This has happened a few times, when I’ll have a day (or a week…) I’m feeling particularly unsettled or emotional and I’m not able to immediately pinpoint why, only to then recall what significant thing was happening exactly one year ago that my brain was subconsciously remembering. That was the case today, and explains a lot of the heaviness and extra grief I’ve been feeling.
January 21, 2021 was the day before Kendall’s last hospitalization that he never came home from. He and I had to spend the majority of the day up at the hospital for so many tests and procedures. We actually ended up going there and back twice that day, an hour each way (meaning four hours of driving, but lots of time for good conversation between us). Due to what felt like some mini miracles, though, we were able to make it home in time to eat dinner with the kids and play a game together as a family (a miracle in and of itself, that Kendall was able to tolerate sitting at the table for so long and be able to interact with everyone). That would be the very last time we would be together as a family (even the day Kendall died, only one child was allowed in the room at a time), the last time we would all see one another without masks, the last time I would really see Kendall walk, or that I would sleep next to him, or hear him joke back and forth with the kids…
And we had no idea, of course. We were so ready to simply get his transplant behind us, looking forward to eventually (hopefully) getting to regain some sense of normalcy again. It felt like surely we must have gotten through the “hardest” part of this prolonged trial that had taken so much out of us. Any wonder that that feels emotional now to think about?
That was also the day that the visitor policy for BMT patients changed, so that I would be allowed to visit in the evenings. I remember being grateful I could be there and Kendall wouldn’t have to face this completely on his own, but also wondering how I would be able to juggle everything with the kids, work, the many preparations and house updates that needed to happen (DEEP cleaning including our ducts, getting a new furnace, air filters and germicidal UV lights installed, preparing food that met the very strict post-transplant requirements he would have, etc.), all while going back and forth up to Salt Lake. I had no idea that in exactly one month from that day I would drop absolutely everything and practically live in an ICU room for five weeks. So very much that I didn’t know was coming, and I hurt now for the Suzanne of a year ago, for Kendall, for our kids, knowing the aftermath of what was so shortly coming.
But I am equally proud for what we survived, the attitude we maintained as a family even in the lowest of moments, our faith that wasn’t shaken. Truthfully, it still seems impossible, maybe even more so now than when I was living it, to think back on what we endured, that it didn’t completely break me or our family. And yet, my Meal Train post from January 21, 2021 ended with, “We are confident that things are going to turn out how they are supposed to, whatever that may be, and that we will be OK no matter the outcome.” We may not quite be at “OK” yet, but we will be. We’re slowly and steadily and surely getting there.
