's now covered by Medicare. Unfortunately, my mom has several more years before she'll be eligible and she's now put in the position of being a full time caretaker, knowing that it is vital that she stay healthy enough to help Dave and also unsure of how she will get healthcare. Ironically, she's a nurse practitioner, and she's spent most of her life working to give other people the best medical care possible.

I have numerous friends who finished grad school and came out only to find they couldn't get a job, which usually means they also can't get insured (there is so much talk about young people being able to get good rates, but let me tell you, it's unbelievable how easy it is to be declared "uninsurable"). And the only thing worse than being unemployed is being unemployed and walking around knowing that one random accident could land you in debt for the rest of your life. Start asking around and you'll probably find out that you know people in this position.

During those first awful hours, when we sat in the waiting room of the surgical ICU, holding our breath every time the doors opened, there was another family sitting across from us. The father had been brought in after a heart attack and needed a triple bypass but he'd recently been laid off and the family had no health insurance - they would have to pay out of pocket. We watched their faces, stunned into immobility as they realized what an impossible position they were in. No one should have to feel so hopeless, ever.

I don't know what the answer is to all of this. I've received treatment in countries with socialized health care and I'm not going to pretend that it's all sunshine and rainbows, all the time. Healthcare is by nature complicated and expensive. It is going to take more than one bill. It could take generations to iron out a working system that ensures health care for everyone. But doesn't that make it even more important to start immediately?

House debate on the healthcare bill will start this week, and the senate is expected to follow soon. As a small act, in celebration of this year that our family didn't know we would have, I'm writing a letter to my senators and representatives, encouraging them to vote for a bill that includes a strong public option, and also signing this letter to Harry Reid and sending this one to Diane Feinstein. A letter doesn't need to be complicated and formal. You can write from the heart and share your experiences. Just make sure to spell check. (Need to look up your elected officials and their contact info? Enter your zipcode in the box on congress.org for a complete list.)

I'm taking a mini blogging break for the rest of the week, to give myself a chance to reflect and re-group. I'll be back on Friday, because I think flowers are definitely called for this week. And to all of you readers who have left sweet comments, and sent kind emails over the last year, I can't tell you how much it is appreciated. Really and truly.