Grandparent's Day

I know that holidays like Mother's Day, Father's Day and Grandparent's Day can be a bit hokey and are what many people call a "Hallmark Holiday"...just another day for the card stores to make money. I do enjoy taking a day, though, to really show appreciation for my parents and grandparents. (Even thought it doesn't and shouldn't take a holiday to show appreciation and love)

This particular Grandparent's Day has been pretty special to me because it marks the first that I have not had all four grandparents alive. As most of you know my grandpa Ray passed away a little over a month ago. Wow...it's already been over a month. How time flies and life here on Earth carries on for everyone else...

We all know that everyone eventually passes on, but until that reality hits it's hard to understand. I have known of death in distant relatives and acquaintances and I have cried at funerals, feeling the pain of others who are grieving. I have never truly known how to empathize, though, until now.  I have been so incredibly blessed in my 24 years of life that I have not truly known the heartache of losing someone close to me. So as you can imagine, this has been difficult for me.

I have always been scared of death. The first funeral I attended was for my great-grandma when I was about five or six years old. During the viewing of the body, my cousin Chelsea took me up to the casket and dared me to touch her. I touched her hand for a brief second and it freaked me out. (She also used to love to take me walking through the cemetery behind my aunt and uncle's house, which I did not like. Thanks, Chelsea, for traumatizing me as a young child! lol) Anyway, I remember from such a young age that I was scared with funerals, cemeteries, and I was absolutely terrified of me or my loved ones dying. It seemed so dark and creepy. To be quite honest with you, I have been scared of death until this year. A huge part of that is attributed to experiencing my grandpa's death, but it also has to do with a strengthened faith and relationship with God. Knowing what awaits us...eternal life after death...makes it not so scary.

When my grandpa was in the hospital and we knew he was going to pass soon it was incredibly important to me that I be there, not only as a support for my family, but selfishly to give myself that understanding and closure, for lack of a better term. As hard and emotional as it was, I will never regret the decision to be there.

  It was a spiritual experience, and an absolute honor, to witness his last breaths here on Earth. 

That night the room was filled with tears, laughter,and sadness yet there was such a sense of peace within me. His suffering has ended. No more back or hip pain. No more discomfort from the stroke. It is all gone and he is in God's hands now. That's a beautiful thing. My heart is broken, in a way that I have never felt before,..broken and grieving for my grandma who lost her husband of almost 65 years, for my aunt and dad who have lost their father, and for my cousins, brothers and myself who have lost such a loving and amazing grandfather.

After experiencing his passing and being able to hold his hand, talk to him and kiss his forehead shortly after his last breaths, I am not so afraid of death anymore.

I will still be completely uncomfortable with it. I will cry. I will grieve. I will let my heart be completely broken. I will not want to experience change and the hurt of missing someone. I will miss my grandpa terribly. I will miss his laugh, his stories, and his awkward yet oh so endearing hugs. But I will take comfort in knowing that death is a new beginning and we will all be together again someday.

I will say, I even overcame a bit of my fear from that 5-year-old moment of touching a body in a casket. I was able to place my hand on my grandpa's shoulder to say my final goodbye at the viewing, It's a strange feeling, but it was one of those things that I knew I needed to do for myself. My brother, Josh, explained it perfectly: It's like seeing Dale Earnhardt's car, but Dale Earnhardt isn't there. The driver is gone. It's just not the same.

While writing about the funeral and the viewing, I want to take a moment to thank everyone who has shown love and support to my family and me during this time. Thank you to Ft. Logan for a beautiful and emotional service with military honors. Thank you to Uncle Gale and Rick who, with my brothers, cousin Sarah and I, shared the honor of being pall bearers. Although I know they won't read this, I want to thank all of my grandpa's old coworkers and friends who attended the funeral and shared stories of their admiration for him. He was absolutely loved by so many and that makes my heart feel so full. I am filled with admiration for him and all that he did in his lifetime. I am inspired by him to fill my life with hobbies and passions. Nothing was out of reach for him and I won't let it be for me either.

