Exposed...and Vulnerable..

Well technically my day started at 1:30 am today when  I was called to the hospital to help a family.  I finally headed home around 4:00 am.  On my way home I absolutely lost it.  I don't know if I just feel more open to feeling the spirit at the wee hours of the night or if it is because I was just exhausted.  I went into what we call the ugly cry, only worse.  It is like the whaling, moaning, animalistic cry.  When it is to the point where words cannot express what you are feeling, only tears and gut wrenching heaving.  Most of my crying is more controlled, but every once in awhile, it definitely goes to this.  It feels really good to release all of the feelings that I feel like I have to try and keep under control the rest of the time.  I always feel disappointed when this happens because I hope that it does not display a lack of faith or understanding to my Heavenly Father or my Savior who have done all for me.  I know that they know the intent of my heart.  I just would do anything to have our Tater bug back with us and it hurts so much to have her gone.  I miss her terribly.  I also know that she is happier and feels better and doesn't have to suffer the torments of her physical body anymore.  I was reading back over some of my blog posts the other night and I had forgotten some of the horrible seizure episodes that she had to endure.  Even with that and the knowledge of the great promises of the gospel and eternal families it cannot take away the longing to hold her and have her and the missing her sweetness, right now.  When I spoke at her funeral at the very end of my talk I said that I would never stop missing her.  I think that is true.  I hope that my heart can survive the severe pain that causes every day.  I know the severity of the pain will lessen as we find good ways to deal with all of this and as time passes and we are able to live good lives and serve others and honor her life. I was able to calm down a little by the time I got home.  I curled up on her spot on the couch and fell asleep for a few hours before it was time to get up and be the mom.

I went for a quick run before I needed to go and pick up kids for swimming lessons.  As I was running I was thinking about some of the emotions that had hit this morning.  Sunday we got a new ward list.  My first response was oh yay, immediately followed by, Tatum will not be listed with our family anymore.  Ugh.  As Lance started looking over the list he said "We aren't on the ward list".  I laughed and said yeah right.  He said, "Really we somehow got deleted."  We looked to make sure we weren't accidentally out of alphabetical order.  Nope we were not on there.  We had a good laugh about the reasons.  It was quite a relief to me.  How can I look at all of our family members and not see Tatum's name on there?  I know that I had thought of this with Trevin too, it has just been so long that I am used to it more with him.  I could certainly use another 6 months without our family being listed without Tatum on there.  Happy for the mistake.  Today I talked with another neighbor who was also not listed.  She was fine with it too.  We would like to institute a new rule that if you do not show up on the ward list you are not allowed to speak in sacrament or bring any sort of pot luck item to any church functions  I think that is fair.

We got to swim lessons and it was nice to sit and have a relaxing 30 minutes to watch the kids and just sit.  A few minutes before we were supposed to leave the lady that I know from our old neighborhood came with her daughter. She handed me a beautiful loaf of zucchini bread.  Truly people are so nice.  I am sad to say that it was an enormous loaf and there is hardly a sliver left!  Mostly eaten by me.  It was amazing.  Thanks friend.

Around noon I drove out to my friend that lives in Saratoga:)  She had done some new sills around her living room window that I wanted to see and she had some curtains that she was going to get rid of that she said I could have.  She made the curtains several years ago and they are adorable.  As I was driving there I kept getting teary and I was worried that when she answered the door that I might be a puddle.  I don't know why I was having such troubles today.   Luckily when she answered the door I was able to hold it together.

Lucky for me the adorable curtains also fit perfectly in the window that I wanted them for.  My luck day.  We decided to go to lunch.  Her kids came with us and afterwards I went and picked my kids up and we went to Trafalga.  It is a little ghetto in the Orem Trafalga, but overall the kids had a lot of cheap fun.

 Hilary trying to learn to feed her tickets into the counting machine..

 Hayden hit the jackpot on the first try on one of his games.  Lucky day.

Hilary being taught by her brother and sister.

Hayden counting tickets and wearing ridiculous socks...

Holden doing the shooting game with his crazy eyes.

You can never have too much mustache fun.  "I mustache you a question?"....Never gets old.

While we were watching the kids my friend asked me if I think about what Tates would be doing right now.  I think about how different things would be if she were here for sure.  If she were here and everything had gone well with her tube surgery and we were able to get her secretions under control like I think that we were getting close to, life would have been close to what we have been doing lately.  I would have tried to take her places with us so she could experience all of the fun things a family does.  Things would have definitely been harder and a lot slower to go anywhere, but who cares about that right?  I would have probably worried to bring her somewhere like this that is a total germ bed.  I had a lot of plans to take her places this summer because I was pretty certain it would be her last summer with us.  I knew it would be a miracle if she made it to next year so I was planning on making the best of her time with us.  I think about all of this every time I leave the house or plan anything.  It is hard for me to look at other one year olds and think of the things that she should have been doing because she was never with her age group developmentally, and I was OK with that.  I do watch them, however, and oh how I miss that age.  I think I was able to let go of that part of her and just adore who she was, so that is what and who I miss.  My sweet, calm, immobile, tube ridden, larger than life Tatum is who I wish I could be taking to all of these places.  Our family just feels so incomplete.

After we left Trafalga we went to my second favorite place, the Mall.  Luckily we only had to be there for a bit because we needed to get home and get ready for our combined activity.  We got home and went to our combined activity, ultimate Frisbee and kickball.  It was pretty fun, and we had a fair turn out.

This evening I was able to talk to Lance for a few minutes about our neighbors idea to do a little fundraising hike to the Y, to raise money for a non profit charitable organization that I want to form to help families with funeral costs.  At the first suggestion I loved the idea but I was sure that i couldn't think about doing anything with it until next year.  For the past few days I just keep thinking that we need to do it this year while people are still invested in Tatum's and Trevin's stories.  Hopefully we could make it a tradition every year that people would want to participate in.  I am going to make a few more phone calls tomorrow to see what needs to be worked out logistically and then I can hopefully post some more information.

Also tonight when I came home from our activity I was showing one of my friends my handle bars and how they are all tweaked and she pointed out that my front tire was FLAT!  Seriously.  I could have screamed.  I actually might have.  Unbelievable.  My bike is being very temperamental.  Thank goodness it didn't go flat until after I got home.  Lucky day.

One last thing.  If you received one of our hospital surveys after you lost a baby at any of our IHC hospitals would you be willing to write a letter voicing your concern for this practice?  The company that does our patient satisfaction surveys isn't sure if they think it is necessary to take this population out of the survey pool.  Hmm.   They said it would help if I could have some parents write letters.  If you are willing, send them to my email address  hjw04@netzero.com.  Hopefully we can help families who come after us, to not have to go through that slap in the face.