This year has made me realize how truly blessed I am to have four incredible grandparents who have always been so generous and supportive. They are all so special to me and I wish I could keep them all in my life forever...and I will even if they may not always be here physically.

If I could just throw in a dash of humor for a second, this is a note to my grandparents now: Please just hang in there until I get married and have kids. I'd really like them to know you. I know at the rate I'm going it seems like that will never happen, but it will, I promise! :)

Anyway, I am lucky enough to have been able to spend a lot of time with my grandma Lou this past month since my grandpa's passing. She is such an incredible woman. She is strong, stubborn in the best ways and so full of God's love. I was also so thankful to be able to visit my grandpa Bud and grandma Frances today. To just sit with my grandparents for a few hours and talk about life is life-giving and fulfilling. I am amazed by their strength, generosity, stubbornness (It's all that German and Irish on both sides of the family!) and the fullness of their hearts with God's love also. I mean, wow. I wish I could just brag to everyone about everything all of my grandparents have done in their lives and what they have given me in this life. If I can be half the woman that both of my grandmothers are, I will be so lucky. (and incredibly fierce...watch out, world!) And I can only hope that my husband has the love and dedication to family that both of my grandpas have.

With all of that being said, I want to conclude this post by saying thank you. Thank you Grandpa Ray, Grandma Lou, Grandpa Bud and Grandma Frances for being the best grandparents I could ever ask for! Thank you for all of the experiences, memories, lessons, gifts, jokes, laughs, tears, and love over the years. I hope you all know how appreciated and loved you are by me and by so many others.  While I could make this a whole other post, I want to share just a few of my favorite memories from my grandparents over the years:


With Grandpa Bud and Grandma Frances:

• Road and camping trips in your 5th wheel. So many great trips camping in style! 
• Sleepovers with popcorn and ice cream every night
• Fishing 
• Grandpa's ridiculous jokes that I need to start writing down so I can share them with my grandkids one day
• Shopping ALL day with grandma...how did we do it??
• Getting to spend almost every holiday together.

With Grandpa Ray and Grandma Lou:

• Trips to the museum, letting Josh & I wander around while grandpa worked in the lab (also, the tours of areas prohibited to the public)
• Fishing (and breaking grandpa's rule: Don't catch more fish than him...oops!)
• Strudels with blue frosting for breakfast 
• Easter egg hunts
• "beach" days at Chatfield
• Getting to spend almost every holiday together. 

So much love to you all!

Quarter Life Crisis

 Almost two months ago I sat down and wrote a blog post that was full of happiness, excitement, love and optimism for the future. This year started out great and I truly thought everything in my life was finally falling perfectly into place...I was starting a new job that would pay more, I had a great boyfriend and we were going to move in together. Then, in the blink of an eye, everything that I had planned fell apart and it went like this:

• I started my job and wasn't feeling too sure about it, but I thought it was just new job jitters.

• My boyfriend very unexpectedly broke up with me and erased me from his life...without giving any real explanation or closure to me.

• Anxiety hit me like a ton of bricks. 

• Within a week ,I quit my job knowing in my gut and in my heart that it was the best decision for me. After a lot of thought, I realized that I had taken the job for money and because I knew it's what everyone around me wanted to do...despite it not feeling completely right from the beginning of the interview process. (Lesson learned there!)

My quarter life crisis had begun. 

Never in my life had I felt so defeated as I did that week. I has struggled for a few years to find a good relationship and a good career. I believed I had finally found those and I had everything planned out. To watch all those plans disappear within a matter of moments was devastating. I'm not going to lie, I was a complete wreck for about a solid week. From the second I woke up every morning (or every time I woke up in the middle of the night because I wasn't sleeping well) my stomach and my heart felt so heavy, I couldn't eat without wanting to throw up, and all I wanted to do was cry because that seemed to be the only thing that would help release some pain for a brief moment. Sleep was the next best option, even though my dreams didn't always let me escape. 

I was heartbroken, angry, frustrated, hurt, sad, and confused about everything...the end of the relationship and the fact that I was now jobless and had no freaking clue what I was going to do... and you better believe that I absolutely let myself feel all of those emotions to the very depth of my soul. I let them control me for a solid week. I know that these are things that people go through every day, but I admit I am a highly emotional person. I love the saying: "It is both a blessing and a curse to feel things so deeply." 

The incredible thing, though, is that despite feeling all of those horrible emotions, I could still feel deep down a teeny tiny spark of hope and optimism. There was a small part of me that would have to tell myself everyday that I was going to be okay. It was faith in God that He would bring me through this and lead me to where I need to be. 

                                    

After spending a week in Utah, (a huge thank you to Aunt Pam & Uncle Tom for flying me out there and taking care of me!) and gathering my thoughts, I reached a point of acceptance with where my life is at. Now, here's the thing that I think it very important for people to know: Acceptance and being "over" something are two completely different things. I am definitely not "over" everything yet. I still have moments of sadness, anger, and confusion. I'm still healing my heart and mind, working on letting go. Acceptance, though, has been helping that process. Acceptance is saying, "Okay. This sucks, and I am allowed to feel all of these crappy emotions, but I know that this is the reality. All these things happened for a reason and it is probably for the best. I am okay and I will continue to be okay."

I have had a lot of support from friends and family as well, which has really helped. So, especially to my incredible mom, and all my friends and family who have been there for me, thank you! You all mean the world to me and I don't know what I would do without you. 

It's funny, though, how quickly I reached a point where I just didn't really want to talk to people about everything. I have already reached a certain point of acceptance and, quite honestly, I just don't want to deal with rehashing the whole story and hearing some of the typical responses:

• "It's his loss"
• It's not just his loss. I clearly lost someone I cared about. I lost a relationship and a plan for the future. That's something to grieve, and no one should tell me otherwise. 

• "You're still young, just have fun and date." 
• I hate this. I just hate it.  I will have fun in my life whether I am young, old, single or in a relationship. I don't want to date a ton of people and if I were to meet the love of my life tomorrow I don't want to be told that I'm still too "young". 

• "The right job will come along"
• I know it will. I know it doesn't always happen overnight. I think I'm old enough to realize that this is not the end of the world.

I know some of my friends and family have already said these things to me, and I understand. I know that it is coming from a place of caring and wanting to be positive for me, and I appreciate that. Sometimes, though, these responses feel like that person is minimizing what I'm going through and feeling. It's almost like saying, "Whatever. Let it go already." Because I know that things will get better, sometimes I just want acknowledgment that it's okay to feel whatever I am feeling in this moment. 

So, I'm going to leave you with this last thought...if someone you know is going through a rough time and they confide in you how they are feeling, try to avoid all of those typical responses just for a bit. Try to just acknowledge that their feelings and emotions are real and they are okay. Even though it's usually not intentional, don't make them feel bad for what they're feeling. We all grieve and process differently and within different amounts of time. Simply be there for your friend or family member if that's what they need.

My mom did a great job of reminding me to stay positive and to take care of myself, but she mostly just let me cry on her shoulder. She showed her support by letting me know she understood how I was feeling because of her own experiences, and let me know that everything I was feeling was normal and it was okay. That was the best support I could have asked for. 

Phew...so if you've made it this far, you've made it through my rollercoaster of emotions. Thank you. 

2014 in a Nutshell

Once again, I have waited months and months to update my blog. To be fair, though, I have been writing in my personal journal pretty often lately, so I've been putting my thoughts down, just not here.

2014 was a year of many ups and downs for me...as I'm sure it was for most people. I started the year off by working two jobs. I was lead cashier at DSW and serving tables at The Rock. I was still in a weird funk since coming back from Ireland a few months before, searching for independence and a better job. To top it off, I was starting to have some serious pain and health issues that I couldn't seem to find an answer to. After months and months of several doctor's visits, examinations, ultrasounds, and an MRI I still didn't have an answer. First, they thought it was pelvic inflammation, then there was a possibility there was something else going on with my uterus. I finally went in and had an X-RAY and found the cause....kidney stones! Seriously?! I was frustrated because it took that long to figure out the issue, which really was so simple, but I was thankful it wasn't something worse.

February 22nd brought the opportunity for me to experience something I never had before....watching a baby being born in real life! My beautiful goddaughter, Georgia, was born and Sarah and Tanner were gracious enough to let me apart of that experience. It was amazing. A little gross as to be expected, but overall just really incredible! It's really a miracle.

In April I finally found a great full time job at Columbia College, working as an administrative assistant. I can't even begin to explain how thankful I am for the opportunity to work there. I'm not going to lie, there are several days that I do not want to go to work, and I have definitely encountered several people who are difficult people to work with, but it has been such a great first "big girl" job! My coworkers are awesome, the flexibility there was super helpful, especially with all of my health issues, the experience and knowledge I have gained will be super helpful in future careers, and I met a pretty special someone there....but more on that later!

My birthday was awesome. I spent it in Blackhawk. Oh man...good times there. My birthday present from my parents was probably one of my favorites...my very own waders and boots for fly fishing! Dorky, I know, but I was using older waders and boots and was getting a wet foot every time and let me tell you how fun it is to stand in a cold river with a soaked foot....it's NOT!! So, of course, dad and I had to go fishing a couple times through the year. We didn't have much luck, but it's always worth it to spend that time with my dad.

Shortly after my birthday I ended up shaving my head for the first time. (not all of it, just an undercut) but talk about liberating!!

Towards the end of August, into September I hit a rough patch. My anxiety was really starting to kick in which resulted in a few panic attacks and a pretty rough depression. I've had some low points in my life, but this was by far the worst. I didn't have an interest in doing anything. I literally just wanted to lie in bed and sleep all day and not have to face the day. I struggled to drag myself through every day, though, to go to work and try to maintain some friendships. During this time I was also having health issues again. I was having pain under my ribs almost every day. I was trying holistic approaches of getting better and nothing seemed to really be working too well. It was during this time that I decided that I wanted to start therapy. I had always thought about it, especially while I was going through school studying psychology. So I finally bit the bullet and just went for it. That was probably one of the best decisions I made in 2014.

I was finally able to start working on my thought patterns and exploring my mind and my emotions. After awhile I was starting to feel really good again and I almost felt like a new me. I had started going to church again (mostly just to the Young Adults group) and I was taking time for me. I, for the first time in a VERY long time, finally felt 100% comfortable just being with myself, working on my relationship with God and with my own spirit. I still spent time with my friends, but I mostly just wanted to be alone and I definitely did not want to even think about dating. I was content and it felt so damn good. So, of course, that's when he came along...

In October, I ended up in the ER one morning because I woke up just feeling so sick and having a lot of pain. After having an ultrasound, I discovered I had sludge in my gallbladder. So I quickly had surgery to remove that sucker. Recovery was a little rough, but it could have been a lot worse. I need to give a huge shout out to everyone who came to visit, or sent me nice texts and messages on fb. You all rock and made me feel so loved! My appetite was really lacking for a few months after the surgery and it actually has just now gotten back on track and I'm eating so much. I need to slow down a bit now...or just actually stark working out. Ugh.

I'd say the last month of the year was by far the best. Derek and I were finally able to go out on a date and I'd say we hit it off immediately. Since then I have thoroughly enjoyed spending time with him, getting to know him, and having those special, little silly moments that just make me smile because they're almost too perfect! I'm a very lucky girl to have such a respectful, fun, and handsome guy in my life. New Year's marks the day we officially became a couple.

So here we are, already 17 days into 2015 and life is so good. I am starting a new job on the 26th at CU Denver. It's going to be quite a change and I'm sad to be leaving some friends behind at Columbia, but I know it's going to be a good change!

If you're still reading this....thank you! Here's to a wonderful year ahead!